billski
Active member
Mansfield only report here. In a word, "fast".
Groomers at Stowe had to cover a lot of acres. Hats off to them.
First-hand reports from at least a half-dozen skiers and boarders from 2/28 was that conditions Saturday were undesirable. While all lifts ran, a very limited number of trails were open from the top.
Sunday. Skied from 8 to 11. While everything open had been brutally groomed flat (as need be) conditions on the trails were variable. I spent most of the day doing wide, high speed, large-radius carving. For the most part, the trails held an edge, with a regular bout with scratch and and occasional short section of limited boilerplate. Things began to soften a little bit as the morning went on, but frankly, the dry snow in the shadows skied better (go figure). We started on the four runner, then migrated over to the gondi area, but didn't find gondi to our liking after a run on Chin Clip and a second run on Perry Merrill. Went back to the four runner. Skied Liftline, Nosedive, Hayride, North Slope and others. Upper mountain skied better than lower, where we found very uneven, rough hard surfaces from groomer sections, unforgiving, death cookies here and there on trail. Nobody was venturing on anything bumped. Frankly, anything ungroomed skied like ice. You know what they say, the prettiest ones are the most dangerous. I accidentally made my way onto an ungroomed section of liftline. While I survived, I would not wish that experience on any intermediate skier. We found uper Hayride to have been churned up much more deeply than others.
Certain of the trails looked like they may never reopen this season, especially sections of Upper lookout where clear ice exposed rock, ledge and earth.
Clearly people were staying away. We skied onto lifts and gondis from 8 until 1030, after which time, a caravan of tour buses showed up filling up the fourrunner queues with about 250 skiers in a matter of minutes.
We enjoyed ourselves, but it did get a little bit boring, flat, unmodulated trails. It was fairly warm. We found conditions variable, we could rip for miles without any company but had to be at full attention. We don't really care for the very hard corduroy; The firmness of the cord caused a lot of brain rattle and subsequent reduction of IQ; it skied much better after the skiers had ripped apart the cords. Terrain parks had very shiny jumps.
So, Sunday on Mani was for upper intermediate and advance skiers. No comment on Spruce since I wasn't over there. I assume it had TLC but have no info.
Groomers at Stowe had to cover a lot of acres. Hats off to them.
First-hand reports from at least a half-dozen skiers and boarders from 2/28 was that conditions Saturday were undesirable. While all lifts ran, a very limited number of trails were open from the top.
Sunday. Skied from 8 to 11. While everything open had been brutally groomed flat (as need be) conditions on the trails were variable. I spent most of the day doing wide, high speed, large-radius carving. For the most part, the trails held an edge, with a regular bout with scratch and and occasional short section of limited boilerplate. Things began to soften a little bit as the morning went on, but frankly, the dry snow in the shadows skied better (go figure). We started on the four runner, then migrated over to the gondi area, but didn't find gondi to our liking after a run on Chin Clip and a second run on Perry Merrill. Went back to the four runner. Skied Liftline, Nosedive, Hayride, North Slope and others. Upper mountain skied better than lower, where we found very uneven, rough hard surfaces from groomer sections, unforgiving, death cookies here and there on trail. Nobody was venturing on anything bumped. Frankly, anything ungroomed skied like ice. You know what they say, the prettiest ones are the most dangerous. I accidentally made my way onto an ungroomed section of liftline. While I survived, I would not wish that experience on any intermediate skier. We found uper Hayride to have been churned up much more deeply than others.
Certain of the trails looked like they may never reopen this season, especially sections of Upper lookout where clear ice exposed rock, ledge and earth.
Clearly people were staying away. We skied onto lifts and gondis from 8 until 1030, after which time, a caravan of tour buses showed up filling up the fourrunner queues with about 250 skiers in a matter of minutes.
We enjoyed ourselves, but it did get a little bit boring, flat, unmodulated trails. It was fairly warm. We found conditions variable, we could rip for miles without any company but had to be at full attention. We don't really care for the very hard corduroy; The firmness of the cord caused a lot of brain rattle and subsequent reduction of IQ; it skied much better after the skiers had ripped apart the cords. Terrain parks had very shiny jumps.
So, Sunday on Mani was for upper intermediate and advance skiers. No comment on Spruce since I wasn't over there. I assume it had TLC but have no info.
