Wachusett 12/20/04

[Zand]

Date(s) Skied: 12/20/04

Resort or Ski Area: Wachusett, MA

Conditions: Packed Powder / Powder

Trip Report:

The trip got interesting about 1 minute after I left my house. A car went spinning off the road on Main Street. Sad thing was that Main Street was the most slippery street. This town has the worst plowers. I got to Wachusett in about twice the time of what I usually do for my first day trip there in a couple of years.

Conifer was pretty much powder on the sides and packed powder in the middle all day. There were a few ice patches toward the end, but they were easily avoidable. It had a lot of people skiing it that were way too inexperienced and clogged everything up.

10th was my favorite trail of the day. It was mostly powdery and started to get bumpy late. There was a lot of powder at the bottom as well. Nice run.

Look Mom was a good trail for flying down. It was smooth. Skiier's left of the lift was all powder, but only about 4 inches of it so it got a little bare in there.

Challenger was also good and speedy. Unfortunately, they turned the guns on around 1:30 which made it all cruddy and hard to see.

Ralph's Run had the guns going all day. It was really bad because it was very narrow and was full of beginners. My goggles froze up and I was blindly avoiding beginners on a 30 foot wide trail. This is usually a good run, but I'll wait for it to get wider.

Indian Summer and Sundowner were open as well. Indiam Summer had the snowguns going. Sundowner was getting most of that snow as the wind was howling. Ollie's carpet and Easy Rider carpet were open.

At 2:00, the temp at the base was 10 and the summit was 7. When I left the parking lot at 3, the temp was a toasty 5.

They had the lines set up for the quads, but I left before the circus rolled into town. I got many runs in in the 4 hours I was there. Too bad it has to warm up this week. If it weren't for the wind, today would have been perfect.