Category: New Hampshire

2005-2006 Season, April, Earned Turns, Hillman's Highway, Mount Washington

Blue Bird Day on Hillman’s Highway

Hillman's Gullies from HoJo's

Driving through Jefferson on Route 2 passing by people ascending the stairs to their houses of worship, I spotted the white caked peaks of the Northern Presidentials dead ahead. While the faithful of small town northern New England filled into their neighborhood churches, the skiing faithful of New England descended upon the Mecca of backcountry in New Hampshire.

My church is the snow covered mountains and the stairs leading up to the church are skin tracks. I worship the snow and get down on my hands and knees to pray when I am ascending the steep boot ladders. My deity of choice is the Earth which brought me here and can take me out when ever it deems I have had my time to enjoy life. At which point I will rejoin the Earth and have my ashes dumped out across the mountains I worship. Today would not be that day though.

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2005-2006 Season, April, Loon Mountain

Crappy Late Season Day at Loon Mountain

Soon after waking up at 7am, I fired up my computer to check conditions. Things did not look too bad until I stuck my head out the door, and boy was it cold! I slacked off until about 9am when I decided that I might as well give it a shot. After my powder day at Saddleback on Thursday, I knew I was in for disappointment, but I figured it would at least be worth the drive. Not so much.

Jay Peak’s woods would not be very skiable after the rain compiled with a hard freeze. I still had a voucher for Loon and suspected a ski area with good grooming would be the best option. But not even Loon’s grooming could save the day!

Driving up to a relatively empty mountain was the first sure sign of trouble. Loon is never that uncrowded at 10am on a sunny Saturday morning. The Sherman Adams Lodge was sporting high school racers who either already finished their run or were waiting for their run, I could not tell. But I could tell that even these racers would rather be indoors than taking a free run, ouch.

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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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2005-2006 Season, AlpineZone Meet Up, Loon Mountain, March, Video

AlpineZone.com Meet Up at Loon Mountain, NH

Greg on Angel Street

Originally, I was planning on returning to Cannon Mountain for a Tuesday Two-fer, but changed plans to ski at Loon with Greg from AlpineZone.com. Having skied with Greg once before, I knew we would have a fantastic time skiing together despite the limited expert and natural snow terrain at Loon; which barely missed out on the foot and a half Cannon received over the weekend due to notch effect snow. The company more than made up for lack of challenging terrain as we ripped up the expert level groomers on Loon’s North Peak.

We started the morning by ascending the Seven Brothers Triple Chairlift and skiing down to the North Peak Express Quad where we would spend most of the morning skiing the groomed expert terrain the lift services. Skiing the trails Right to Left, we started by making a quick cruising run down Walking Boss before proceeding to ski under the liftline on Flume. Finally, we took Sunset to Angel Street and decided that Angel Street definitely was the most fun and had the best snow. We would return often to Angel Street throughout the morning.

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2005-2006 Season, Cannon Mountain, March, Powder Day

Return of the Skiing Wounded at Cannon Mountain

Return of the Skiing Wounded

After nearly a three month recovery time from a broken elbow, I made my triumphant return to skiing this Sunday at Cannon Mountain. My recovery time eerily coincided with the snow fall of the season. October through mid-December were sensation early season months with copious amounts of natural snow fall with the biggest dump falling before the lifts even opened. After December 10th, fresh powder was slim pickings through the end of December, January, and February.

Enter the first week of March and a foot and a half of snow in Franconia Notch. Most of the snow fell Friday night and Saturday before my arrival unfortunately, so freshies were hard to find. But certainly not impossible for those who know where to look and are willing to sacrifice their bases for some of the best turns to be had. For a moment, I had doubted the accuracy of Cannon Mountain’s claim of a foot and a half of snow until I was knee deep in it, with an occasional unexpected balls deep shots where the snow drifted.

Originally, the plans was to take it easy on my first day back. Slowly work my way up from beginner and intermediate groomers and generally stay away from natural snow trails. I figured I would take my chances. Armed with an elbow pad and mischievous grin, I attached the mountain from my first run. Taking Middle Cannon to Extension, I sampled some wonderful freshly groomed snow followed by choice dust on crust natural snow fall. Uh oh. A foot and a half is sensational normally, but the scraped crust underneath was not as fun to contend with. Much of the natural snow trails featured either dust on crust, dust on dirt, or the rather unpopular dust on rock. Worth the base damage for every turn!

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