Category: March

2005-2006 Season, Cannon Mountain, March, Powder Day

Return of the Skiing Wounded at Cannon Mountain

Return of the Skiing Wounded

After nearly a three month recovery time from a broken elbow, I made my triumphant return to skiing this Sunday at Cannon Mountain. My recovery time eerily coincided with the snow fall of the season. October through mid-December were sensation early season months with copious amounts of natural snow fall with the biggest dump falling before the lifts even opened. After December 10th, fresh powder was slim pickings through the end of December, January, and February.

Enter the first week of March and a foot and a half of snow in Franconia Notch. Most of the snow fell Friday night and Saturday before my arrival unfortunately, so freshies were hard to find. But certainly not impossible for those who know where to look and are willing to sacrifice their bases for some of the best turns to be had. For a moment, I had doubted the accuracy of Cannon Mountain’s claim of a foot and a half of snow until I was knee deep in it, with an occasional unexpected balls deep shots where the snow drifted.

Originally, the plans was to take it easy on my first day back. Slowly work my way up from beginner and intermediate groomers and generally stay away from natural snow trails. I figured I would take my chances. Armed with an elbow pad and mischievous grin, I attached the mountain from my first run. Taking Middle Cannon to Extension, I sampled some wonderful freshly groomed snow followed by choice dust on crust natural snow fall. Uh oh. A foot and a half is sensational normally, but the scraped crust underneath was not as fun to contend with. Much of the natural snow trails featured either dust on crust, dust on dirt, or the rather unpopular dust on rock. Worth the base damage for every turn!

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2004-2005 Season, Loon Mountain, March

Loon, NH

Dad & Steve at North Peak

Today was a perfect day to take advantage of a free ticket to Loon. My dad and I arrived at 8:30 A.M. to a nearly empty parking next to the mountainside rentals building. Governor Adams base lodge was similarly vacant. My expectations of a light weekend crowd due to the holiday proved correct with ski on lift lines all day on the Kancamagus Quad with only the ticket scanners holding up the line. Ski on lifts all day on the East Basin Double and ski on past noontime on the North Peak Quad with very short waits before noon. Gondola was walk on until 9 A.M. and a four minute wait at 9:30 A.M. Given the short lift lines, the trails still exhibited quite a bit of traffic. I can not imagine this place on a weekend!

Loon is amazingly dedicated to the bumps and puts a lot of mountains to shame with the amount of bump coverage, especially considering their resorty image. That said, most of the bumps sucked this afternoon. Bumps on skier’s left of Lower Flume were firm and scrapped. Same for bumps over on Lower Rumrunner where lines were better and less scraped but still poor conditions. The short bump pitch under the Gondola on Picaroon was a cool idea for introducing bumps to the intermediate skier. But this short bump shot was also scraped and firm. Bumps under the Double Chair lacked good lines and were spread out (i.e. slip slider formed bumps) so I stayed skier’s right under the lift where the snow was softer. Triple Trouble was a treat with good lines. Bumps were on the larger size and still rather firm but not too bad. Definitely the best bumps of the day. Triple Trouble reminds me a little of Middle Hardscrabble at cannon with its twists and unrelenting bumps.

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2004-2005 Season, AlpineZone Meet Up, Magic Mountain, March

AlpineZone.com Meet Up at Magic Mountain, VT

Brian & Steve on Magic Carpet

Another successful AlpineZone.com Meet Up was staged for Magic Mountain in Southern Vermont for late March. Bob, Brian, and I met in the lodge and we ran into MrMagic on the slopes. The morning began with beautiful weather and good conditions though it was cloudy most of the day with clouds burning off to allow for decent views towards the afternoon. Magic Mountain had 100% of its terrain open with about somewhere between a quarter to a third left ungroomed.

We begin with a warm up run down Medium to Vertigo with nice packed powder opening up to some big arcs near the bottom. Next we skied Trick to Wand to Showoff; getting in Trick before it scraped up too much. Over on Talisman, a thin groomed track was run down the center with natural and bumps on either side. I liked skier’s right up top and skier’s left down low while Bob and Brian tended to stay on the rough groomed patch. I wanted to show the guys Broomstick which is a great narrow trail off the top of the mountain. However, Bob’s knee was recovering and needed a stress free day of skiing. Despite Broomstick looking flat, I feared Heart of Magician and Lucifer were likely bumped. I volunteered to inspect by way of Master Magician (a guys gotta have his fun ). I took Master skier’s right and I think I overheard a fellow skier mention the words sick and nuts in the same sentence but I wasn’t sure. Skier’s left was fantastic! I only hit three rocks but I scored nearly untouched snow which was by far the best on the mountain. Later I hit Master again skier’s right through the trees which was dust on crust and dust on ice. Not so good. I found out Broomstick was unfortunately not doable without hitting very user unfriendly bumps on Heart or Lucifer.

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2004-2005 Season, Magic Mountain, March

Magic Mountain, VT

Master Magician

Awesome day done up proper at Magic Mountain. All trails were open despite some thin cover. Action on the groomers got the morning off to a fine start. You could say I began my morning by turning a Trick. Lower sections of the mountain featured ripping groomed snow great for opening up the turns and picking up some speed. Magic is extremely underrated for their groomed terrain. All the groomers except Wizard were great in the morning and stayed great all day. Wizard featured frozen granular surfaces that were not enjoyable in the morning but finally corned up late in the afternoon.

While riding the lift, I spoke with a college kid racing in the Thompson Division (my former racing division when I attended UMass Lowell). The kid skis Stratton all the time due to his girl friend having a Condo at the mountain. He had never skied Magic before and he was raving about the mountain! Another convert, I love it! You just have to ski it on a good day to understand.

For natural snow, things started out very hard with frozen granular surfaces. My legs were not moving quick enough as I was tired and undernourished. Essentially, I was making it look like amateur day on Talisman, Sorcerer, Twilight Zone, Heart of Magician, and Goniff. Talisman and Heart were pretty nice at lower elevations but I did not care much for the unforgiving frozen bumps of Sorcerer. Goniff was significantly better Twilight Zone which is rarely the case.

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2004-2005 Season, Cannon Mountain, March

Not So Powdery Conclusion to the Cannon Trifecta

My predictions of Sunday being an epic completion to three days of incredible skiing at Cannon went wrong. The snow storm never materialized in full at Cannon. I would estimate a three day total of about 5-8 inches (matching the actual numbers provided on Cannon’s web site). Not much snow fell after I left Cannon Saturday night. Sunday brought out a huge amount of people which would explain why the crowds were light on Saturday. The Cannonball Quad went down for two hours during the morning which sent massive amounts of people to the Tram (people were queued up over the bridge!) and the Zoomer Triple Chair (5 minute wait). These were the longest lines I have ever seen at Cannon by far due to the Cannonball Quad being down.

I was feeling significant pain after nearly back to back powder days on Thursday and Saturday. I did not think I was going to make it past noon time as the turns were hard and painful. Bumps were solidifying across the front face trails with regularly groomed sections of Zoomer and Avalanche featuring ice between the bumps. The regular bump lines are okay in the troughs except Zoomer Lift is a tad thin. Lakeview was very packed down but skied rather well. A lot of scraping was featured everywhere on the mountain, despite the fact that it was still snowing during the day and loose snow bumps were forming on nearly every trail by day’s end.

Snow report at 7:15 A.M. stated that all 55 trails were open but Kinsman and Tramline were roped. Did they close it due to the crowds and to keep the joeys from hurting themselves? Honestly, Tramline was definitely skiable from the view above. I was disappointed for my skiing partners who wanted to give that trail a run as it skied fine Saturday and looked fine Sunday as well. I still found some untracked Sunday, but it was very heavy snow and I would rather have been skiing through something more tracked up.