dlague
Active member
We like to night ski at Gunstock from time to time on Tuesdays because it is 2 for 1 or effectively $16 each. While my son's skiing program at school is on Tuesday nights, i thought that we were not going to night ski there until mid February. However, yesterday was a teacher workshop day? So, he had the day off and the ski program was not happening was a result of not being a school day. That opened the door for night skiing this week. We had some concerns about conditions since during the last weather event Gunstock did not get snow. I called Gunstock and talked to them about the conditions since their website was vague. They said they were hard at work scraping up the surface to get the trails in good shape. The temps were looking good and the winds were going to be minimal for the most part according to Accuweather.
We arrived around 5:20 and hurried to get gear on and we were excited to make some turns. We grab our skis and started the trek up to the lift (one thing I hate about Gunstock). On the walk up we were noticing that the snow that was groomed earlier was setting up pretty firm. We made our first run down Tiger and wow - it was super fast and while edgeable it was pretty firm. It was groomed and corduroy skied away but the top layer started to develop a frozen crust that we could carve through yet very slick (for the lack of a better term). We were liking it. We headed up the Tiger Triple and made a run across the entire night skiing area from Derringer -> Upper Smith -> Exit 27 over to Pistol Triple. Boys wanted to hit the park so we tooled around there for a few runs and found landings to be hard as heck! We then decided to go down Pistol and this was another run where we just flew! We liked it so much that we lapped it a few times. It fun to just dig in with the edges and let the skis arc. The temps were dropping quickly and the winds started to pick up - boy 15 degrees at night is a whole lot different than 15 degrees during the day. Then again it might have been the wind chill factor. We headed in to eat and I had a couple Harpoon IPA.
When we cam back out we lapped Ramrod Quad and raced down each run. Smith Phelps, Ricochet, and Ramrod Race trail were all open and all skied fast as well - boat loads of fun. We ended on a final set of runs by heading down Tiger to Tiger Triple where we then went down Tiger Steeps (no bumps) back to Tiger and to the lodge. The usual bump trails Red Hat and Lower Cannonball were closed for grooming and race training respectively! There was not a bump to be found and if there were any, they probably would have been hard as rock.
We had a fun fast cruising night. While there seemed to be quite a few people inside, the trials were pretty open. I felt bad for a beginner trying to learn skiing - they do not use their edges yet and the surface was slippery - fun for us but sucked for them.
They have a pretty nice park - I had another looking up but it was blurry!
We arrived around 5:20 and hurried to get gear on and we were excited to make some turns. We grab our skis and started the trek up to the lift (one thing I hate about Gunstock). On the walk up we were noticing that the snow that was groomed earlier was setting up pretty firm. We made our first run down Tiger and wow - it was super fast and while edgeable it was pretty firm. It was groomed and corduroy skied away but the top layer started to develop a frozen crust that we could carve through yet very slick (for the lack of a better term). We were liking it. We headed up the Tiger Triple and made a run across the entire night skiing area from Derringer -> Upper Smith -> Exit 27 over to Pistol Triple. Boys wanted to hit the park so we tooled around there for a few runs and found landings to be hard as heck! We then decided to go down Pistol and this was another run where we just flew! We liked it so much that we lapped it a few times. It fun to just dig in with the edges and let the skis arc. The temps were dropping quickly and the winds started to pick up - boy 15 degrees at night is a whole lot different than 15 degrees during the day. Then again it might have been the wind chill factor. We headed in to eat and I had a couple Harpoon IPA.
When we cam back out we lapped Ramrod Quad and raced down each run. Smith Phelps, Ricochet, and Ramrod Race trail were all open and all skied fast as well - boat loads of fun. We ended on a final set of runs by heading down Tiger to Tiger Triple where we then went down Tiger Steeps (no bumps) back to Tiger and to the lodge. The usual bump trails Red Hat and Lower Cannonball were closed for grooming and race training respectively! There was not a bump to be found and if there were any, they probably would have been hard as rock.
We had a fun fast cruising night. While there seemed to be quite a few people inside, the trials were pretty open. I felt bad for a beginner trying to learn skiing - they do not use their edges yet and the surface was slippery - fun for us but sucked for them.
They have a pretty nice park - I had another looking up but it was blurry!
