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Stowe 12/6-12/7/14

C-Rex

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Left the house at 6 AM on Saturday in the mixed precipitation. Luckily, the roads were in decent shape and there was little to no traffic. Also lucky that it changed over to snow right around when we hit the 89 interchange. Weather didn't slow us down too much though. We were on hill by 10ish.

Snowed all day at Stowe, and was cold enough to keep from getting too wet, but definitely on the warm side. I think it was hovering just under freezing. Visibility was a little tough for those without proper flat/low light lenses but I didn't have much trouble, personally. Other than that, conditions were great. The site said 26 trails on Saturday and 40 on Sunday, but I didn't see anything open on Sunday that wasn't on Saturday so maybe they just hadn't updated it yet. For the number of people, even with the demo day going on, there was plenty of terrain to keep the trails uncrowded.

Sunday was a different story. The temp dropped into the teens at the base and single digits up top. With that, the surface got quite "firm", to put it nicely. Only saving grace was the stashes of loose granular that had built up on the edges of most trails. We did a few runs on the quad and then decided the gondola was the place to be. Staying warm on the way up made the day much more tolerable. They had busted up a bunch of wails overnight on the trail under the gondola so that was like riding on a surface made of golf balls, and Nosedive and some of the other steeper trails were scraped off boiler plate with a narrow strip of granular on the edges.

All things considered, it was a pretty good weekend for early December. I was planning on taking next weekend off but now I'm hearing there could be a good dump on they way, so we'll see. Got to get while the gettin is good.
 

KevinF

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I was there all weekend as well. It definitely got firm on Sunday, but that's what sharp edges are for. I did most of my Sunday laps on the gondola for the increased warmth as well; when we went back to the quad in the afternoon, I found conditions over there were actually a bit better, I guess because of less traffic. Still wanted sharp edges though.

The bumps on Centerline, Hayride and Liftline were actually pretty soft, although the troughs were kinda scratchy.
 

steamboat1

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Beatiful shot taken this weekend.

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C-Rex

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It was cool seeing the clouds all settled in the notch on Sunday morning. Good shot, Steamboat1.
 

steamboat1

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steamboat1, looks nice! Is that your photo or a mountain promo shot?
Pic is from the photo gallery on Stowes website, I saw it & thought I'd share. They take a lot of nice pictures. They regularly have outstanding sunrise photo's from the top of the hill. Whoever their photographer is does a good job.
 

k123

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Stowe was really good today, the groomed surface was much softer than on Sunday, sweet packed powder. It snowed all day amounting to about 2 inches, got better with each run. NWS calling for 7-11 inches tonight!
 
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