Category: Cannon Mountain

2007-2008 Season, Cannon Mountain, December, Powder Day

One Powder Run at Cannon

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Wincing in pain, I awoke without an alarm this morning after yesterday’s strenuous powder day at Burke. Everything hurt from my lower back to just behind my knee. Plans were already hatched to combine lift serviced and earned turns at Cannon to maximize powder potential almost a full week after the last storm hit New England. Original plans included the possibility of a full skin of Tuckerbrook but due to my tense and sore muscles I dialed plans back a bit.

Arriving at the Peabody Lodge, Cannon’s excellent staff were working the parking lots to alert potential customers that power was currently out but may be back online later. “No worries” I told a lot attendant. Pointing to my bindings I mentioned that “I have my own power.” Lifts were still running on backup power to get the remaining customers off the chairs before the bull wheels stopped turning. Since the power just went down, I decided to not wait for what could be a few minutes or a few hours.

Not long after I began skinning, I heard the tell tale hum of power being delivered to the lifts. No worries as I was off the grid regardless and heading for whiter pastures. I was baffled by the amount of traffic inflicted upon the mountain in the past few days and felt like a royal Johnny Come Lately as I picked up a well packed down skin track. There was plenty of fresh powder to still be found but I would not enjoy the pleasure of laying down first tracks today.

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2006-2007 Season, April, Cannon Mountain, Earned Turns

Spring Corn Skiing via Earned Turns

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After a rather long hiatus with only occasional lift assisted skinning, the One Run for the Price of None Tour 06-07 fires back up again with a vengeance… and man are my arms tired. My legs too. All of the powder and packed powder skiing this season has my physical condition less toned than usual at this time of year despite passing my season total of 39 days. Speaking of lifts turning, I can honestly say I am glad Cannon always shuts down the first week in April because boy oh boy was it nice having the mountain almost entirely to myself. This was the best day of skiing I have had….. in the past seven days.

Originally, the plan was some local BC but downed trees had me concerned. Opting on a summit from the M side, I was blown away by both the coverage and blow down. This is better coverage than I have seen during many years in January, wow! Also impressive was the wind and weather damage done to the summit tower. Many pieces of wood were torn clear off the tower making the summit tower access slightly dangerous but safe enough. Views everywhere were amazing. I spread my arms, felt the breeze, and smiled a big toothy grin. This was a truly beautiful Spring day and there was no where else I would rather be. Something about this mountain, I don’t quite know what it is, continues to leave me in various states of awe.

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2006-2007 Season, Cannon Mountain, March

Great Challenging Skiing at Cannon

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After a Powder Day warm up at Burke due to the lifts being closed at Cannon on Friday, I made my way back to the promised land with Dave on Saturday. Despite Cannon claiming up to eight inches of fresh, the wind picked the mountain clean as we found out on after getting first tracks off the first tram down Taft Slalom to Upper and Middle Hard. The trails featured two to three inches of wind packed fresh snow on top of a firm base. Taft Slalom skied excellent as did Upper Hard but firm moguls under the new snow on Middle Hard proved difficult to negotiate for a first run.

Since no fresh snow was to be found on the main trails, we ducked into the woods and found more of the same with two to three inches of fresh snow on average. Things were starting to warm up as the sun came up and softened things up to the point of melting. We continued to hunt the woods until lunch time when we opted for burgers at The Lift and then headed to the summit to tackle Tramline. With barely more than one hundred inches of snow, it was hard to believe Tramline was open even with the dense base building snow from the recent blizzard. Sure enough, Tramline was a total disaster and should not have been open to the public. Tramline featured two pinches with a near mandatory sidestep over rock and dirt. The crux maneuver below Tower One was almost child’s play compared to the less than heroic side stepping in key pinch locations. Tree skiing continued later that afternoon with Dave heading home shortly after Tramline. Much excitement was head in the trees on my spiritual home mountain.

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2006-2007 Season, Cannon Mountain, December, Powder Day

Powder Day Cannon Style: Earned Turns With Lift Assistance

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Damn, I love this mountain. Season Pass to Jay Peak be damned; when Cannon Mountain gets hammered with snow, I am there and paying for a lift ticket. Especially when said lift ticket is only $25.00! Granted the price of admission provides access to only one chair and one route down, but it cuts back substantially on time skinning up and allows for multiple summit trips. Cannon reported in with just over a foot of fresh snow, but my adventures to the summit of the mountain brought boot to knee deep powder snow on multiple runs suggesting either the wind deposited all the snow in all the right places or Cannon under reported what accumulated at the Summit. Given my runs from the summit were down untracked trails, I suspect no one bothered to measure snow depths on the upper mountain.

Despite having a Season Pass to Jay Peak and both ski areas reporting in a similar foot of fresh snowfall, my suspicion was that Cannon was going to have better terrain accessible by skinning. Also, lift serviced on the Peabody Quad servicing Ravine sounded much more fun and relaxing than Haynes and The Jet at Jay Peak on Telefest Weekend, not to mention the two for one email campaign that Jay Peak launched for this weekend. At Cannon Mountain, I found modestly crowded slopes but not over crowded like at Jay Peak the past two weekends. Additionally, snow quality was substantially better and never deteriorated and the Peabody Quad was ski on almost the entire day. If I choose Cannon over Jay Peak just to enjoy a single groomed run, I would have made a sound decision. But there would be much more skiing to be had at Cannon besides the Ravines.

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2005-2006 Season, April, Cannon Mountain

Last Day of the Season at Cannon Mountain

Echo Lake from Gary's

Anyone that firmly believes a bad day of skiing is better than a good day at the office does not get out on days like this. There definitely are days on which I would much rather be working than skiing, this day was one of them. The only day of the season i can recall thinking “I should have stayed home.” [I repeated this same thought nearly a week later at Loon, NH due to similar but slightly worse conditions].

The original plan for the weekend was skiing Mad River Glen on Saturday followed by either Tuckerman Ravine or Gulf of Slides on Sunday. After the down pour at Mad River Glen yesterday, I was still optimistic that the Ravine might be an option for Sunday until Saturday night when I checked the summit temperature of Mount Washington which was reading 17 degrees!!! And that was not even the coldest part of the night. With the winds howling, temperature falling, and potential new snow overnight, it just was not going to happen. If the Sherburne had still been open top to bottom and in good condition, I might have considered it as the Sherbie is always worth a day trip by itself. But not when you can not skin and ski top to bottom.

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