Category: December

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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2004-2005 Season, Crotched Mountain, December

Crotched Mountain, NH

After making a couple powder turns on Gallows Hill in Salem, MA after a sizable coastal dump, I went in search of fresh at the closest big mountain I could find. After having a great initial experience at Crotched Mountain the previous weekend, I anxiously set off in hopes that the mountain scored some fresh snow. I met up with the Marketing Director Chris Bradford to say hello before hitting the slopes.

I immediately noticed that the wind had blown most of the fresh powder off the mountain by the time I arrived. However, the groomed snow was an excellent packed powder with occasional fresh snow snow pushed off to the side of the trails. From the Summit, Satellite had great fresh snow skier’s left that bumped up quite nicely. Skier’s right also had some fresh snow on Satellite which continued on the right side of Cosmic Blast. Continuing down skier’s left of Meteor there was additional nice loose powder on skier’s left. I tried ducking into an unmarked glade to sample the woods which looked decent from it’s entrance; however, I quickly discovered that looks were deceiving as I immediately began bottoming out and scraping all sorts of nastiness.

I cycled these runs from the summit quad four times then headed inside to refresh due to the high wind which generated a cold skiing experience. I went back out and cycled another four runs before packing it in for the day. Pluto’s Plunge turned out to be decent in places with some loose powder on the edges and Equinox also proved to be a decent powder stash. However, the little powder that was available was little and far between. This would have been an excellent day of skiing for late November or early December. But for my eighth day on skis after dropping turns in foot deep powder in the morning, it left an immense amount to be desired. Crotched Mountain is shining like a diamond amongst New Hampshire areas struggling through the conditions. But without natural snow, skiing just isn’t the same no matter where one skis. Hopefully the new year will bring some sizable snow dumps without the rain-freeze-thaw cycle New England has experienced so far this winter.

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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