Fringe benefits of working in academia include University shut downs on powder days. With a foot of snow walloping much of New Hampshire, I ventured up to Jay Peak for a mid-week powder day. Thankfully, the new Michelin X-Ice snow tires had been mounted on Friday or else my day would have been substantially different and less powdery due to an unplowed six inches of dense compacted powder at go time. Three hours later, I was clicking in at the Stateside Lodge and skiing towards the Jet at Jay thirty minutes past first chair.

My unexpected tardiness combined with an abundance of College kids (due to the new Triple Major pass) and the lack of uphill capacity (Bonaventure and the Freezer were not spinning) resulted in quickly readjusted plans and expectations. Much to my dismay, almost all of Stateside was completely tracked out by 9:45 A.M. when I plopped my butt onto the Jet Triple Chair. I immediately went for the trees but found lots of tracks.

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Considering what we were skiing on last year at this time, I really have no right to be anything but thankful and grateful for the tremendous early season bounty of natural snow blanketing Jay. But familiarity, perspective, and relativity often combine to suggest strange things, such as half the mountain being open and three powder days within two weeks of opening day is not enough to satisfy.

Yes, when I arrived at Jay I was disappointed to see “only” a few inches in the parking lot. That disappointment escalated as I made my first run finding the wind had removed most of the powder from Derick, Haynes, and U.N. as I madly cut across the trails on Stateside’s southern flank searching for the goods. As per usual, high winds at Jay indicates the powder will be found in the woods. But I “only” found a few inches in the first few open glades I skied. Perhaps the expectations were a little too high today considering it is “only” December 1st!

The trails at Jay quickly melted away from my mind as I searched for powder in the woods. I was eventually rewarded later in the afternoon with six inches of fluff which I repeated three times before calling it a day. The crowds showed up en masse around ten and proceeded to lay to waste the few precious inches of good snow in the open glades. With lines at The Jet backed up out of the corrals and the groomed trails featuring a despicable mix of hard pack, frozen groomer tracks, rock, and ice, it was definitely a day for trails untouched by the groomers. Lower trails near the Bonaventure Quad were stupendous natural snow romps. However, the trip down Montrealer to Northway to Taxi made those trails almost unworthy of the effort required to reach them.

With a storm rolling in Sunday evening through Tuesday of this coming week, Jay is seriously setup for one of its best December’s ever. Half the mountain is already open and two dozen trails on the other side of the map have enough snow to open once the Green Mountain Freezer fires up next week. For those able to take a vacation day on Tuesday and Wednesday, epic things are awaiting. The rest of us will have to settle for sloppy seconds next weekend. But I am okay with that because it is “only” December.

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