Cannon showed off its snowmaking improvements during opening weekend. The new system has clearly allowed Cannon to shore up a critical shortcoming of the ski area. Cannon has always struggled to open terrain and connect its two lodges and summit building during the early season. When natural snow and consistent cold temperatures are sparse, the mountain can struggle to open up major routes before the New Year, let alone the important Christmas vacation week.
In recent years, Cannon has historically opened the Peabody Quad with one mid mountain route route along the narrow trails Middle Cannon and Gremlin. This created a super WROD and surface conditions that deteriorated rapidly. Despite the blue square ratings of Middle Cannon to Gremlin, solid intermediate level skiing was clearly not available during a typical opening weekend at Cannon.
This year, Cannon went with a different strategy spreading out open terrain for ALL ability levels between three lifts including the Brookside beginner lift. True beginner terrain on opening day at Cannon? Perhaps a first as long as I have been skiing there. And even some terrain park features. But Cannon’s grooming was not up to par compared to the new snowmaking system which meant that intermediates still would not be happy with the offerings. On the other hand, those of us that appreciate ungroomed conditions were delighted.
Groomers made a few passes on the intermediate rated Front Five trails. But the skiing was hardly at an intermediate level. Gary’s had barely two groomer passes in what may have been a rush job. The groomed snow was not even smooth and had occasional ridges to navigate. Rocket was groomed less than halfway across. But adding insult to injury for intermediate skiers was that the groomers were extremely slick and decidedly not fun.
But I cannot complain. The limited grooming on the Front Five meant that Gary’s, Rocket, and Zoomer were all more than half ungroomed and sporting small irregular bumps. I made my way back and forth from one end to the other over the course of a dozen runs and found reasonably good conditions. The snow had a soft loose topping over a somewhat crusted base layer. For an opening weekend, only a powder day could have made it much better by Cannon standards!
My best turns were on skier’s right of Zoomer where I found an interesting, off kilter rhythm in the steep section. I spent my runs trying to work my early season balance, edge release, and stance. After a dozen runs of non-stop ungroomed snow and bumps, my legs were starting to feel tired. So I called it a day. It was one of Cannon’s better opening weekend offerings in a long time.
Snow guns were blasting on Lower, Ravine, Middle Ravine, Middle Cannon, Gremlin, the Links, Upper Cannon, Tramway, and Profile (wow!) so it appears that Cannon is going to try for two unique top to bottom routes by next weekend, in addition to the already opened Front Five and lower mountain trails. Which means that (assuming conditions allow) Cannon will have all of its major routes except Upper Ravine open by its second weekend of operation. They may be a bit too aggressive in expansion though as the lower mountain groomers could use a little more TLC to get them into reasonable shape.
