Okemo 1-8-05

[crombie]

After looking up where to go this weekend, my wife and I settled on Okemo rather than our favorite, Stratton. The price is about the same, there's a $5 difference between mountains, but we had never been to Okemo and we couldn't get in contact with the guy who could get us discount Stratton tickets.

Anyways, we got up at 5 and headed out, took the route up 89 in NH and got off on NH 131 and had breakfast at a neat cafe when we got lost looking for a Dunkin Donuts (it's IN the Mobil station, who knew?)

We managed to get a great parking spot near the base area, but it was a complete zoo there. We managed to get our lift tickets and head up the mountain to the southern face. It was in great shape, with 6 or so inches of new snow, unfortunately we hadn't made it there early enough to enjoy the fresh tracks, but it was a lot of fun. The southern face is a great area with a detachable quad that whips ya up the mountain.

As we were heading up for the second time, it started barely snowing. By the time we got to the top, it was snowing, and it started to come down steadier as the morning progressed. We skied Dreamweaver like 3 times, and even though it's a green circle, we felt it should be classified as a blue square.

We skied the south face for a bit more, and then took the Upper Mountain Road, which is exactly what it says it is and requires some XC skills. It was prettty though.

We ended up somehow in the Jackson Gore area, and it was pretty icy compared to the rest of the mountain we had been on. Possibly because they had just opened it?

Anyways, we had a great lunch in the summit lodge (best food we've had in a lodge), skied a bunch of runs on our own, and with the snow coming down most of the trails managed to stay in pretty good shape during the afternoon. Some were skied over, some not, but it just depended on the trail really.

So it was a good day. There were a lot of people out but it only seemed crowded around the top and the bottom and near big trail merges. The liftlines never took longer than 5 min., although as a single it was less than a minute. The food was good, the snow was even better, and if they had enough snow for the glades trails to be open it would have been a perfect skiing day in New England.

It was well worth the 4+ hour drive home during a snowstorm.