Today was an interesting but rather good day. The temperature started off in the pits which encouraged visiting the lodge every second or third run. By the end of the day, I was considering removing layers. Further suggesting abnormalities, the Red Chair, Blue Chair, and Tram all suffered off line issues throughout the day. The Blue Chair was down for half the day, the Red Chair was down for a quarter of the day, and the Tram went down around noon time for what about a half hour. Lift mechanics were spotted climbing up the Tram arm to the wires near the summit shack and inspecting one of the cable holders. Just another bizarre day at Jay Peak.

(more…)

As I predicted in my report yesterday, powder was long gone by Sunday and replaced with packed powder and frozen granular. What I had not predicted was the wind buff both in and out of the trees would be so substantial. The poor setup likely had many folks who did not ski Saturday wondering if there was any powder this weekend. Open slopes and groomers were a crappy hard packed loose granular which left much to be desired whereas wind protected trees sported decent packed powder.

On our first run, I actually made a few nice turns down The Goat before running into scraped and icy conditions at the S turn under the Freezer which is always a suspect spot on the mountain. We continued down Green Mountain Boys which also had nasty loose granular surfaces and skied into North Glade. With the Freezer and Tram off line for half the day yesterday, I was hoping that the Tram Side glades would have conditions than Stateside which took the full brunt of eight hours of traffic. Unfortunately, the wind buff even terrorized the woods and North Glade was no exception with variable wind buffed snow and general thin cover. A work out for the first run of the morning to say the least (especially considering I was already hurting from Saturday). The snow was better lower in North Glade but not worth a repeat.

(more…)

Thank goodness we are going to get some more snow soon. As far as snow conditions go, this was the second worst snow conditions I have skied this year (which includes those infamous December days in which only The Jet and Haynes were open). Absolutely horrid. I took four runs and went home, completely baffled by the small line of people queuing up to actually pay for lift tickets outside the Stateside Lodge. I have skied some questionable days this season, but ultimately I have generally decided it was worth the time and gas money to get at least a few runs and dial in the legs a bit more. Not today, it was a complete waste of my morning.

Something wet but not of the frozen variety caked Jay’s snow base and froze over slightly. The result was that the groomers were only skiing well for those with well tuned race skis (I would have been a lot more happy today had I a pair of Volkl 6 Stars). Trails on the Stateside of the Bonaventure Quad were essentially scraped up frozen groomer tracks with a deceptive dusting of loose snow. Natural snow trails faired slightly better in most spots, a lot worse in others.

(more…)