Christmas Day Sugarloaf

[uphillklimber]

Date(s) Skied: December 25, 2005, Christmas day

Resort or Ski Area: The loaf

Conditions: PAcked powder/machine groomed, and lots of fog

Trip Report:

This day started out real early and the road up was an adventure, even had a whop-di-do on the wet ice on the way up. At slow speed, we still made it fairly quickly to the loaf, in time for 8:00 first tracks. Problem is, they don't start til 8:30 officially. They let us go at 8:20.

Today, the fog would often dictate which way we turned at the top of the lift. Timberline never opened up (conditions). We did some trails that visibilty caused me to veer off trail twice in the same run. After that, we took small choppy turns til we got good visibility. When you could see where you were going, it was a blast. Great conditions, and deceptively fast snow to boot. (I guess some would say that's not a good thing, while others would say it was).

When we started out, you could see some thin cover, and as the day wore on, there was more brown snow. It was warm out, 24 up top and 38 at the bottom. This led to some slushy snow, but the higher up you went, the better it was. Once again, the lines were almost non-existant. Must have had something to do with it being Christmas.

We skiied virtually every open trail, as fog would allow. We did some many re runs we could actually say we were bored. It may also have had something to do with the shear volume of vertical we got yesterday and today and our energy levels... but that's another story... We only bailed on one trail, upper skidder. By the time we got to it, it was well scraped, and the base was ice, not hardpack. as steep as it was, we could not maintain control on it. So we skiied down, bouncing off the moguls to scrub speed and took a cross cut out of there. Not only are moguls fun, but I'm glad to be able to handle some of them. I think I'll keep practicing them.

Today and yesterday at the River, we had lots of opportunity to practice our technique. So many runs, with such good snow (okay we had to dodge some brown snow and fog at the loaf), that we practiced many things and were just a flying down the hill. At the end of the day, we headed to the beginner area to tackle soft ungroomed piles and moguls, the type of thing that used to terrify us. We were bombing them!

At the end of the day, we heade to the fitness center for a hot tub. What a way to finish up skiing the river and the loaf! What a weekend!!!!