What's your "best" awful skiing weather ski trip story?

Whitey · Feb 4, 2016

I thought that since the weather is so god-awful for skiing that I’d start a thread about awful weather you experienced when you went for a ski trip.

Mine is from about 10 yrs ago when a buddy of mine and I went to Sugarloaf. We both took Monday off of work so that we would have a 3 day weekend there. That’s was our 1st mistake as we had toyed with taking Friday off instead to make the 3 day weekend. We both got passes from our wives and we were on mtn in a room at the SL Inn. So we were primed for a weekend of epic skiing and epic drinking.

Saturday was good to great skiing and we tore up the mountain. Unfortunately, when we woke up on Sunday it was pouring rain. Like “build an ark and start pairing up the animals” level rain. We went out because we were there, and not many other reasons. Skied til about 2pm that day. By about 10am, I could count the # of people still skiing on my 2 hands. And this was a “prime time” weekend in Feb. We both brought our best “wet weather skiing” gear and were still soaked thru to the skin by about the 3rd run. In the Widowmaker that afternoon we were the only 2 people in the place, we had the bartender to ourselves. We got smashed. We went back to the SL Inn later. That night we decided to walk up to the base restaurants via the condo/snubber trail. About halfway up our feet went thru the top of the snow and dropped down into the underground river that we didn't realize was flowing under the snow. We ate dinner that night at the Bag with our pants soaked from about the crotch down. We were too drunk to care.

Even better, overnight that night (Sun into Mon) the temperature swung at least 50 degrees. It went from being warm and rainy to “cold as sh!t”. Of course all the mashed potatoes & water froze solid and half the mountain was blue ice. We skied Monday because we were there. We were also literally the only people skiing that day. The lifties kept giving us looks like “you guys are idiots”. It may have been some of the most dangerous skiing I’ve done because it was so frozen solid. About a ½ second after you pointed the skis downhill you were doing Tuna-speed level, like 40-50 MPH. You then had to try to check your speed and stay out of the woods by carving on something that resembled an uneven hockey rink.

We bailed by lunchtime, said “sh!t, we should have come and skied Friday instead” and left. Of course about a day later my buddy got deathly ill and missed almost the entire week of work. His wife wouldn’t let him ski trip with me again for about 3 yrs.

Good times. . .

mriceyman · Feb 4, 2016

I have a terrible memory so it works in my favor .. But i also forget how many great days ive had

Sent from my iPhone using AlpineZone

Mapnut · Feb 4, 2016

My story is not unlike Whitey's except that this was way back about 1971. In those days there wasn't as much information available about snow conditions. You young guys may find this hard to believe, but there wasn't even any Internet. It was January I think, similar weather, heavy rain followed by a hard freeze. I lived in Maine at the time, so my brother and I though it might be worthwhile to drive up to Sugarloaf and see if they had gotten snow at higher altitude. Of course we could have phoned ahead, but we didn't. When we got there Sugarloaf was completely closed!

They told us Saddleback had 2 trails open, so we though we might as well drive over there.Their base elevation was higher. The trails that were open were Blue Devil and Silver Doctor off the T-bar. They had gone over them with a "Powder Maker", i.e. an ice crusher, which left a nice even surface of, well, crushed ice. It was like skiing on sharp ball bearings. We managed 2 runs, but the thought of falling on that stuff was too scary. We returned home with our faces intact.

dlague · Feb 4, 2016

Skied Jay Peak when it was freezing drizzle. Temp near the surface about 27 and the air above was warmer (inversion) and the drizzle was freezing on our jackets, helmets and better yet goggles. It made it rather interesting. The funny part of this was the fact that I recommended skiing at Jay Peak to my sister and her family. While my family sucked it up, my sisters family (mostly my sister) were not very pleased.

On another adventure, about 12 years ago I took my wife to Jay Peak because that was my home mountain growing up. She was relatively new to the sport and not very experienced. This day happened to be a pretty windy day and very cold. We did a few runs from the Metro Chair and it did not seem that bad. Next, I suggested going up on the Flyer and over Alligator Alley the winds were howling, chair swinging and the chair stopped. The face masks were not helping and she was holding her hands in front of her face. Once it got moving and we finally got off the wind to our back was pushing us down Northway. She was not very excited about this sport at the moment. Ah, I had a better idea, Tram still operating - take the Tram to the top. That was one scary trip for her and when we started skiing down on Northway, we could not see anything and it was blowing us back (pretty flat there for a bit) as we came around on that trail to the Flyer terminal the wind helped to push us again. We got to the bottom and she recommended sticking to Metro chair. It was not a very good introduction to Jay Peak. In the end, we had three bad day trips there in a row and my wife was about to never visit Jay Peak again, but great days came along and her opinion changed. Then again her skills changed dramatically and these days she is full on into skiing!

Smellytele · Feb 4, 2016

dlague said:
Skied Jay Peak when it was freezing drizzle. Temp near the surface about 27 and the air above was warmer (inversion) and the drizzle was freezing on our jackets, helmets and better yet goggles. It made it rather interesting. The funny part of this was the fact that I recommended skiing at Jay Peak to my sister and her family. While my family sucked it up, my sisters family (mostly my sister) were not very pleased.

On another adventure, about 12 years ago I took my wife to Jay Peak because that was my home mountain growing up. She was relatively new to the sport and not very experienced. This day happened to be a pretty windy day and very cold. We did a few runs from the Metro Chair and it did not seem that bad. Next, I suggested going up on the Flyer and over Alligator Alley the winds were howling, chair swinging and the chair stopped. The face masks were not helping and she was holding her hands in front of her face. Once it got moving and we finally got off the wind to our back was pushing us down Northway. She was not very excited about this sport at the moment. Ah, I had a better idea, Tram still operating - take the Tram to the top. That was one scary trip for her and when we started skiing down on Northway, we could not see anything and it was blowing us back (pretty flat there for a bit) as we came around on that trail to the Flyer terminal the wind helped to push us again. We got to the bottom and she recommended sticking to Metro chair. It was not a very good introduction to Jay Peak. In the end, we had three bad day trips there in a row and my wife was about to never visit Jay Peak again, but great days came along and her opinion changed. Then again her skills changed dramatically and these days she is full on into skiing!

My wife has only seen Jay as a ice infested wind blown cold place. We have been 3 times together. She wants to give it another try,. I have been 7 or 8 times with half being great, half sucking ass.

frapcap · Feb 5, 2016

I've got two good car ones on the way to ski Sugarbush.

A few years back I had a beater of a 1991 Corolla with 4 mismatched tires, only one being a snow tire. It was snowing like hell one morning and we left the hotel early to get first tracks at Mt Ellen. I took a wrong turn going to the mountain that morning from Burlington and we wound up on some windy, hilly back road. For any modern car, this wouldn't be a problem, but for my shitbox, you had to accelerate down hill just to keep the momentum to make it up the hill on the other side. I was white knuckled and asshole puckered the entire time. After getting lost and turning around, we could see the correct road when my rear end took a hop off of a frost heave and the ass and front ends swapped places and we (thankfully) slammed backwards into an existing snow bank. The car turned off. After a very extended crank, it turned over and ran like shit because the tail pipe was clogged up with snow pretty deep.
So, we're out in this blizzard condition morning, jamming ski poles and sticks up the exhaust trying to knock it loose.
We finally say "fuck it" and I drive anyway since the car already had an exhaust leak and the gasses kinda had somewhere to escape to.
As we approach the next hill, the engine is waaaaaaaay down on power. It starts slowly whirling like a toy with a dying battery. We're half way up and start to slide backwards on the unplowed road. Suddenly, "POP!! BANG BANG BANG!!! WHAM!!!" My gut sinks, we're fucked, out here in the middle of nowhere, no traffic, no plow, in this shitty, shitty car, when all the sudden, the car surges forwards and regains all of its "power." In the rear view, I see this HUGE puff of smoke and a bunch of debris shoot out of the tail pipe. Thank you Jebus! We still make it for the first few chairs and have a great day skiing despite this awful adventure.

Another trip to Sugarbush, on another very snowy, but warm-ish day we were in a looooooong line of traffic headed up the steep ass access road to Lincoln Peak. There was snow, slush, and ice mixing on the ground that the plow hadn’t quite made it to yet. We didn’t know how slick it was until we watched a car coming DOWN the road at speed, completely sideways, just NARROWLY missing us and the car in front of us and the car behind us. Next was an SUV that hit a car further down the hill than us before spinning off into the trees. So- this road was SLICK. The traffic line is so long because people kept getting stuck. So did we. There were 4 of us in the car and after the downward car nearly hit us, we had two wheels in the shoulder just to stay safe. We waited for some room to open up in front of us to keep our momentum before having to stop and get stuck again. Having the two wheels off the road helped at least one drive wheel get traction on something that wasn’t glazed ice, even if it was loose powder. We started moving, got about 6 feet and began to get stuck on the steepest part like the vehicles before us. But, we all opened our doors and started to push up the hill like an Olympic toboggan racers team. We pushed while the driver lightly accelerated until he found traction and we jumped in one by one into our respective seats and got up the rest of the hill.

rocks860 · Feb 5, 2016

frapcap said:
I've got two good car ones on the way to ski Sugarbush.

A few years back I had a beater of a 1991 Corolla with 4 mismatched tires, only one being a snow tire. It was snowing like hell one morning and we left the hotel early to get first tracks at Mt Ellen. I took a wrong turn going to the mountain that morning from Burlington and we wound up on some windy, hilly back road. For any modern car, this wouldn't be a problem, but for my shitbox, you had to accelerate down hill just to keep the momentum to make it up the hill on the other side. I was white knuckled and asshole puckered the entire time. After getting lost and turning around, we could see the correct road when my rear end took a hop off of a frost heave and the ass and front ends swapped places and we (thankfully) slammed backwards into an existing snow bank. The car turned off. After a very extended crank, it turned over and ran like shit because the tail pipe was clogged up with snow pretty deep.
So, we're out in this blizzard condition morning, jamming ski poles and sticks up the exhaust trying to knock it loose.
We finally say "fuck it" and I drive anyway since the car already had an exhaust leak and the gasses kinda had somewhere to escape to.
As we approach the next hill, the engine is waaaaaaaay down on power. It starts slowly whirling like a toy with a dying battery. We're half way up and start to slide backwards on the unplowed road. Suddenly, "POP!! BANG BANG BANG!!! WHAM!!!" My gut sinks, we're fucked, out here in the middle of nowhere, no traffic, no plow, in this shitty, shitty car, when all the sudden, the car surges forwards and regains all of its "power." In the rear view, I see this HUGE puff of smoke and a bunch of debris shoot out of the tail pipe. Thank you Jebus! We still make it for the first few chairs and have a great day skiing despite this awful adventure.

Another trip to Sugarbush, on another very snowy, but warm-ish day we were in a looooooong line of traffic headed up the steep ass access road to Lincoln Peak. There was snow, slush, and ice mixing on the ground that the plow hadn’t quite made it to yet. We didn’t know how slick it was until we watched a car coming DOWN the road at speed, completely sideways, just NARROWLY missing us and the car in front of us and the car behind us. Next was an SUV that hit a car further down the hill than us before spinning off into the trees. So- this road was SLICK. The traffic line is so long because people kept getting stuck. So did we. There were 4 of us in the car and after the downward car nearly hit us, we had two wheels in the shoulder just to stay safe. We waited for some room to open up in front of us to keep our momentum before having to stop and get stuck again. Having the two wheels off the road helped at least one drive wheel get traction on something that wasn’t glazed ice, even if it was loose powder. We started moving, got about 6 feet and began to get stuck on the steepest part like the vehicles before us. But, we all opened our doors and started to push up the hill like an Olympic toboggan racers team. We pushed while the driver lightly accelerated until he found traction and we jumped in one by one into our respective seats and got up the rest of the hill.

My friend crashed my car on that downhill a few years ago. He completely lost traction so he was going down the hill in the other travel lane until someone started coming towards him and he clipped the back of someone's car. It then took us about 3 hours to get back to Stowe and in the meantime we got stuck in some random persons driveway at the bottom of a huge hill. It was a disaster

Mapnut · Feb 5, 2016

Superb writing, frapcap!

Rushski · Feb 5, 2016

Late 90s, believe shaped skis were just starting to break through to some extent... Got my off for the season lawn sprinkler friend and talked another fried into switching wit another intern for his med school rotation of some sort to take off. Was also going to meet my oldest Brother, who lives in Northern NH to meet at Cannon.

Rain-sleet-snow-sleet-rain-snow mix for the whole ride forthe ride up out of Mass. Many cars andtrucks off the road.Buddy kept hisDodge truck on the road despite the horrible road conditions.Sometimes in 4WD, sometimes not.You know it’s bad when a Subaru wagon is offthe road…

Made it to Cannon to find freezing rain and high winds. Completely closed as everything was coveredin solid ice.Brother made it and turnedaround and went home.We decided totruck on and headed to 302 to see how Attitash would be.Passed Bretton Woods and it had changed tosnow at that point, but kept driving as the reputation of its terrain pushed uson.Very slick drive from that point to Attitash.

Raining. But no turning back.They were giving out theglorified trash bags with arm holes in them.Figured it would be a good test for the Gore-Tex shell.Rain ended up winning.Skied through close to eight inches of wetmashed potatoes.One buddy rented aboard for something different as he had tried it a few times and HAD likedit.Complete struggle and really didn’t get above the crap any better than the other two of us on skinny skis.

At noonish for lunch, he switched back to his skis. They headed out for the torture.I had had enough…
In hindsight Bretton Woods would’ve been the smartest choiceand have since to grown to like the place.
Also, later in the season, stayed a night at my brother’s toget out skiing with him. No luck as amajor ice storm hit and everything was covered in solid ice.Littleton actually canceled school.Cannon once again was closed.

Those two instances in a so-so season led me to a four yearabsence on the slopes.

Got back by having guys at work talk me into it. Bought new equipment and haven’t looked back.

Whitey · Feb 6, 2016

Smellytele said:
My wife has only seen Jay as a ice infested wind blown cold place. We have been 3 times together. She wants to give it another try,. I have been 7 or 8 times with half being great, half sucking ass.

Jay gets a lot of love on this site, and most of it is deserved. But at the same time - when it's bad it can be BAD. Cold, windy, icy. My mix of epic to awful in visits there is about the same as yours - about 50/50. But when it's good. . . well you know.

But then again, that's true for any mountain. Maybe Jay's elevation, exposure, & latitude may make it seem worse when it is cold/windy.

Bene288 · Feb 6, 2016

The girl and I went to Belleayre probably 5 years ago on a Wednesday, was back when tickets were insanely cheap if you brought a canned good or something. Remember it being like 24$ to ski all day. It was raining/sleet/snow in Albany but several sources (OnTheSnow included) claimed the Catskills would have all snow. I had just gotten a different truck and wanted to try it out on the icy and snowy roads.

The ride down the Thruway was littered with cars/trucks off the road. We even stopped to push a young girl back onto the exit she was trying to take. She had turned sideways and got hung up on some sleety slushy nastiness. No problem for me, love winter driving and was loving the new truck. Performed very well in the snow.

As we're driving to the mountain and climbing elevation the sleet/rain/snow turns to just sleet. We discuss leaving but decide to go in to the lower lodge. The woman at the desk was very positive: "Don't be fooled down here, it's all powder and snowing up top!". With this news we decide to go for it. We boot up and take Superchief up top. Completely soaked on the first chair up. The sleet has now gotten a little wetter. We conclude the lady at the ticket window was completely full of shit. Conditions were 3+" of crust on top of heavy wet snow. The skis would break through the ice and you would just stop. There was no skiing it whatsoever. I tell my girlfriend that we need to blow down a steeper trail to get down. She gets nervous as she usually likes to warm up on an easy cruiser. But I explain to her that we would be WALKING down anything without the proper grade in conditions like this. We head down one of the steeps. Would ski for 25 yards tops then be stopped by the ice. Imagine the videos of the huge ice clearing ships in the arctic, that's what our boots looked like. This continues to the bottom. It took us an hour to get down after several double ejects. We had fun with it though. Swigged the flask on the while we dug each other out.

We went back to the ticket window and politely asked for a voucher for another day, as conditions were unskiable. "Well I'm sorry, but you've been skiing for more than an hour so I can't give you a voucher". We went back and forth, hitting all the point you would expect and she wouldn't budge on the vouchers. We leave after some choice words. I email management when I get home and hear nothing back. We both swear off Belleayre and say we'll never give them our hard earned money again.

I got a random letter a year later. I had forgotten what had happened initially. Management had been changed, I think by ORDA, and sent us vouchers in the mail along with a lengthy apology.

bdfreetuna · Feb 6, 2016

How about diarrhea on the Ridge of Jay Peak. Probably could be spotted from the tram if someone was looking closely.

Not Sure · Feb 6, 2016

Best and worst in the same day !
Killington 1990 something , woke up to 16" powder and still coming down .
3-4 runs of untracked knee deep light powder .
Outter limits had a heavy cross wind that filled mogul troughs to the top . Tons of face shots every run .
Noonish noticeably warmer and a little rain mixing in . An hour later steady rain and had to wipe slush off the chair seats.
1:00 watched the wedge shaped warm front come up the valley.
My skis seemed to have shifted to low gear as I had trouble moving in the mashed potatoes .
Ended in a downpour around 2:00 .completely soaked

SIKSKIER · Feb 8, 2016

I went to Sugarloaf one weekend when the forecast were calling for 20 inches.We only got 12.What disaster that weekend was.

What's your "best" awful skiing weather ski trip story?

Whitey

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mriceyman

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Mapnut

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dlague

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Smellytele

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frapcap

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rocks860

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Mapnut

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Rushski

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Whitey

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Bene288

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bdfreetuna

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Not Sure

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SIKSKIER

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