I could not have picked a better first day to ski Mount Mansfield! I have no room to complain since tickets were $15 with two canned goods, but the morning got off to a TERRIBLE start with a 20+ minute wait at the ticket counter. Stowe may have a new POS system that was not working too well. Only three out of four ticket windows were open and operating terribly slow. Cashiers were hand entering all the credit card info. Customers putting fifteen dollars on a credit card and not consolidating group purchases also substantially contributed to the backup. After the ticket line fiasco, I was more than ready for some turns in fresh snow!

The Forerunner Quad was running with an average wait time of about 5 minutes. Not too bad considering the gondola wasn’t running and they were busing folks in from Spruce Peak as the Mansfield lot was packed. Snow was falling in the morning and never stopped throughout the day but I would suspect total accumulations were low today. Maybe an extra inch or two. Low visibility and poor light throughout the day.

Screw warm up runs! Let’s see what all the hype is about regarding the fabled Front Four. I took three runs down Liftline and one down National to start my day and I Was not impressed with the trails themselves. Neither were excessively steep and both are rather wide. Unfortunately, Goat and Starr were roped and were the two trails I was most interested in giving a rip.

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