Mount Snow - 2.8.13 + 2.9.13

A friend invited me to stay at his house near Mt Snow and with the storm coming i jumped at the offer.

Drove up Thursday night to avoid travel probs.

Skied Friday afternoon. Skiing was very good. it was snowing lightly all day, 4-5 inches by the time the lifts closed.

Sat up early and cleared the cars. got about 15" of light pow. Stopped at Sundance to grab my discount ticket ($63 for full day) and found that Tumbleweed lift was down for mech probs so rather than deal with the double and hiking we headed over to the main lodge.

place was pretty packed as expected. on the snow just after 8 AM. runs were getting tracked out but there was good powder on the sides of trails and we had no problem finding it.

it was cold and windy. North Face was closed due to winds. Bluebird was running a bit slow and stopped a lot. it was too cold to take out the camera so no great photos. Skied hard until the early afternoon and called it a day.

i rode the golden bubble!


some trail on the south side


mid morning off canyon express

Got the golden bubble too this weekend. First time ever I got a gold chair in all my years of skiing there. Unfortunately, it quickly became a smoking cabin, so I avoided that lift the rest of the day, choosing the fresh air of the other lifts instead.

That trail on the Southside in the Sunbrook area is Big Dipper- kicked butt on Saturday for sure!! (My wife and I actually rode up Sunbrook Quad with that wind howling in our faces the whole way for a re-do of that one!). By Sunday though the winds had literally scowered part of Big Dipper on a long flat that runs basically parallel to the direction the wind was blowing down to frozen dirt, grass and rocks (while I did ski it, I will admit to taking the new pair of Blizzard Cochise's that I bought on friday off and walking across that area back onto an area with blown in snow further down!)

Sunday just delivered for me! My condo complex had our annual "AM EXPRESS" where about 30 of us had the Bluebird to ourselves from 7:30 until 8! Got 2 PERFECT highspeed cord runs in with my wife and kids and a good friend and his daughter and a 3rd loading on the BB before anyone else had lift access Then the weather just became perfect! Bluebird sky, light winds and a temp that warmed into mid 20's which after Saturday's temps and wind felt downright tropical!! I ended my day about 2:30 with my Mount Snow App GPS tracker registering 22 runs, 33.2 miles covered and just under 29k vert feet skied- I had a fantastic day!

Just a fun mix of areas of great soft corduroy in the morning, some definite wind blown/wind slab on the Northface that got better as the day went on and some traffic chopped up the wind slab, to plenty of soft bumps forming as the day went on all over the place Are there places where the wind blew off essentially all the new snow down to the frozen ground? Yup Are there places where the wind blew all the new snow off to the solid manmade base layer? Yup Are there places where the wind blew in some DEEP areas of snow? Yup. You just had to keep in mind the direction the wind blew from and then use that knowledge to one's advantage! Favorite run of the last 2 days for me was Fools Gold over at Carinthia- not the toughest, but it so often gets overlooked and the winds blew at the right direction to fill it in there! Even at about lunchtime on Sunday I was still getting on trail untracked boot top deep 75 to 100 yard long stretches of powder on skiers left on that trail!

Great last 3 days for me!

i knew today would be great, i was sad packing the car and heading home while my friends went to the mountain this morning.

Fools Gold is an overlooked trail. Our ski-home trail is off it at the top,I did 3 times Sat before skiing home Powder all the way down Awesome

Iron Run is one of my favs too. Highly overlooked.

Fools Gold was good Sunday afternoon.

We did some tree skiing this weekend. That's always fun.

We skied Friday AM. It was OK. We weren't there when it reallys started to pick up. The wind Saturday was insane. Kudos that they ran the summit lifts. I really thought they were going to have a windhold.

Glenn said:

Fools Gold was good Sunday afternoon.

We did some tree skiing this weekend. That's always fun.

We skied Friday AM. It was OK. We weren't there when it reallys started to pick up. The wind Saturday was insane. Kudos that they ran the summit lifts. I really thought they were going to have a windhold.

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About 1/2 way down on skiers left if you saw some tracks WAY out past any others, those were mine! S kept looking at me like I was some immature 4yr old with 5 heads (well 2 out of 3 ain't 1/2 bad ) everytime we'd make another lap and me and my new Cochise's would venture further and further out! :lol:

I agree with you guys on the trails over at Carinthia.
I headed over there when the winds really picked up Sat afternoon. North face was on wind hold and the only summit lift was the Bluebird where lines were long. Over at Carinthia there were no lines. I hit all the good natural trails multiple times. Narrow Gauge had some nice 2-3 foot drifts so I did that run twice. As well as Iron Run. I finished the day off with a couple of runs on Fools Gold , the left side was still fresh tracks like Dr Jeff said. Then I got to ski back home on the Bears Vrossing ski home trail off of Fools Gold, 4800 feet of fresh tracks. Some flat areas where I had to stay in others trracks to keep the speed up, otherwise I'd be walking.

Saturday was my best day at Mount Snow this year, I missed the powder day Christmas vacation week.

MommaBear said:

Got the golden bubble too this weekend. First time ever I got a gold chair in all my years of skiing there. Unfortunately, it quickly became a smoking cabin, so I avoided that lift the rest of the day, choosing the fresh air of the other lifts instead.

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MommaBear, smoking on the Bluebird is completely 100% not allowed. You have/had every right to bitch the hell out of anybody who smokes in there. Staff can't see every chair of every lift, so they really rely on guests to self-police.

For future reference. Kills me to think that people would be smoking on the BBE with other guests. unreal.

madvibes said:

MommaBear, smoking on the Bluebird is completely 100% not allowed. You have/had every right to bitch the hell out of anybody who smokes in there. Staff can't see every chair of every lift, so they really rely on guests to self-police.

For future reference. Kills me to think that people would be smoking on the BBE with other guests. unreal.

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Dan, unfortunately I had the same thing happen on Saturday too. I was using the singles line and got paired with a group of 5. By the time we got to tower 3, they were lighting up. When they even asked me if I wanted a quick puff, I told them that it inflames my breathing and they said that they'd keep their hits to a minimum and just laughed when I pointed out the no smoking signs in the bubble. The 1st time in literally 100's of times I've ridden the Bluebird that it's happened

unreal. next time, tell an ambassador right as you get off the lift. you can be subtle about it and point them out. at the very least, anybody should be getting their pass clipped for smoking on the lift, regardless of *what* they're smoking.

can you manually raise the bubble cover while the lift is moving?

absolutely. you're free to raise / lower the lift on the uphill side. not while downloading, though.

I would call the cops and have them arrested on the spot!

cps27 said:

I would call the cops and have them arrested on the spot!

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do you drive a bus?

gmcunni said:

do you drive a bus?

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Lol.

madvibes . . . does smoking count under the no vandalism policy? Cause I'd be happy to point it out if that ever happened when I was riding (especially with my kids).

Alternatively, I could use my favorite Steven Wright joke:

I got on this chairlift with this guy I didn't know. We went halfway up the mountain without saying a word. Then I turned to him and said, "You know, this is the first time I've gone skiing in ten years." He said, "Why did you take such a long time off?" I said, "I was in prison. Want to know why?" He said, "Not really...Well, okay, you better tell me why." I said, "I pushed a total stranger off a Ferris wheel.

madvibes said:

unreal. next time, tell an ambassador right as you get off the lift. you can be subtle about it and point them out. at the very least, anybody should be getting their pass clipped for smoking on the lift, regardless of *what* they're smoking.

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drjeff said:

Dan, unfortunately I had the same thing happen on Saturday too. I was using the singles line and got paired with a group of 5. By the time we got to tower 3, they were lighting up. When they even asked me if I wanted a quick puff, I told them that it inflames my breathing and they said that they'd keep their hits to a minimum and just laughed when I pointed out the no smoking signs in the bubble. The 1st time in literally 100's of times I've ridden the Bluebird that it's happened

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Sorry about that they do not represent smokers that I hang out with.