Mrg 12/13/09

[polski]

Incredible how much terrain was available on natural snow at MRG today - 38 of 41 main-mountain trails, if I'm not mistaken. Mostly pp/chowder but some nice patches of untracked on edges.

Wild to ski MRG when it's not bumped up. Canyon was the boys' favorite. Lower Antelope was mine. (Lower Antelope on Dec. 13!!)

It started snowing again in early afternoon, at a pretty good clip. We had to leave before it accumulated much and still had a hellish drive home.

Didn't take many pics but here's one, from near the top of Chute. No moguls; heavy snow on the trees but not enough to cover the cliff faces. riverc0il wrote of skiing this trail yesterday.

[riverc0il]

That pic does no justice to Chute! It is not a super steep trail but that section has some pucker to it causing most folks to take the ladies tee off skiers right.

Glad you had some fun. 38 out of 41 trails, eh? Did they have the steeper trails off the Sunshine Double actually open? They were roped (needlessly) on Saturday even though the report had most of them open. Perhaps they were "saving" them for Sunday... which seems odd. Well, I didn't save them for you because those trails had the best snow on the mountain on Saturday. Slalom Hill was simply off the hook!!

[polski]

Originally Posted by riverc0il

That pic does no justice to Chute! It is not a super steep trail but that section has some pucker to it causing most folks to take the ladies tee off skiers right.

"Ladies tee," ouch</confession>

Glad you had some fun. 38 out of 41 trails, eh?

I think it came down to 37 after a while. Around noontime up top we noticed the "PARADISE IS CLOSED TODAY" sign had gone up. (wish I'd taken a pic of that ...)

Did they have the steeper trails off the Sunshine Double actually open? They were roped (needlessly) on Saturday even though the report had most of them open. Perhaps they were "saving" them for Sunday... which seems odd. Well, I didn't save them for you because those trails had the best snow on the mountain on Saturday. Slalom Hill was simply off the hook!!

Yes, a little birdie told us to hit the double first run up and we could see Gazelle itself was very lightly tracked (only the very top was still roped off because of wind-scour). As I mentioned in your TR, I was with my boys; they weren't down with the Sunnyside blacks for a first run but it was nice to drool over ...

[polski]

A few other miscellaneous tidbits, not all skiing-related but part of the trip:

-- listened to the entire Dead 12/29/77 Winterland show on the ride up. The Dick's Picks CD includes filler from the next night at the end of disc 3; I'd forgotten what songs were on there so took it as a good sign to hear the opening strains of Estimated Prophet as I turned onto Route 17 for the final leg to the mountain. The Deadheads in the audience may recall that in riv\'s TR thread I was fine with expecting little untracked pow on this trip because "my time comin' any day" ...

-- we were THE first car in the MRG parking lot at 8:20 a.m. That was a first for me. Got some good intelligence from the lot attendant, who'd earned turns on dawn patrol. (he was not the aforementioned "little birdie" though)

-- listened to the entire Pearl Jam 6/28/08 Mansfield MA show through the white-knuckle drive on the way back. I dunno, helped keep me on edge.

[polski]

p.p.s. this trip really reaffirmed my strong preference for natural snow. Oh, I'm glad for machine-made when it makes the difference between open (like Sunday River in mid-Oct, and quite a good surface actually) and closed. But the natural snow yesterday was dry and soft, whereas one of my sons took Easy Way once at the very bottom and reported the machine-made surface there was bulletproof. I also realize some places have much more advanced snowmaking and produce a higher-quality cover (like Crotched), but still, gotta love when nature smiles on us.

I'd add that while there were plenty of thin spots at MRG yesterday, most of what was exposed was grass. I hit rock a few times but with trivial effect on my bases.