MRG: How Bad Could it Be?
Most of my vouchers were blacked out due to the holiday and I desired additional conditioning. So I decided to use my Mad Card despite the holiday weekend. How bad could it be?
Very, actually.
Category: February
Cannon: Powder Frenzy
The biggest storm of the season for most ski areas dropped a foot and a half of dense fresh at Cannon. The powder frenzy was on. Given poor roads and most mountains receiving similar snow totals, staying close to home was a no brainer. I queued up early for the Peabody and went straight for the Front Five taking two laps down Paulie’s before heading for the summit.
The untracked went faster than I could have imagined possible. Later that morning, the trails emptied as many local skiers that skipped out on work for the morning left the mountain to make their afternoon shift. I have done the same, I know the game. But the damage was done, it was time to go hunting off map.
Building the Base: MRG
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.
Forget Me Not
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.
The Honeymoon Resumes at Smuggs
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.