This past week’s storm really helped with base building in Northern Vermont. But I was as much concerned with my own personal base building. I hit Mad River Glen in an effort to continue working towards mid-season form. With the trip just two weeks away, I decided top to bottom thin coverage at Mad River Glen would help.
After two false starts, I finally managed to skip out of work early. Three days ago, a storm dropped almost a foot on central New Hampshire. I had the prerogative to shut operations down per standard procedure when the University cancels classes. But duty called, we were needed. Despite my recent resentment towards work, I am not resentful for making the call to open. It was the right thing to do. My upbringing would abide nothing less.
My dad and I used to ski together once per season. Our family skied a lot when I was younger. But he didn’t ski much any more and sometimes that one day was his only real day of skiing all year. I really enjoyed those days. And while I wasn’t impressed with my first visit to Tenney when we skied there, I enjoyed skiing Tenney with him. I’d take another run with him anywhere if I could.
Even Okemo.
So the mountain always brings back memories since I only skied Tenney once when it was open, and we skied together that day.
This past January was a horrible month for me personally, sub-par skiing was not the worst aspect. But with only four days of skiing including one terrible day, it was a mostly forgettable month of skiing as well. After two exhaustive weeks at work including a 13 day work week and a significant number of 12-15 hour days, I was ready for some fun.
I was expecting a decent amount of fresh powder with limited terrain. What I got was a decent amount of terrain with limited fresh powder. The official report came in at four inches but it was unevenly distributed with very little at the base and perhaps a little more at the summit. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to open up Freefall (for an hour), Liftline (excepting the steepest pitch), and many upper mountain off map trees. It was not what I expected but I was not disappointed.
Magic Mountain led Vermont in new snow reporting in with 10-14″. It felt deeper in spots but never felt less. The snow was extremely dense and super surfy. I was expecting more people but crowds were light and the double was ski on all day. It felt great to have a relaxing powder day.
Red Line and Black Magic were closed to conserve snow conditions for this weekend’s Ski the East Freeride Tour stop. It was disappointing not being able to ski one of New England’s best liftlines, but I could certainly get behind the cause of ensuring Magic has a great event on Saturday. Otherwise, the mountain was completely good to go, though there wasn’t much base to speak of underneath the new dense snow.
Projected storm totals steadily decreased leading into the weekend. Saturday was a sanity check day that I spent recovering from work induced exhaustion. Sunday was supposed to be epic redemption. But the storm faded away before it began, favoring areas further east and south. Dartmouth tallied just 1-2″ by first chair on Sunday morning and that’s the breaks.