Jay: I Can Milk It
Early season powder days at Jay when only the Jet Triple is running are often some of my best days at Jay. Today was no exception. Take the lift, hike, boot deep, and repeat.
Category: December
Top to Bottom at Cannon
Cannon skied much better than expected today. The mountain was open top to bottom with occasional route options. Temperatures stayed cool up high and only warmed up later in the day down low. Conditions were extremely variable depending on elevation and angle of the sun. For an expert skier trying to get into shape during the early season, it was a delightful variety of conditions. But for intermediate skiers and below, it was Cannon at its most unforgiving.
Upper Cannon was open with man made ungroomed including minor whales and bumps. Upper Cannon is normally a travesty of brutal grooming. The trail gets scraped down because most people don’t know how to ski a winding trail (hint: you go against the curves, not with them — skiing the insides of the curves rather than the outsides). Skiing an ungroomed and bumped Upper Cannon was an absolute dream. So much so that I could not have cared less about the bumps being frozen and lacking rhythm.
The Links were a ridiculous thin coverage mess and best avoided excepting for Upper Cannon access. Middle Cannon had variable loose granular mounds and hard pack with varying degrees of softening (or not softening) depending on angle of the sun. Upper Gremlin was consistently fun despite its inconsistent conditions. I’d much rather the alternating and variable loose granular and hard pack of Upper Gremlin to Lower Gremlin’s piles of mush and mash.
Considering the warm temperatures and lack of natural snow, I was impressed with what Cannon had to offer. Conditions and coverage were both better than expected. I was thrilled that Cannon FINALLY has taken advantage of their upper mountain lift and blew open an upper mountain trail earlier than usual.
Cannon has failed to get the upper mountain open by Christmas some years. But they finally got their act together and went for top to bottom as soon as possible. And it is about damn time. There is no reason why Cannon shouldn’t go for broke on the upper mountain before Thanksgiving. But for now, I am definitely happy to see this first step in the right direction by having Upper Cannon open despite the difficult weather.
Waterville Valley: Happy New Year?
After only skiing twice in over a month, I was a little antsy to make some turns. I knew the snow would be terrible. I knew it was groomer skiing following a rain/thaw/freeze event. I knew to expect a miserable skiing experience. And at noontime on the first day of this new year, I decided a miserable ski experience was better than vegging out at home.
Boy, was I wrong.
Jay: Running on Empty
Today should have been a banner day. Somewhere between two to three feet of super dense snow opened up almost all of Jay including a lot of off map trees. The extremely dense snow skied better after it was tracked up and packed down rather than untracked.
While skiing my four runs today, I frequently thought to myself that the snow and skiing today at Jay was better than the “Powder Day” a few days earlier at Killington. I thought to myself how much I utterly despised the fact that I couldn’t enjoy it.
Today was not meant to be despite my deep desire to enjoy the storm’s bounty before the inevitable rain/thaw/freeze event began. Work had ran me ragged. I was exhausted, stressed out, and deeply fatigued. I managed to get up early and make it to the mountain for first chair, but I would have been better off staying in bed.
Killington: Boom
This is perhaps my most delinquent trip report ever. But here it is for the sake of posterity and record keeping. The use of the “Powder Day” tag for this report is stretching the definition of that tag to the breaking point.
Killington got rocked as the epicenter of the immediate storm. The new snow was enough to make everything skiable at Killington, including trees. However, I didn’t venture into the trees because untracked snow was extremely challenging. Not to mention packed down snow was skiing better than untracked.
Many skiers often refer to “dense snow” as “cement” just as many skiers often refer to “scraped hard pack” as “ice”. Supportive dense snow is very fun to ski when you learn to adjust your balance and turning technique. But Killington’s bounty truly fell into the cement category, as deep and dense as I have ever skied. Tracked up snow skied better than untracked. I quickly lost the powder hound mentality and just sought out quality snow on quality trails.
The lifts opened in a cascading fashion starting with Snowdon Quad, then Northridge Triple, then Canyon Quad, and finally Superstar. The gondola never opened but they kept the line running in an effort to reducing icing and open it the next day. I didn’t quite make it to the Superstar opening before my legs gave out shortly after noontime.
The Canyon Quad stalled out for a little over ten minutes while I was on the lift and near the unload station. The wind was honking but it was not entirely uncomfortable since the temperature was hovering around the freezing mark, as evidenced by the sleet that was falling from the sky. Killington offered everyone on the lift a voucher for $10 off their next ticket for the minor inconvenience. The weather and the wait were mildly uncomfortable but hardly noteworthy in hind sight except for Killington’s gracious offer. Kudos for Killington for stepping out when they really didn’t have to.
Ropes were dropped everywhere and I skied most trails in the Canyon basin and ended the day on Ovation. While dropping over the rocks on Ovation’s steepest section, I managed to score my biggest core shot to date proving that the deep and dense snow was not bottomless and fell over no base.
It was a fun and tiring day but less epic than the snow totals might have suggested.