This trip report includes no pictures. Long time readers of TSW will realize what that means…

I assumed Cannon wouldn’t have the gumption to open the Front Five trails. There was no base under the foot of snow that fell on top of grass. With terrain undulations and water bars abound, the natural snow skiing at Cannon would be adventurous and not completely safe despite the element of self selection. But Cannon proved me wrong.

My original plan was to by pass Cannon and ski up a well manicured neighboring slope. But Cannon’s Facebook page reported free skiing today due to the Eaglecliff Chair being broken (resulting in bus shuttling between the base lodge and the Zoomer Chair). The snow report indicated natural snow trails “could” open pending patrol inspect. It wouldn’t hurt to see what happened. Worst case, I would get my legs warmed up before skinning.

But skinning wasn’t going to happen today. The ropes were already down as I arrived and the frenzy was on. Except, there was no frenzy. Perhaps due to the Eaglecliff Chair issue or perhaps due to Black Friday, not many skiers showed up. Untracked powder abound with minimal competition. Usually the Front Five gets completely tracked out within three runs. But I was still skiing fresh lines after three hours.

Zoomer, Zoomer, Paulie’s, Avalanche, Avalanche. Damn.

Damn!

Things were finally starting to get cut up. So I went somewhere that I am not supposed to talk about. Despite having been open for over an hour, not a single track had been made excepting the skin track from yesterday. I couldn’t possibly keep quiet. I yelled and hollered and whooped up every single turn. The folks skiing Avalanche probably couldn’t help but stop and turn their heads and wonder…

I kept going back run after run. And eventually others started to figure it out, perhaps on their own, perhaps after hearing the screams of joy. But after three hours, the snow was still fresh and not yet chopped up. Untracked lines could still be found. It was glorious.

I kept thinking I might stop skiing the lift and take that earned run that I had originally come for. But I kept turning left off the lift for one more run, and then one more run… just one more run…