Category: Powder Day

2010-2011 Season, Cannon Mountain, February, Powder Day

Cannon: Thank you, sir. May I have another?

Powder in the Trees at Cannon

Cannon makes you work. Great skiers routinely get spanked in the trees at Cannon. Unlike almost any other mountains save perhaps Mansfield, you really suffer for the best turns at Cannon. That type of rigor elevated my skiing as I was developing my tree chops and skiing Cannon more than any where else. But I don’t ski Cannon much any more. And it shows whenever I return to my home mountain.

Despite a claimed twenty four hour total of eleven inches, I immediately had trouble finding snow deeper than my boot buckles. I started on Mittersill in hopes that the lift being closed yesterday would have kept traffic to a minimum. The limited fresh felt nice but my favorite slot on the mountain was already well bumped and deeply troughed from yesterday. It was time to go into the woods in earnest and employ noontime plans just after the opening bell.

Epic descents were had and up to eight inches of fresh was slayed. I worked. I sweated. I fell on the hard pack outside the Tram Summit Station and busted the toe piece on one of my bindings. Oops. I made it work. Just like the mountain was making me work.

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2010-2011 Season, January, Powder Day, Saddleback

Saddleback: The Perfect Plan

Casablanca Entrance 2

Or perhaps the title should be The Perfect Weather Pattern. Seven inches since Thursday and double that since last weekend with the coldest weather since 2009 moving in for the weekend. Crowds stay home and I ski untracked all day at Saddleback: home to the best on map soft wood glade skiing in New England.

Saddleback already had some damn fine glade skiing. But the recent addition of Casablanca solidifies Saddleback’s position as the New England leader in the soft wood glade category. Casablanca is just as expansive as it looks on the map. Virtually the entire area is thinned out and skiable. But the cutting was inspired–still retaining a few uncut sections to give the glade some definition rather than just one big sprawling big box glade. Very few on map glades in New England have been so well planned and cut.

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2010-2011 Season, Earned Turns, January, Powder Day, Tenney Mountain

Meadow Skipping at Tenney

Skinning up Venus Fly Trap at Tenney

Hair of the Dog style leg rehabilitation continued today at Tenney. While ski areas were fully tracked out and busy with the holiday crowds, there was still uncrowded slopes and untracked powder to be found. I began skinning under a bluebird sky hot on the track of the only other soul on the mountain.

The skin track was just as flat and meandering as most of Tenney’s trails. The snow was fluffy in nature with no base to speak of. Snow depths were significantly less than at my house just a few miles away as the crow flies. Lack of trail mowing was evident but no worse than could be expected.

My original plan called for inspection and subsequent descent of Snap Dragon: Tenney’s steepest trail. But base depths and snow density clearly suggested meadow skipping would be the safest and most enjoyable option. On the descent, I scratched up my boards skiing a trail used as an access road. Low angle grassy trails were best!

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2010-2011 Season, January, Mad River Glen, Powder Day

Cautious Exuberance at Mad River Glen

Lynx: Second Run of the Day

My calves were still throbbing from Thursday’s powder romp. So I cured them–Hair of the Dog style–by dropping into FallDice to Glade for a warm up run. My previous pain suddenly seemed so much less than my current state of agony. It worked! The light powder was exquisite and I yelled my approval loudly. The shock eventually numbed the pain but my performance and stamina were severely taxed. On the next run, I found delicious chopped up powder with occasional untracked on Upper Antelope to Lynx to Beaver.

Tree lines of all varieties and elevations were safely skiable using cautious exuberance. More of the former is safer but more of the latter is a heck of a lot more fun. Almost everything was in play from upper elevation tight softwood corridors to low angle thwack jungles. Mid-mountain birch options skied the best and retained the most untracked lines. My third run selection was stupendous: barely tracked to untracked to single tracked. I returned to this location on my fifth and final run to claim second tracks and close my eights. Untracked snow depth varied depending upon the last time each line were hit. Anything from a few inches to knee deep. Hell yea.

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2010-2011 Season, January, Pico, Powder Day

Pico: A Slope for the Win

Outpost Double Chair Offline

There are many lessons to be learned from this past storm. And even more lessons to be learned from my decisions and reactions—in many ways sound but yet still lacking. One of my key management tenets is to “assume your assumptions are wrong”. But I failed to apply this to my storm chasing decision making process. I had the perfect plan if only my assumptions were correct. But they were mistaken in many ways.

Formulations for the powder day decision began with the fact that Magic Mountain and Pico Mountain would both be closed on Wednesday and open on Thursday with a full component of untracked powder. Targeting Thursday instead of Wednesday presupposed Northern New England wouldn’t get much snow, that the storm would start late morning, and untracked would never amount to more than a few inches due to being constantly skied in. This season of all seasons, I should have known not to bet against Cannon.

Another unforeseen monkey wrench in the plan was Killington Season Passholders pillaging Pico the day after their powder day at Killington. I relied upon memories of my last day at Pico, a two foot weekend dump in which I got uncontested first tracks down Summit Glade with no line at the chair. But I forgot about the situational context. I forgot that everyone else knew what I knew about Pico opening Thursday. I forgot there would be absolutely no surprises with this storm.

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