Game on! Last week’s two inches was just a teaser of better things to come. A massive storm system drew moisture out of the tropics and sent cold air racing the Appalachian chain into Florida. Combined with upslope snow fall on the backside of the storm, this is the trifecta of perfection for early season powder dumps in New England. Amazingly, the Catskills in New York received the highest snowfall totals at nearly double Mount Mansfield’s reported 12″ at The Stake. But when all was said and done, Mansfield definitely received more than a foot of fresh and was the best place to ski following the storm.
Austin and I hooked up in West Lebanon and carpooled up to Stowe. Originally, we had been considering Jay which was forecasted to receive more than Mount Mansfield. But the initial snow totals suggested that the upslope did not kick in for Jay like it did for Mansfield. We met up with Greg in the parking lot and skinned up Nose Dive. After an ill advised dabble in Nosedive Glades, we skinned up to the Octagon and prepared for a descent down National.
National usually is a horrible trail to descend featuring irregular spacious mounds of snow with scraped snow in the valleys. National is one of Stowe’s well known “front four” trails but hardly merits its reputation as an expert level trail. The steep drop scares many skiers into throwing the skis sideways and scraping off the snow which then slides into unorganized mounds. Suffice to say, National hardly skis well except immediately following a fresh dump.
Seeing an beautifully untracked line down skiers right, I picked my way through some thin coverage and rocks (which had kept most skiers away) and slid into a slot of bliss. With quads burning and begging for mercy, I skied down National’s powdery bliss spraying powder clouds left and right. Happy Birthday to me one day early. At the intersection of National and Liftline, tracks went everywhere but untracked was still to be found. The tracks a testament to well over a hundred skiers and riders hiking for turns. I finished my first run of the year down Lower National making somewhat aesthetic lines where once there was untracked snow. This is the way to begin a season.
7 thoughts on “Sensational Earned Turn Powder Day to Start the Season”
Nice… about time you got a report up! I’d nearly given up on it. Funny, I’ve seen less pictures from the 100+ people that hiked Stowe than I have seen from the few who hit plattekill and winham!
Thanks because the snow was so good, everyone skiing at Mansfield were too busy skiing epic powder to bother with powder. One thing is in common of all trip reports from my best days… they almost never have pictures with the trip report. It is amazing how few pictures have been posted considering there were over a hundred cars in the lot at Mansfield on Thursday alone!
Riv…I completely understand the lack of pics…although I must admit that’s what I was after when I came over here. To Roark’s point…didn’t see any you tube from Mansfield either.
Way to get it.
Thanks! The proverbial this report is useless without pics may be applicable to my report as with the many others on the net. There was a good report on T4T that included pics by samtheman who I shared part of a run with on Thursday.
Sadly, my camcorder shit the bed two years ago so I haven’t had the chance to make any new videos in a while. Once camcorder tech improves lower end camcorders to an acceptable level and I dig up some additional disposable income, I would like to get back into making videos. But it ain’t happening this season.
I am completely jealous. I saw snow on Cardigan Sunday. It was what was left from the 3 inches that fell here.
Check out http://www.skitheeast.net/submissions/view/281760642
Word. The Meat Wagon had reserved one of the first parking spaces in the Gondi lot that morning. Glad to see the Meatheads getting in some early season action. Hopefully they were shooting video for next year’s movie. They completely missed getting some stellar footage in October of 2005 and 2006 and November of 2007. Early season and late season have been missing components in their videos from the get go and I’d love to see their appreciation for turns anywhere and anytime shown on video with October turns.