Category: 2005-2006 Season

2005-2006 Season, AlpineZone Meet Up, Loon Mountain, March, Video

AlpineZone.com Meet Up at Loon Mountain, NH

Greg on Angel Street

Originally, I was planning on returning to Cannon Mountain for a Tuesday Two-fer, but changed plans to ski at Loon with Greg from AlpineZone.com. Having skied with Greg once before, I knew we would have a fantastic time skiing together despite the limited expert and natural snow terrain at Loon; which barely missed out on the foot and a half Cannon received over the weekend due to notch effect snow. The company more than made up for lack of challenging terrain as we ripped up the expert level groomers on Loon’s North Peak.

We started the morning by ascending the Seven Brothers Triple Chairlift and skiing down to the North Peak Express Quad where we would spend most of the morning skiing the groomed expert terrain the lift services. Skiing the trails Right to Left, we started by making a quick cruising run down Walking Boss before proceeding to ski under the liftline on Flume. Finally, we took Sunset to Angel Street and decided that Angel Street definitely was the most fun and had the best snow. We would return often to Angel Street throughout the morning.

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2005-2006 Season, Cannon Mountain, March, Powder Day

Return of the Skiing Wounded at Cannon Mountain

Return of the Skiing Wounded

After nearly a three month recovery time from a broken elbow, I made my triumphant return to skiing this Sunday at Cannon Mountain. My recovery time eerily coincided with the snow fall of the season. October through mid-December were sensation early season months with copious amounts of natural snow fall with the biggest dump falling before the lifts even opened. After December 10th, fresh powder was slim pickings through the end of December, January, and February.

Enter the first week of March and a foot and a half of snow in Franconia Notch. Most of the snow fell Friday night and Saturday before my arrival unfortunately, so freshies were hard to find. But certainly not impossible for those who know where to look and are willing to sacrifice their bases for some of the best turns to be had. For a moment, I had doubted the accuracy of Cannon Mountain’s claim of a foot and a half of snow until I was knee deep in it, with an occasional unexpected balls deep shots where the snow drifted.

Originally, the plans was to take it easy on my first day back. Slowly work my way up from beginner and intermediate groomers and generally stay away from natural snow trails. I figured I would take my chances. Armed with an elbow pad and mischievous grin, I attached the mountain from my first run. Taking Middle Cannon to Extension, I sampled some wonderful freshly groomed snow followed by choice dust on crust natural snow fall. Uh oh. A foot and a half is sensational normally, but the scraped crust underneath was not as fun to contend with. Much of the natural snow trails featured either dust on crust, dust on dirt, or the rather unpopular dust on rock. Worth the base damage for every turn!

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2005-2006 Season, December, Jay Peak, Powder Day, Video

Powder Day and Broken Elbow at Jay Peak

Steve in Kitz Woods

Wow, what a day. A two-fer $49 coupon had me skiing for only $24 as yet another early season snow storm slammed into Northern Vermont. Jay Peak was reporting a foot and a half of fresh over the last few days with a 40″ total for the week. I quickly found out that most of the snow had been blown off the trails and deposited into the woods.

The Green Mountain Freezer was pretty darn cold! I took one run from T Freezer on the only open trail from the lift on crappy frozen granular which totally sucked. Over to The Jet I went, where the open runs were okay featuring lots of chewed up pow left over from the recent 6″. The glades were phenomenal though!!! Wow! Very hard to understand why the gladed trails were roped. A foot and a half of light pow and plenty of fresh lines! Timbuktu and Kitzw Wods were simply sensational. I met up two guys from the FTO Forums in Timbuktu and we paired up for the rest of the afternoon.

We headed up The Freezer after lunch and started wondering what Beaver Pond Glades were looking like on such a fine powder day. Only one way to find out I quipped! We hiked up above the Freezer so as not to duck any ropes and proceed to lay waste to untracked foot and a half boot deep freshies. Spectacular. We jumped into Beaver Pond and had an awesome time trying to find fresh lines in the exceptional powder.

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2005-2006 Season, December, Powder Day, Stowe

Powder Day at Stowe!

Hiking Cliff Trail

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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2005-2006 Season, Cannon Mountain, Earned Turns, November, Powder Day

Earned Turn Powder Day at Cannon (Day 2)

Skinning Mittersill

The epic early New England ski season marches on! Today was my eighth day of skiing for the current season and sixth day earning turns. Why pay over thirty dollars for crappy scraped up man made snow when New Hampshire’s best powder stash was begging to be pillaged? Instead of paying for the ‘privilege’ of skiing crappy snow, I opted to take one run for the price of none.

I have been fairly harsh in my criticism of Cannon Mountain’s decision not to open Thanksgiving Weekend as scheduled. However, I would like to offer a big ole’ thank you to Cannon management for keeping New Hampshire’s best powder stash off limits to any one not willing to earn their turns. Powder lasts for days on end when the masses can not access it, whereas it normally only lasts a few hours when the lifts are spinning. So here it is, thanks cannon! If cannon wants to join NELSAP, I might even be okay with that if this weekend is the result!!!

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