• Welcome to AlpineZone, the largest online community of skiers and snowboarders in the Northeast!

    You may have to REGISTER before you can post. Registering is FREE, gets rid of the majority of advertisements, and lets you participate in giveaways and other AlpineZone events!

Ski Butternut - 3/28/04

Greg

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Jul 1, 2001
Messages
31,154
Points
0
Date(s) Skied: Sunday, 3/28/04 - 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM

Resort or Ski Area: Ski Butternut, Great Barrrington, Massachusetts

Conditions: Sping conditions, slush. Bright sun, few breezes, warm - about 50*F. No crowds.

Trip Report: We decided to take a trip to Butternut to ski the morning. We arrived at about 8:15 AM and found the lot to be pretty empty. Got geared up and on the lift shortly after 8:30 AM. We commented on how strange it felt to be sitting on the chair in 50 degrees will strips of snow only on the trails. First run was down AppleJack which was pretty fast. The surface was a freshly groomed and packed slush that caused you to move pretty quickly. Essentially, every run after that was slush as the sun warmed things up and skier traffic broke up the groomed surface.

We skied four or five runs off the Top Flight Quad and then noticed the Overbrook Triple was running. We hit Freewheeler and Downspout a number of times off the triple. Conditions made for challenging skiing. Very heavy slushy snow. Stopping was tricky if you built up a large amount of speed and I felt a lot of lateral stress on my knees while turning. It was, however, a great day to be out on the mountain. Sunshine, warm, and great scenery. Coverage overall was pretty good, but some trails are showing dirt patches - namely Upper Downspout. Uptown was closed so we had to speed off Downsput to get back to the Quad. A large slush puddle hampered our progress. We took many more runs off the Quad including Applejack and Lucifer's Leap/Hob Nob. Run of the day was one of my Butternut favorites, Applejack. Great coverage throughout and there was a pretty solid base which let you really get an edge in.

Butternut is hoping to stay open through this week and I'm not convinced they'll make it to the weekend, especially with this week's forecast. There are areas with tons of snow, but what's going to kill them is connecting/access trails and the coverage at the base. There are many wet slush puddles all around the mountain. This past weekend was most likely their last with almost 100% terrain.

We never waited in line for more than 3 or so chairs so we got a lot of skiing in for 3 1/2 hours. A really fun spring skiing day, but probably my last local outing. I hope to get three more days in when I head to Reggae-Fest at Sugarloaf next month. Let's hope the base hold on up there!

Click HERE for pics.
 

skijay

Member
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
911
Points
16
Location
MA
I kind of wanted to go to Butternut as I at first was not really wanting to go to Catamount. I am glad I did. It was 13 minutes further than Butternut.
It is sad to here that someone had an accident yesterday. The snow was tricky and I am glad I was on snowblades as we saw many people stuggle in the slush on skis. If you fell you were soaked!

Catamount too was empty, never a lift line.
 

Greg

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Jul 1, 2001
Messages
31,154
Points
0
skijay said:
It is sad to here that someone had an accident yesterday.
It was actually last Wednesday, but just made the news today.
 

skijay

Member
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
911
Points
16
Location
MA
I just looked at your pictures. It looks like they have some decent coverage still. According to their site, Catamount is now closed for the season. Let's hope that Butternut makes it to next weekend. I think 4/6/03 was the last day for Butternut.
 

Greg

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Joined
Jul 1, 2001
Messages
31,154
Points
0
My guess is that if they stay open next weekend, they'll run just the quad. There are only two runs off the Triple and Upper Downspout is getting pretty thin. The only way back to the base/Quad is now from Downspout so I suspect the Triple will close this week. Whip/Nuthatch had decent cover. Whether that stays open will depend on access from Pied Piper. My guess is that if they run next weekend you'll have Applejack and Lucifer's/Hob Nob off the quad. We didn't ski Main Street so I can't comment there. Dipsy is done and access to (lower) Cruiser is pretty shot.
 
Top