Sugarbush: December 1, 2007 (Hardcore Day...)

[thetrailboss]

Date(s) Skied: December 1, 2007

Resort or Ski Area: Sugarbush (you should not be surprised)

Conditions: P/MG/FG

Weather: COLD and windy to start, some clear skies in the late afternoon.

2007-2008 Report #: 6

Trip Report: Well, back out there again. I was caught in a whiteout last night on my way home from school…admittedly I was because that meant freshies at Sugarbush, but regrettably the driving was and tough. I made it home, got my things together, and went to bed. As Lostone et al heard, I awoke an hour later than planned. Oy, you’s gotta set the alarm for SATURDAY morning if it is going to go off…

So I made good time…got to the mountain at 9am, which was good considering that the front had just passed and the winds were really BAD. I did call to verify that the lifts were still spinning.

When I got there, I noticed that the Bravo was stopped and folks were waiting I thought it was windhold…turns out it was a chair derailment/mix up in the terminal. Either way, it made my wait for the pass processing and booting up much easier.

Got my pass, got on the lift (though my “Angels” were not working first thing this morning  ).

First run was down Birdland. Some nice soft snow on the sides and some nice bumps. It was a good warm up for the legs. There some slick spots, but it was not too bad.

Then it was off to the top for three runs down a winched Organgrinder. The snow was good…odd in that it was freezing underneath still and there were some death cookies in places and some ice. It was worth three runs though before I made a beeline to the Lodge for a warmup and lunch.

I did wait at the designated AZ/SkiMRV spot at 10am, but nobody else made it I guess…

After lunch and a chat with Lostone, I boarded Bravo and did two quick spins down Lower Organgrinder and Birdland. The former was nice, but you had to be careful because the snow was relatively new…and ungroomed.

I stopped at Allyn’s intending to warm up an use the bathroom. After stopping however, I turned around to see Lostone standing there.

“Hey, the meeting was at 10am, remember?”

We chatted and soon smootharc appeared from the other side of the lodge. So we had an ad hoc SkiMRV outing for an hour or so. We hit Jester twice and then Organgrinder. Both guys are great skiers and fun to chat with…smootharc is hard to miss with his outfit. I guess you can say we had a Head/Dalbello conference of sorts

Lostone and I headed to the bottom while smootharc went in for his daily dose of woodsmoke at Allyn’s.

At the bottom I swapped for the short boards and headed back up. I did two spins down Birdland (Sandy Macys was front and center) before deciding to do “just one more” off the top. It was about 2:30pm. I ran into smootharc and we rode up the lift.

When we got to the top, we ran into WWF-VT and had a chat. Smootharc charged ahead while I skied with WWF-VT and his kids.

They stopped at Allyn’s and I continued on for a few more runs. I did Organgrinder once more before I made my ritual hike to the summit and took in the sunset. It was numbing cold…I took some pics with my phone and then skied down Jester.

By now it was about 3:30 and I figured I would take one more down Lower Jester. It was nice…soft snow and no traffic. When I merged back onto Lower Organgrinder, I ran into three people at the Heaven’s Gate Traverse intersection. It was one woman and two men. She appeared to be stumbling around trying to take her skis off. I stopped and asked if they needed help. She was not in good shape. She was white, appeared to have blue lips, and managed to stutter, “I-m-m-m-m-m Fine. Too colddddddd. Got to get down and I don’t want to ski.” It was 3:40 or so and it was getting dark and cold. I asked if they wanted help and she declined, but it was clear to me that I needed to alert someone as to this situation because they were a loooonnnngggg way from the base…and honestly she looked and acted hypothermic.

So I charged down to the base and alerted the chairlift staff. They recognized the seriousness of the situation and got patrol and a snowmobile up there. I told them that she was conscious, but needed to get off the mountain ASAP.

I made sure things were fine, and then skied to the lodge before skiing back for one more. I had to close the place…as I rode up the lift, I saw the woman and ski patrol. It appeared that they were putting her in the sled. All I know for certain is that when I skied back to where she was, there were sled tracks and nobody else. At the bottom I saw the sled with her skis…so at least she made it down OK. Oh yeah…my last run was a nice cruise down Lower Jester.

A great day. Cold, but nice…I will be hiking tomorrow with a friend, but I am seriously feeling a case of ski-itis coming on for Tuesday…

[severine]

Sounds like a great day out! That was very kind and thoughtful of you to be sure that woman was well taken care of. Kudos to you!

[WWF-VT]

Nice to meet you on Saturday. It was a cold but nice day. I drove up on Saturday and after getting our lunch and passes we were on the mountain from 1:30-3:30 and hit almost all the open terrain with the exception of top part of Organgrinder. Friday night's snowfall had the mountain looking good. Nice to ski on the first day of December with snow cover everywhere.

Sunday was warmer. We got a very early start and with my kids we were among the first to make tracks on Snowball and Spring Fling which opened with deep coverage of machine made powder.

[thetrailboss]

Upper OG skied well first thing in the AM, but got progressively worse thereafter...as in icier and scatchier.