Sugarloaf 4-15-08

[loafer89]

Area skied: Sugarloaf, Maine

Date skied: April 15th, 2008 from 9:30am - 3:00pm

Surface conditions: Machine groomed, hardpacked and frozen granular above 2,500',
spring snow below Peavy- X-Cut.

Weather: Bluebird with not a cloud in sight, 32F at 9:30am (base), 45F (base) at 3:00pm
with the summit staying around 30F all day.

Sugarloaf from The Landing:






We started out our day with a groomed Tote Road which we did top to bottom including Tote Road Extension and the conditions ranged from loose and frozen granular at the summit to soft snow for the last few hundred feet of vertical. Next up was a run down Kings Landing which had a mix of mid winter type loose granular mixed with some spring snow just above Peavy X-Cut. Scoot was the trail of the day with the most consistent snow from top to bottom with soft easy to carve spring corn snow.

We did a few runs of of the Spillway Chair including Sluice and Spillway which where decent if a bit hardpacked. Ramdown was a nice groomer and we did it all the way down and continued on to Whiffletree which had soft corn snow and ungroomed lines to ski.

We made it back up to the summit and noticed that the snowfields where now open and despite misgivings about how good the snow would be we did the treck to the backside and scrambled over quite a bit of rocks/scree to reach High Rigger. The first few hundred feet of vertical where really nice with soft corn bumps, but the trail turned nasty once we had to head west torwards an exit into King Pne bowl with survival skiing on barely edgable snow on Jagger. Once the sun works on the snow later this week, the skiing will get better in the snowfields, but today was just too cold.

High Rigger:




We had lunch and then skied Narrow Guage top to bottom including the extension and enjoyed a mix of corn snow and loose granular snow. Binder from the summit was a blast with lots of corn snow and walls of snow to make bowl type skiing alot of fun. We skied this trail to Tote Road/Spurline and into the Stomping Grounds and had fun on the huge hits and the mini pipe.

Narrrow Guage:




We took a run down Hayburner which had soft edgable snow and rode the Super Quad up to Mid-Station X-Cut for an inspection tour of Lower Winters Way (frozen bumps and closed) to Gondi Line which was a bit skied off and had some refreezing corn snow to Wedge which was great if you stayed in the sun on skiers right and refreezing on skiers left.

Our last run of the day was Binder to Tote Road to Scoot with a mix of corn snow and refreezing corn snow in the late afternoon sun.

[loafer89]

I updated my post with a few pictures.

[powhunter]

Nice pics...looks like a ton of snow up there!

[deadheadskier]

How old is your son again? I see plenty of young bucks with great ability, but the patience to hike up and hit the backside would require far too much patience and motivation for most youngins'.

Great TR

[loafer89]

My son is 8 years old and yesterday was a case of father being dragged up there by the son.