Category: Reports by Month

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.

(more…)

2014-2015 Season, January, Mad River Glen

MRG: Three and Out

Mad River Glen was an easy decision for the holiday weekend since Mad Cards are not subject to holiday blackouts. Ironically, I decided on my destination due to the holiday but I neglected to think through the ramifications of a holiday weekend at Mad River Glen. Not setting an alarm and arriving an hour after opening bell further added insult to the injury.

The base area was bedlam. Little kids were scurrying everywhere and the lodge was overpacked. The ticket line almost seemed longer than the line for the Single. I shrugged and went with it, I had no energy to be dissatisfied and it wouldn’t have helped the situation. Thankfully, the Single line was never intolerable and, of course, the trees are always empty.

After nine days so far this season, I had yet to have a major tree and bump day. Yet I wasted no time going into the woods and finding some of Mad River Glen’s tightest lines. Constantly winding and branching, these narrow fingers are amongst my favorite lines within the ski area’s boundaries. The packed powder was excellent. The occasional shot of untracked powder I found at mid-mountain elevation skied worse than the packed powder due to the rising temperatures.

(more…)

2014-2015 Season, Attitash, January

Attitash

My uncle and cousin from Florida were visiting in New England and wanted to spend a few days skiing. So I joined them at Attitash on day two of their three day jaunt through the White Mountains. They experienced a temperature swing of 100 degrees between the high of Florida when they left and the low in the White Mountains Wednesday evening. But the cold and wind relented somewhat Thursday afternoon and the skiing turned out to be quite pleasant.

Wildcat shut down for the day and diverted skiers to Attitash due to the low temperatures and extreme wind chills. We decided on a late start and began skiing just before noontime. Bear Peak’s high speed quad got a late opening after the wind died down and the summit triple was offline so we “warmed up” on Attitash’s Flying Yankee.

Not much terrain was available from the Flying Yankee, only five options for limited vertical. After lunch, we made our way to Bear Peak where we found three top to bottom routes and the terrain park. The snow was very edgible and skied well on most trails. Wandering Skis was unfortunately the worst trail for conditions as mountain ops only recently flattened the whales resulting in death cookies and frozen golf balls.

I haven’t had a high speed hard pack day all season so it actually felt nice to rip some big and small arcs on the groomed. Despite the record setting cold and wind chill the previous night, temperatures after noon were pleasant and didn’t even require full face coverage. But today wasn’t about the skiing but rather seeing family that I rarely get to see. A rare non-powder day vacation day and well worth it.

2014-2015 Season, December, Jay Peak

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.

(more…)