A fresh coating of snow freshened things up significantly. Despite the increased coverage, the snow was an unusual high moisture content variety that was lower quality than the previous weekend. As per usual when New England receives some snow, the deep freeze descended over the region from Canada. It was a tram day for sure! Temperatures eventually warmed to ten degrees below zero before factoring in the wind chill. Later in the day, I would suffer through the coldest Cannonball Quad ride I can remember.
Per usual I began my morning on the Front Face. Bumps on right sides of Rocket and Zoomer Lift Line were hard packed and unforgiving but would get much better in the afternoon. Paulie’s was better skier’s right this week as skier’s left looked rather green by the evening. Avalanche had both skier’s right and left bumped with groomed snow down the middle similar to Zoomer. I enjoyed skier’s left better personally but neither was completely satisfying. Returning to these trails later in the day, I found some rocking bumps skier’s right on Zoomer and Zoomer Lift Line. These bumps had softened up and formed well with more skier traffic. Zoomer was great all over the place except where the side slippers were coming down center.
Last year I hammered Cannon rather hard for snow plowing all their bumps. So I owe Cannon Operations a huge Thank You for allowing the bumps to develop. Paulie’s and the Hards have yet to receive any grooming and the snow is awesome on all these trails as a result! Rocket and Gary’s have blue square bumps on skier’s right. Zoomer and Avalanche have bumps both skier’s right and left. Bumps also exist on Taft Slalom as well which makes this skier happy.
The Upper Mountain was damn cold. But I still ventured up to the summit four times. The morning summit runs included Taft and the Hards in between warming up in the Lodge. So cold! Taft was wind blown but edgable, Upper Hard was ugly until just before Mid Hard, Mid Hard was sah-weet… but I was too cold to enjoy or make good turns. Finishing out the run on a chopped up Red Ball (what a waste of trees, this run never does anything for me), I went right back into the lodge! Returning for this combination on my last run was damn near epic once I was warmer and the sun was out. I opted to duck the rope onto turnpike to avoid the Red Ball run out. My return ventures to the summit involved the Eaglecliff Triple to the Front Face to the Tram in an effort to avoid the more exposed and cold Quads.
Overall, cold and windy with better cover but not as good snow as recent weeks. An enjoyable day out highlighted by exploring some terrain and finally skiing a pair of lines that I scoped out during the Summer. After some epic December storms on minimal base, we are still waiting for the big one…
