Stratton - 3/18

[sankaty]

Date(s) Skied: 3/18

Resort or Ski Area: Stratton

Conditions: Spring corn

Trip Report:

Noticed yesterday the improving forecast for VT, so decided to go up to Stratton today. It was fantastic. It was overcast but basically dry until about 10AM, and then sunshine and temps in the 50s for the rest of the day.

Because temps were warm overnight, the snow was soft right out of the gate, but not too sticky. Basically it was perfect corn snow for most of the day. There is still great cover over the whole mountain.

The run of the day was lower Spruce, which had some nice bumps. Bear Down was OK, but it looks like it was groomed recently because it wasn't bumped much at all. It was starting to form some later in the day, so in a few days it should be great. I wish Stratton would let more trails bump up as there was no top to bottom bump route.

The only real bummer is that the woods are in bad shape. There is plenty of snow, but an ice storm recently has caused a huge amount of tree damage. There is debris and downed branches and trees everywhere. Also, the snow surface is covered with chunks of ice that has fallen off the trees. All this, combined with the heavy spring snow, made the woods very treacherous. It will be tough for them to recover this time of year, but I'm still hoping. I suppose the ice chunks will break up/melt. If the debris can be cleared, the woods would be great.

I'll upload some pics in a bit.

 

[Angus]

skied mt. snow Friday and top of mountain, north side of mountain and just about everyplace else was on wind hold...any problems at stratton. and woods too were a mess. took a few runs just to do something different.

 

[sankaty]

skied mt. snow Friday and top of mountain, north side of mountain and just about everyplace else was on wind hold...any problems at stratton. and woods too were a mess. took a few runs just to do something different.

Aside from the gondola, no wind holds a Stratton. Both the Ursa and Shooting Star lifts were running all day. I guess they are sheltered just enough, though there were a couple of gusts that made the chairs swing alarmingly.

Here's a photo of the woods. It was actually even worse than it looks, as the photo doesn't really capture the smaller debris and ice chunks that were everywhere.

View attachment 4430

 

[mlkrgr]

Aside from the gondola, no wind holds a Stratton. Both the Ursa and Shooting Star lifts were running all day. I guess they are sheltered just enough, though there were a couple of gusts that made the chairs swing alarmingly.

Here's a photo of the woods. It was actually even worse than it looks, as the photo doesn't really capture the smaller debris and ice chunks that were everywhere.

View attachment 4430

I can see how the gondola is more prone to wind at that place; I had quite some sways on the last quarter of the ride a few years ago while the Ursa chair was moving along fine. It was one of those slow midweek days shooting star was closed by default anyway.

I think Stratton really positioned itself as a solid intermediate mountain. Best run over there bumpwise is under the Snowbowl quad but there's a T bar line that's susposingly used for racing that's very fun to ski in fresh powder in that area a few trails over. I'd bet it'd be fun to ski it on a good spring day too.