Category: January

2016-2017 Season, January, Jay Peak, Powder Day

Jay: New Year’s Day Powder

Face Chute

An overperforming storm combined with New Year’s Day hangovers and holiday crowds heading home to make for an epic first day of the New Year. Despite the forecast only calling for about four inches, the Jay Cloud delivered a solid foot with deeper drifts. While I was going to bed early and setting my alarm for 5:15am, a lot of other skiers were partying late and planning to sleep in. The vacationing holiday crowds were leaving early and who knows where the powder hounds were.

I went right at it with boot deep untracked down Can Am and then onto the Jet where I found more untracked boot deep in the trees for my second and third runs. Top to bottom boot deep untracked on a third run during a holiday weekend is something else. Despite knowing the reasons, I still couldn’t help but wonder how it was possible, how was this happening?

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2015-2016 Season, January, Jay Peak

Jay: Better Than It Had Right To Be

Despite receiving more snow than other northeast ski areas, Jay had no right to be skiing well during MLK Weekend. I kept my expectations low and was genuinely impressed with what I found on and off piste. Low expectations might be the single most important aspect of my season this year. At this rate, I might even remember 2015-2016 fondly despite likely having one of my lowest ski day totals in a dozen years. That said, I would dearly like to have my first powder day of the season sooner rather than later.

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2015-2016 Season, January, Jay Peak

Jay: This Will Begin to Make Things Right

Northwest Passage

The first seven words spoken in The Force Awakens are equally fitting for this weekend. After suffering through three horrific months, the season has been redeemed. This weekend may not have included the perfect dump that we all want. But it was far better than we could have hoped for and it was awesome when evaluated on its own merits. It was not perfect but still just what we needed: it got us excited and happy to be skiing again. The metaphor is strong with this report.

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2014-2015 Season, January, Powder Day, Smugglers Notch

Smuggs: Negative Temps are Better than Lines

Mansfield from Madonna Summit

The past two months have been off the rails at work. I haven’t been able to enjoy the storms of the past month. I haven’t been able to enjoy much of anything. Endless twelve hour days and unrelenting stress culminated with a twelve day work week. I was exhausted physically, mentally, and psychologically.

Going into this weekend, I had given up on the idea of skiing Saturday. I needed rest. I needed to stop. I needed anything other than yet another 5:30am alarm and five hours round trip behind the wheel. But seeing the new snow reports trickling in Friday afternoon, I realized that I needed to not let lingering effects of work stop me from enjoying my passion.

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