Sugarloaf 1-22-08

[loafer89]

Area skied: Sugarloaf, Maine

Date skied: January 22nd from 9:45am - 3:45pm

Surface conditions: packed powder, hardpacked, new snow (1-2')

Weather: Cloudy with on/off light snow and gusty winds (again) 12F at 9:45, 19F at 3:45pm.

High winds, that where gusty at times kept all lifts closed except for the Superquad, Whiffletree, Double Runner East and the Bateau T-Bar.

We started out the day with a run down a powdery Tote Road with snowguns blazing on Chicken Pitch which made for sweet powder turns on a usually icy stretch of the trail. I ducked into Ram Pasture Glade which sucked with breakable crust and quickly left for Tote Road again.

Next up was Hayburner which was an alternate of ocassional icy patches and windblown powder. Kings Landing was better with soft manmade snow and guns going on the stretch just above Peavy X-Cut.

Glancer was very nice with 1-2" of untouched powder over groomed snow for silky smooth turns and Windrow was much the same, but with a nasty mix of death cookies, bare spots and frozen snow by the bridge close to the Superquad that had just been run over with a snowcat without grooming that section.

Double Bitter was okay with powder moguls and hardpacked snow in between and we did that run twice, skiing into the Half Pipe on both ocassions. We skied Competition Hill after it was opened back up after race training and it had nice groomed snow with new snow on top.

After lunch we skied Lower Winters Way which had icy rutted moguls with stashes of windblown powder in the troughs, Bubblecuffer was a bit better with more snow cover and less ice/hardpack.

We did one run on the Bateau T-bar and hiked up West Sluice Chute in the face of a stiff west wind and skied Gondola Line which had some powder snow mixed with ocassional ice cookies and hardpack, but was a fun high vertical run.

By the time that we took our last run the wind had died down (how convenient) and I did Tote road and my friend did Spillway.

We left the mountain with peaks of blue sky and low winds, so we are hopeful for a good day on wednesday.