A NELSAP Special Event sponsored by the new Snow Valley owner allowed NELSAP’ers a rare chance to earn turns at the Private lost ski area Snow Valley. The owners plan to develop a Private Ski Club with Private Real Estate and lodging for club members. Snow Valley is private property and earning turns at the Ski Area is not normally allowed making this powder day an extra special treat. Six inches of blower powder, sweet!
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).
Berkshire East was selected as the first location of the AlpineZone.com Meet Up. Seven forum members meet Sunday morning at Berkshire East in Massachusetts to share some turns, tales, and fun. A good time was had by all! As always, it is always fun and interesting to put some names to forum member handles in addition to getting to know some folks better. Plus, it sure beats skiing alone and is a lot more fun too boot! Especially considering the lack of trails open at Berkshire East this weekend due to a recent rain storm. What normally would have been an awfully boring day on the slopes was turned into a really fun day with some great folks. A group photo can be found at AlpineZone.com. Greg Blasko, founder of AlpineZone.com, is the photographer of all pictures on this page.
Despite a recent dumping of snow fall that opened The Beast up to 100% in early February, a recent rain storm closed almost half of the mountain. Flying Cloud and Big Chief were the only two decent trails open and we spent most of the afternoon cycling these two trails. Competition was closed all day due to a J3-J4 race and the rest of the open trails with exception of War Dance were rather flat and too easy for our group.
Saturday dawned with amazing blue skies after 4-6″ of fresh light powder fell in the Franconia Notch region. Originally, the plan was to tackle Burke and enjoy some refreshments in the Lyndonville area before and after. However, a report of fresh light powder at Cannon Mountain had me thinking otherwise and I was unable to by pass Cannon while heading North on Interstate 93. Parking at the Tram Building, I opted for the powder boards and anxiously headed inside to boot up in time for the first tracks Tram at 8:15AM. While boarding the Tram, I was surprised by the number of folks on AT gear as I was, mostly sporting the Freeride.
Upon reaching the Summit, decisions had to be made. I could either nail a top to bottom hard scrabble run while the getting was good or make a B-line for the Saddle. I opted for the Saddle with the deciding factor being the delayed opening of the Cannonball Quad which would further delay a return to the summit. Whereas a Saddle run would take plenty of time allowing for the delay to catch up to my tracks.
Whereas normally the day immediately following a huge dump is the best day for turns, in this case two days after the dump turned out to be the better of the pair. Saturday was an epic day at Cannon and saw record numbers of people to the mountain. I picked up skiing buddy Porter at Bentley and made a B line for the Tram base at Cannon Mountain in the Franconia Notch of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Prospects from the base area were excellent with some sun shining through despite the ugly cloud aloft on Grumpy Old Man Cannon’s Shoulder.
From the summit, we headed straight for the best snow on the hill descending Upper and Middle Hard by way of Taft Slalom. All trails had phenomenal snow that was occasionally packed with mounds of softer snow. Taft was best on skier’s right which would deteriorate into unsafe thin cover later in the day due to beginner and intermediate skiers snowplowing and side slipping near the rock ledges. We then boarded the Peabody Quad and took Bypass to find scraped conditions and rather firm bumps. Paulie’s Extension had decent snow dumping into skier’s right on Avalanche which still contained occasional untracked patches and amazingly fun snow to plow through.