Category: New Hampshire

2004-2005 Season, Cannon Mountain, March

Not So Powdery Conclusion to the Cannon Trifecta

My predictions of Sunday being an epic completion to three days of incredible skiing at Cannon went wrong. The snow storm never materialized in full at Cannon. I would estimate a three day total of about 5-8 inches (matching the actual numbers provided on Cannon’s web site). Not much snow fell after I left Cannon Saturday night. Sunday brought out a huge amount of people which would explain why the crowds were light on Saturday. The Cannonball Quad went down for two hours during the morning which sent massive amounts of people to the Tram (people were queued up over the bridge!) and the Zoomer Triple Chair (5 minute wait). These were the longest lines I have ever seen at Cannon by far due to the Cannonball Quad being down.

I was feeling significant pain after nearly back to back powder days on Thursday and Saturday. I did not think I was going to make it past noon time as the turns were hard and painful. Bumps were solidifying across the front face trails with regularly groomed sections of Zoomer and Avalanche featuring ice between the bumps. The regular bump lines are okay in the troughs except Zoomer Lift is a tad thin. Lakeview was very packed down but skied rather well. A lot of scraping was featured everywhere on the mountain, despite the fact that it was still snowing during the day and loose snow bumps were forming on nearly every trail by day’s end.

Snow report at 7:15 A.M. stated that all 55 trails were open but Kinsman and Tramline were roped. Did they close it due to the crowds and to keep the joeys from hurting themselves? Honestly, Tramline was definitely skiable from the view above. I was disappointed for my skiing partners who wanted to give that trail a run as it skied fine Saturday and looked fine Sunday as well. I still found some untracked Sunday, but it was very heavy snow and I would rather have been skiing through something more tracked up.

2004-2005 Season, Cannon Mountain, March, Powder Day

Sloppy Seconds Powder Day at Cannon

Driving north on I-93, things looked bleak. Raining until Concord and only light snow fell occasionally from there. The roads were clear all the way to Cannon when I was expecting a long snowy drive. At Cannon, during the morning I was skiing Tramline and noticed the sun was poking through the clouds! What happened? Where is this huge storm? The sky clouded over and started dumping by early afternoon and all was good.

I warmed up on Vista Way to Bypass to Zoomer carving some mighty fine arcs that felt good. It seemed like Vista Way had been groomed recently and Bypass was still a disaster. Like bypass, Profile was also opened but still looked nasty with powdery bumps building up in between groomer tracks etched into the ice.

Lakeview Glade was had twice with nice untracked powder near the trees on skier’s right where it was really nice. Still some thin spots to watch out for though. Echo Woods was crap, still really thin with tons of rock under the snow. Paulie’s Folly skier’s right was sick! And so was Avalanche! Powdery/crudy bumps that you could just plow through, I was loving it! Gimme more! It was the first time I ever skied avalanche bumps skier’s right top to bottom without having to stop and catch my breath or reassess lines… I simply could not stop it was so good.

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2004-2005 Season, Cannon Mountain, March, Powder Day

Epic Powder Day at Cannon

TramlineEpic! Powder! Best day of the year!

Cannon got rammed by the recent storm. Yesterday had limited operations at Cannon due to the storm. With the upper mountain lifts not operating yesterday, today was just as good. Cannon is now fully open except for Profile and Bypass which took a huge hit from the wind and look about as ugly as I have seen them. Vista Way was rather ugly too except skier’s left which was nice featuring some wind slab jumps with extra soft landings.

Opened the morning with some hot groomer action via Middle Cannon to Extension to Rocket. The groomers in great shape! I am not one to rave about groomers but the snow was excellent under foot. Front face trails were quite variable with diced up choppy wind slabbed powder. Slabbish at times, bumpy at others, and occasional powder to keep it interesting. Essentially, I could ski any of the three conditions but the variability was not choice within the same run. Untracked powder on banshee was followed by a tram to the summit.

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2004-2005 Season, Cannon Mountain, March, Powder Day

Tramline Opened & Powder in the Trees

Tramline

March roared in like a lion on the first of the month dumping over a foot of fresh in ski country. By Wednesday morning, 20 inches of light fluffy powder had fallen on Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire’s Franconia Notch. When I arrived at Cannon on Thursday morning, I was greeted with reports of epic powder over the previous two days. Many folks claimed it was one of their best days of skiing ever. One even quipped it was “better than skiing out west.”

Unfortunately, my long weekend through vacation time did not perfectly coincide with the epic powder dump. As a result, I arrived to a mountain that already was pillaged of much untracked powder…. but not completely. Knowing some select and secret lines in combination with the Tramline opening for the first time this year combined for one of the more satisfying ski days I have had this year despite the conditions being somewhat less than epic.

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2004-2005 Season, Cannon Mountain, February

Cannon Mountain, NH

Vista Way Bumps

Who knew all the vacationers would sack the goods?? The powder that had been reported on Thursday was no where to be found. I managed to score 300-400 linear feet of untracked all day. Things certainly could have been worse, if that is a complaint! Essentially, all the main routes were packed down and most of the non-main routes were too. I have become rather snobbish about my snow lately, powder to the people! But not much powder to be found today

Taft Slalom was groomed flat as a pancake. Upper/Middle Hard were both fantastic! Vista Way, generally the worst or the best on the mountain on any given day along with Paulie’s Folly, was the best today with awesome packed powder and occasional soft bumps with quality lines. Profile had good bumps in between the scraped off sections which made it not worth repeating. I was not feeling Zoomer. Paulie’s got the winch treatment last night and was flat as a pancake. Decent bumps was found on skier’s right of Paulie’s Extension down through Avalanche with exception of the section by the Banshee Cut Back (something needs to be done about that area, it is uglier than the Links).

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