Category: December

2004-2005 Season, December, Gallows Hill Park, Powder Day

Gallows Hill Park in Salem, MA

Gallows Hill Park

On the eve of Sunday December 26th a long awaited double storm barreled into New England. The temperature was cold and the moisture was immense and a light fluffy snow began falling heavily. The snow parking ban for Salem went up with Police driving the roads warning residents to move their cars or be towed away. After digging out and removing my girl friend’s car to Gallows Hill Park down the street, I realized this was the perfect storm for any powder lover with one important exception: the storm would fall only in south eastern New England and the jackpot was reserved for areas furthest removed from the mountains: the coastal areas.

“When live gives you lemons…” as the saying goes, so that is just what I did. When my morning alarm clock began buzzing, a quick peek outside revealed what I suspected the night before: that work would soon be called off due to treacherous driving conditions leaving the afternoon open for skiing. The only problem was that none of my favorite ski areas up north received much for snow fall. I grabbed my gear and drove around the corner to access Salem’s biggest and steepest vertical drop figuring I might as well take advantage of some of the deepest powder in New England even if it is in my own backyard.

Gallows Hill in Salem, MA is so called since it was the location of the Witch Hangings that resulted from the Salem Witch Trials (which actually took place in nearby Peabody, MA). A small park now rests upon the hill’s flat summit area with another park and parking area below the hill’s southern slopes. It was from this parking lot that I began my ascent of Gallows Hill.

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2004-2005 Season, Articles, Crotched Mountain, December

A Ski Area Reborn: Crotched Mountain, NH

Pluto's Plunge

Crotched Mountain re-opened for the 2003-2004 ski season after laying dormant for more than 10 years. The ski area originally opened as Onset Mountain in the late 1960s and was renamed Bobcat Ski Area for a brief time before being incorporated into Crotched Mountain; a completely different ski area further east along the same ridge. After being interconnected with its sister mountain and renamed Crotched Mountain West, things took a turn for the worse and the combined ski area closed.

Enter Peak Resorts; a Ski Resort Company with a Model of Success that is most unlike the other major Ski Resort Companies in the industry. Instead of building a roster of mountains with impressive vertical drop statistics and lots of slope side and base area development options, Peak Resorts has opted to acquire and develop Family and Never-Ever friendly lower elevation ski areas close to major population centers. Peak Resorts re-opened the western portion of Crotched Mountain investing a sizable initial investment into new equipment, facilities, and one of New England’s most intense snow making systems.

Crotched Mountain is Peak Resort’s first foray into New England skiing; however, their criterion for success remains unchanged. An uncompromising dedication to providing the best snow conditions for a massive amount of skiers is quickly evident when viewing Crotched Mountain’s impressive facilities and statistics. With over 100 brand new tower snow making guns capable of creating massive amounts of snow in a short period of time, Crotched has laid claim to having the highest production per acre snow making capacity in New England. After having skied Crotched Mountain with 90% of its terrain open during a December characterized by its warmth and non-crystalline precipitation, I can subjectively vouch for the accuracy of that claim.

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2004-2005 Season, Cannon Mountain, December

Cannon Mountain, NH

Mount Lafayette

Driving up to the notch, I was amazed how beautiful the day was beginning. Bright blue skies without a cloud to be seen on the whole drive up Interstate 93. The Franconia Ridge was as majestic as I have ever seen it with its white capped peaks fronting a sky of bright blue. Visibility from the top of the quad was about as far and clear as I’ve ever seen it from cannon. everything was perfect about the weather except one thing: the wind.

Cannon opened with Middle and Lower Cannon and Ravine, Big and Short link, and Spookie on the Peabody Slopes with Zoomer Triple Chair turning for Gary’s on the Front Face. The Tube Park was replaced by a handle tow beginners area (great call!) and the Tuckerbrook Quad was spinning, but I did not get over there.

The HSQ was essentially only useful for uploading to ski down to the Zoomer chair. The wind was ferocious, just about as bad as cannon can get and still have that lift turning. The brutal wind made the ride on the Peabody Quad extremely uncomfortable and it was avoided by everyone as much as possible. Conditions off all trails from the quad were boiler plate. By 11ish, Big/Short link and Ravine got roped and a sign was placed at the loading area of the quad stating the lift serviced terrain for experts only. To bad the Eaglecliff Triple wasn’t turning as Lower Cannon had okay snow in between the blown off sections and would have been a more enjoyable ride getting over to Gary’s.

Gary’s was not at it’s best but had it’s moments. Skier’s right featured a few inches of man made pow that blew over from Rocket where the guns were going like crazy. During the morning it was kinda tough to ski, but once it got broken up it was really nice. The rest of the trail was hard pack with moth ball frozen granular.

Not the best day at cannon today, but they should have some more trails opening hopefully tomorrow, definitely by next weekend. It is definitely not Cannon’s fault the wind took all the snow off the trails and dumped it into the woods. I am sure the groomers will fix it up for tomorrow, but it just shows how bad most ski areas are hurting for some natural snow.

2004-2005 Season, December, Killington

Killington, VT

Having one more free pass to blow by December 20th, I hit up the formerly “Mighty-K” for my third time this season. I normally crap on Killington rather viciously. I still feel that Killington deserves such rants but after three tries at Killington during an awful early season, I have a little more respect for the mountain. Having as much terrain open considering the conditions is very impressive. I was expecting much less open terrain than they managed to open. Also impressive were the snow guns covering Lower Superstar and the Canyons area. I would guess Superstar through Ramshead may likely be fully open by next weekend except for the trees.

Wet spring like conditions were reported on Saturday which could not have been more different from today. I arrived at the Killington Access Road with tires spinning over a blanket of white. The fresh snow fall got me excited.

I began the morning on Snowdon and I ended the day on Snowdon. Sheets of scraped snow were everywhere by the end of the day. The North Ridge Triple offered natural snow on Ridge Run which sucked but it was completely natural snow so I could not complain! I was amazed that Killington had natural terrain open. They also had Upper Chute and Great Bear open with natural snow conditions but they looked too nasty and thin for even my tastes (which is saying something!).

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2004-2005 Season, Cannon Mountain, December

Demo Day at Cannon

Peabody Quad

Today was Cannon’s demo day: sample all the skis you want for only an Andrew Jackson. It was an incredible deal that I could not pass up. The big winner of the day was the Dynastar Legend 8000 178cm which I have since purchased.

Originally, I planned to ski Cannon on Friday and stay overnight at the ‘Dice in Gorham. When leaving Cannon, I did not believe the hype regarding potential snow fall overnight. So I decided to head home and research the skis online after wrapping the day up at Cannon.

Middle/Lower Ravine with Big/Short Link provided the only route just like the previous weekend. Snow conditions were much better overall this weekend. The conditions were similar: pushed around loose powder on the trail edges and hard pack in the middle. Most of the route yielded mini-bumps and loose snow. I established a standard route down the trails to keep my testing conditions essentially the same for every ski. While the conditions were boring, they allowed for excellent comparisons for the demo.

Regarding other non-opened trails, the groomers and ski patrol were busy on Middle/Lower Cannon today and that is a lot to open for this coming weekend. All other trails had less snow and coverage than last week, especially the Front Five which would need a solid one foot dump to open without snow making at this point, and that is not happening any time soon.

The weather was fair with patchy fog and cloudiness. I wish I had gotten some pictures of the fog in the valleys making an under cast near the lower surrounding hills, but I was too busy pushing the skis to pull out my camera. The mountain saw a small amount of sleet or freezing rain around noon time and just a touch of light snow when I left at three–hardly a prelude to an incoming dump. By the time I got to Plymouth, the sky opened up and started raining. Cannon will definitely benefit from the system moving in this weekend but don’t expect any additional terrain to open other than Middle/Lower Cannon.