Category: Cannon Mountain

2013-2014 Season, Cannon Mountain, February, Powder Day, Truth in Snow Reporting

Cannon: Powder Frenzy

Cannon Trees

The biggest storm of the season for most ski areas dropped a foot and a half of dense fresh at Cannon. The powder frenzy was on. Given poor roads and most mountains receiving similar snow totals, staying close to home was a no brainer. I queued up early for the Peabody and went straight for the Front Five taking two laps down Paulie’s before heading for the summit.

The untracked went faster than I could have imagined possible. Later that morning, the trails emptied as many local skiers that skipped out on work for the morning left the mountain to make their afternoon shift. I have done the same, I know the game. But the damage was done, it was time to go hunting off map.

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2013-2014 Season, Cannon Mountain, January, Middle Hard the Hard Way, Powder Day

Give It All You Got: Cannon

Today may be the best “two days after the powder day” powder day that I’ve ever had. Yesterday, I desperately wanted to ski Cannon. I knew it was going to be bananas despite being a day after the storm. But I was extremely fatigued from skiing Magic on Friday, I simply didn’t have the legs.

I responded to my alarm with ambivalent lethargy. I assumed today would fail to inspire yet still merited the effort. I wanted to ski natural snow again before the impending rain. In six hours, I made seven runs. By my standards, that is a statistic suggestive of an incredible day at Cannon.

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2013-2014 Season, Cannon Mountain, January, Truth in Snow Reporting

Vista Bound: Cannon

Vista Way

Has it really been more than two weeks since I last skied? Bad weather and a horrible week long cold combined to remove two weeks from my season. Both the trails and I recovered earlier this week and this coming weekend looks very nice. I eased back into things at Cannon where expectations started low, got raised way too high, and ultimately the skiing was very satisfactory.

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2013-2014 Season, Cannon Mountain, December

Cannon: Getting it Done

Gary's

The below average temperatures of November benefited Cannon tremendously. Terrain is opening at a significantly faster rate than last year. Today’s offerings included two fully unique routes from the Peabody Quad along with Gary’s and Rocket from the Zoomer Chair.

That doesn’t sound like much but some of these routes and trails are seriously wide (especially Gary’s and Rocket) and take a substantial amount of fire power to get them open. There is even a decent sized terrain park near the lodge. Last year, the Zoomer chair had not even opened yet whereas this year it is on its second week.

Snow making is in place on Middle Cannon, Middle/Lower Ravine, the Links, the Huckerbrook area, and the Zoomer base area (presumably in preparation for blowing Zoomer and Avalanche). I don’t recall ever seeing as many guns blowing at the same time at Cannon.

Despite arriving well after first chair, surfaces were edgeable hard pack and generally fun to ski. This excepts a few constricted high traffic areas that sported excessively scrapped down snow. Loose snow was plentiful along the edges of Gary’s and Rocket. Packed powder it was not. But it wasn’t bad skiing either.

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