speden
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- Nov 18, 2008
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Checked out Stowe today. Had some good snow flurry activity in the morning, and got maybe a half inch of accumulation. Gave some of the less used trails a buttery smooth surface for a while. Overall the coverage on the trails is quite good, and they've been making a lot of snow. They've left a few trails completely whaled up. I think it was a trail called North Slope that was completely covered in tall whales, and that made for some really nice runs. The Liftline trail has also seen a lot of snowmaking and was in good shape. I saw a high speed wipeout on that from the chairlift. Some young guys were straightlining part of it, and the first one pulled it off, but the second guy was catching some air and not quite recovering each time until he lost it and slid on his belly for a long way. But he didn't hit any trees and looked okay.
Some of the trails that haven't seen snow making were much more scratchy, like Cliff Trail, where the whole center of the trail was scratch. Actually I think I improved quite a bit at skiing on scraped off trails today out of necessity. Later on some thick fog moved in at the top of the mountain which was kind of neat. I thought it might be a flat light day, but visibility ended up being fine. Temps were also very comfortable in the upper 20's.
This was my first time skiing Stowe, so I was going all over the place just checking out the trails. They have a pretty good variety of terrain, and some of the trails are decently long. The first lift I tried when I got there was the Mountain Triple. Oh my god, that thing is slow. I was having flashbacks to the old Spear lift at Ragged where you felt like you could walk up faster than the lift. I don't know how they expect anyone to lap their terrain parks with the way it's set up. The Fourrunner Quad is pretty good, so I stuck to that for the main mountain. I took the Gondola a few times, but they trails over there weren't as interesting. It looked like for the most part the glades are more or less closed. Maybe if they get some natural snow next week things will open up more.
After skiing I didn't know where to go for apres ski. I had parked at Mansfield lodge, so just had a couple beers there, but there was no live band or anything. Most of the base buildings are on the other side of the road, so maybe that was the place to be. The transfer gondola to the other side stops running at 5, so I didn't want to get stuck over there with my car on the other side.
Some of the trails that haven't seen snow making were much more scratchy, like Cliff Trail, where the whole center of the trail was scratch. Actually I think I improved quite a bit at skiing on scraped off trails today out of necessity. Later on some thick fog moved in at the top of the mountain which was kind of neat. I thought it might be a flat light day, but visibility ended up being fine. Temps were also very comfortable in the upper 20's.
This was my first time skiing Stowe, so I was going all over the place just checking out the trails. They have a pretty good variety of terrain, and some of the trails are decently long. The first lift I tried when I got there was the Mountain Triple. Oh my god, that thing is slow. I was having flashbacks to the old Spear lift at Ragged where you felt like you could walk up faster than the lift. I don't know how they expect anyone to lap their terrain parks with the way it's set up. The Fourrunner Quad is pretty good, so I stuck to that for the main mountain. I took the Gondola a few times, but they trails over there weren't as interesting. It looked like for the most part the glades are more or less closed. Maybe if they get some natural snow next week things will open up more.
After skiing I didn't know where to go for apres ski. I had parked at Mansfield lodge, so just had a couple beers there, but there was no live band or anything. Most of the base buildings are on the other side of the road, so maybe that was the place to be. The transfer gondola to the other side stops running at 5, so I didn't want to get stuck over there with my car on the other side.
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