Today was an amazing day at Jay. An almost ideal setup occurred to make this a special day.
A few inches fell on Friday with only the Jet running. Then a freak foot of fresh, that was not in the forecast, fell overnight. Only Jay got it and not many people were there to enjoy it.
Of all the mountains that I might suspect to score a “day after the powder day” powder day (during a holiday period), Mad River Glen is not a prime suspect. But adventurous woods skiing yielded everything from packed powder to loose fluff to honest to goodness completely untracked lines, two days after a holiday weekend storm. Friggin’ sweet!
I wasn’t expecting expansive off map opportunities but Mad River Glen delivered. Throughout the morning I kept thinking “there is no way that such and such a shot is going to ski well” and invariably I would try it and score excellent snow and quality turns. Despite the “woods are thin” signage at the Single, I found the off map woods to be very well covered and one dump away from being chargeable.
When I got home from Jay, I dejectedly flopped down into my chair and started flipping through trip reports. I quickly found myself at the NY Ski Blog reading Harvey’s latest post on ski touring right outside his backdoor. And the thought occurred to me that I could keep reading about other people skiing or I could head outside my own backdoor and earn some turns myself. There was only an hour and a half of daylight left but I could just barely squeeze it in.
I quickly ran through the house and gathered up my touring gear. Much to my chagrin, I later discovered that I had been too hasty in gathering my gear. While applying my skins in the howling wind, I cried out in dismay as I realized that I had the wrong pair of skins! I applied a quick fix that worked and commenced skinning on skins that were 3cm short of full width coverage and 10cm short in the tail.
Mad Riven Glen has gone from famine to feast with this past week’s storms. That series of storms culminated in 20″ during the weekend, which included some rain followed by a hard freeze. This created an exceptional base on which the fluff piled on top of. And just like that, Mad River went from closed to 100% open.
The week before Christmas is always uncrowded. Even when Christmas falls immediately after a weekend. Even when a foot and a half of snow falls in the past forty-eight hours. Call it the Christmas shopping effect: sleeper powder days when uninspired skiers and riders are busy prowling the malls instead of prowling for powder.