My first Mad River Glen experience featured excellent coverage, great conditions, and beautiful blue skies. This visit greatly expanded my exposure to some of the best terrain in New England. Ski It If You Can, indeed. Shareholder since 2007.
Made it up to Haystack in Vermont for the Massachusetts Day $29 deal. Haystack is the often overlooked little sister of Mount Snow and the Bastard Child of American Skiing Company. Despite Haystack being less crowded, having no lift lines, and decent terrain, the mountain has not been as successful as neighboring Mount Snow. Instead of increasing advertising and awareness, ASC simply turned Haystack into a weekend only operation to reduce friendly fire on Mount Snow.
The loss of everyone else becomes my gain! Despite the $29 deal for Massachusetts residents, the mountain remained rather uncrowded. Most lifts were ski on with an occasional one to two minute wait on the POMA Brand Barnstormer servicing the summit and the Hayfever Triple accessing two-thirds of the mountain. The CTEC Brand Witches Triple, servicing Haystack’s expert terrain, closed shortly after the mountain opened due to high winds. This lift would later re-open and was always ski-on. The base lodge was roomy and had adequate seating with a perfect window view of the mountain face.
After skiing Cannon on Saturday and staying the night in Whitefield, NH, it was onto Burke Mountain in Vermont for skiing on Sunday. First Tracks!! Online Ski Magazine provided discounted tickets to its readers for this excessively cold outing. The temperatures were substantially below freezing with severe frostbite danger and the slow Willoughby Quad chairlift was not helping in that department. Most skiers took two or three runs then went inside to warm up.
Burke is a carvers’ and groomer skiers’ paradise despite its other bolder offerings in the trees. As a F.I.S. Certified Super G trail, The Dippers made for excellent wide GS turns. Bear’s Den and Willoughby are character trails that also provide excellent high speed grooming while also retaining many rolls, twists, and turns characteristic of older style trails. East Bowl was also groomed, unfortunately. But regardless, this trail is always excellent and a must ski every visit to Burke.
Originally, I had planned to pay my final respects to the 2001-2002 Ski Season at Cannon Mountain in the Franconia Notch. I was leaving open the possibility of visiting Burke in mid-April considering they recently received some of the best snow of the year. However, Friday night I learned that Burke would close that weekend despite having all of their trails open with ample coverage to last well into April.
My dilemma began. Cannon is my favorite mountain in New England and the front face trails beckoned for me to ski them one last time this year. Both ski areas were having Pond Skimming events on Saturday; however, I could only choose one. I went to bed Friday night with thoughts of Cannon in my mind.
Saturday morning, I got a late start on purpose due to rain and poor weather. I packed up and had the wheels rolling from my home in Haverhill, MA at 6:30 PM. The entire drive up I-93 was miserable with rain (rather heavy at times) and low visibility. While driving through Concord, NH, I phoned both mountains for their trial reports. Cannon reported fewer trails open than expected with a quad on hold, while Burke promised sunny skies with all trails open! The decision had been made, but that didn’t make driving by Cannon any easier. A look at the Front Face trails at Cannon confirmed my decision to be correct. The Front Face looked to be in awful condition with thin cover, dirt, rocks, and low base depths showing prominently in many spots on all of the Front Face trails. Amazingly, after passing by Cannon and driving out of the Notch, the skies cleared! The further North I drove, the more sun and fewer clouds I saw!
Jay Peak is one of those New England mountains that has a dedicated and rabid following. They preach to any who will listen about how much snow and powder Jay receives and how great the glades are. If you are looking for big powder in the East and lots of Glades, then Jay Peak is definitely worth the trip! If glades and powder are not your thing, then Jay Peak doesn’t offer enough to justify the drive.
For this trip, I did not yet ski well in powder or glades. Skiers that love powder and glades must have been unhappy on the Monday I journeyed to distant Jay Peak. Jay Peak was groomed everywhere it seemed. Only a couple of choice bump trails were left alone by the groomers, much to my disappointment.
In the morning, I skied lookers right side of the mountain via the Tram and High Speed Quad. The snow was extremely fast, and the groomed snow had occasional thin cover/scrapped sections. Most trails on the right side drop into an extremely flat run out. A great place to practice a tuck for five minutes. Marked on the trail map as a blue square (perhaps because of the occasional patch of trees in the middle of the trail), this run out wore me out rather quickly. The entire bottom half of the mountain is very flat, which unfortunately makes for long flat run outs.