Mount Sunapee - 1/21/07

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Date(s) Skied: Sunday, 1/21/2007 - 9:00 am - 2:30 pm

Resort or Ski Area: Mount Sunapee, NH

Conditions: Manmade packed powder, some hardpack, scraped with ice patches by afternoon. No crowds all morning, some crowds in afternoon.

Trip Report: Had a very good day at Sunapee yesterday. It was pretty cold when we first got there which may have kept some people away...the HSQ was basically ski-on all morning and there was never more than a few chair wait on the South Peak beginner quad. There was a race on Eggbeater but the racers stuck to the North Peak and Spruce lifts, which was fine...Lynx was the only trail open that I would have wanted to go down anyway. They had the snow guns going on the summit liftline trail which made for some whiteout conditions on the way up (gaper moment/lesson learned...turn away when you pass by the guns otherwise you will have iced over goggles at the top). There were basically 3 ways down from the summit and it looked like most of the Sunbowl area was open as well.

I wanted to stay with the rest of the family so I pretty much stuck to the novice trails (Ridge from the summit and the South Peak area). As it turns out, these were in the best condition...Ridge had plenty of edgeable manmade and there weren't a lot of people on it. South Peak trails were in their usual groomed packed powder condition. I was able to get a few runs on my own in the afternoon so I quickly checked out the Sunbowl. The other lesson learned is to hit the Sunbowl early in the day...coverage was not a problem but the trails I went down (Skyway and Lower Wingding) were pretty scraped up by the time I went down them. Last run was down Blastoff which had ice patches on the upper section.

All in all it was a very good day to go out...if the crowds are down and non-threatening groomers are your thing, Sunapee is a great place to head to for a day trip.