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Okemo 3/31/18

ss20

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 13, 2013
Messages
3,919
Points
113
Location
A minute from the Alta exit off the I-15!
Okemo may have a lot of issues/inconveniences with it...but at the end of the day... when it's all open it is absolutely massive and the 10% of trails that aren't groomed are more than enough for a fun spring day.

I chose Killington over Okemo because with the deep freeze Friday night I figured Killington would be rock solid everywhere but Bear. Okemo's drastically lower elevation really makes a difference on these spring days when the mountain has to overcome temps in the mid 20s the night before.

I got out at 8:30am and, as expected, things were stiff to say the least. I did a couple laps off the greens from the summit of the 6 pack, then dropped into Solitude. At 10:30 things were starting to get soft. I went down to the base, did a quick ski change, and headed to South Face. Punch Line had OK bumps, kind of mis-shaped. Double Diamond was good. Upper Fall Line and Triplesec (both with great bumps) leading into a groomed lower Fall Line, was an A+ home run of a trail. Then I went to Jackson Gore and found good bumps on Rolling Thunder (ROTD), White Lightning, and Upper Limelight.

Back to the main mountain for laps on The Plunge and Sel's Choice which have seeded bumps open to the public...a real rarity these days...quite sad. Timberline had bumps too, surprisingly. I skied til last chair at 3:45.


Being primarily a Killington skier, I'm used to bump runs like Outer Limits and Double Dipper which are steep and unrelenting. It was a nice change of pace doing the more low-angle stuff at Okemo. The ridges in the mountain provide nice breaks in between mashing the bumps. Jackson Gore had nearly top-to-bottom bumps providing about 1,300 vertical and the Timberline-Sel's Choice was probably 1,400 feet over on the Main Face.

Even without classic Okemo bump runs like Ledges and Big Bang-Eclipse I was thoroughly entertained all day. Typically my "throw-away" mountain for skiing groomers after rain, Okemo made up a lot of ground in my book today.
 
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