Sugarbush, VT Friday 2/8/08

[billski]

Originally planned to do Cannon, but after hearing they had groomed nearly everything, we headed to Sugarbush.

Another nice, warm day. Strange weather, I haven't used my face mask at all this season. Dressed lightly, we knew we were going to get a workout.

Decided to warmup on Organgrinder No, actually that was the second (pics) run after a very fast schuss on Jester. Overall, nice, fresh packed powder all around, with selected scratchy spots where the scraper-sliders went, but readily avoided. Sun came out midday.
I threw in pics of various stuff for those who have not been, or not been since the build-out.

My ski bud did a lot of editorializing about how slow the upper mountain lifts are. He would like to know if there are plans to upgrade lift service, with all the new base upgrades and lodging. He suggested it would almost be a requirement. Slow lifts don't bother me, I'm looking for quality slopes, but he wanted an aerobic exercise like we had on Sunday at Wildcat!

We concentrated on Lincoln Peak for a while, finding the place beginning to get bumped up all over from the freshies the day before. Report was roughly 12" the day before. It was clear the Thursday locals got the on-trail goods, but the woods still had a lot of sweet, fresh lines, mostly top-of-ski-boot deep.

Jester was in good shape, Downspout was OK, kinda getting scraped off. Can someone explain why Ripcord and paradise are rated as double blacks? we thought Organgrinder was a lot more work. Maybe it was the day?

My ski bud and I were a dichotomy for the day. He wanted speed, I wanted pow. So we flipped a bit, then poked into the Eden woods later in the day. They were delicious, lots of powdery fun, new lines to be had.

North Lynx was also very good. The bump fields along Birch run were a good place to practice bump rhythm, they had a nice pitch and lots of powder on them.

The snow in general was heavier than I expected, which translates into a sorer billski today. But, it was a lot of fun and very enjoyable all around.

Alas, calls all day on AZ 6-13 radio channel brought no joy. Only responses from some local business/work crew.

No Castlerock for us. Word was it was scrappy bumps. Don't know, I was enjoying the woods.

We did more woods in Beeper Sleeper, which seemed to get too much traffic for powdery fun. We wandered off into some other unmarked woods in the N. Lynx area. There is some pretty steep stuff over there. I got into a little adventure when I landed inside a drainage ditch that I didn't see coming. My bud didn't appreciate my free-wheeling woodsman adventure, he said he was hitting "too many branches", so he bailed and continued his warp-drive cruising. Fun for all.

Warmup?










New(2007) base lodge:



My youngest lives for this stuff:


Ahh, sweet woods:

[KingM]

Nice pictures. What time did the Wafflehaus close? We stopped by around 2:30 and it wasn't open.

This is my take on your Organgrinder vs Ripcord/Paradise. Organgrinder is very steep, and when it's bumped, it's just too much for my abilities to go top to bottom through all those moguls. But it also gets groomed more frequently than R/P. When it has been groomed and the other two haven't, there's no question that it's the easiest of the three.

Lower Organgrinder, IMHO, should have a different name, since it has nothing in common with the upper part except the name. Looks different, skis different, and is one of the easier blacks at SB.

[billski]

Thanks for the trails perspective.

Wafflehouse is only open on weekends and holidays, just like other wafflehouses at other resorts...

We would have crashed at your place if we had kept our original plans for a Tuesday trip. We both had obligations last night.