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$teaux, March 13, 2014

billski

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Feb 22, 2005
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Dumped pretty heavy early evening and all night. I think the 18" is correct, even for the summit. Very windy in the AM. Everything spun during the day except the double.

Mansfield parking lot was crazy, entirely filled. Turns out UVM canceled classes for the day, and it showed.

Strong, but not ridiculous winds, but we stayed in the gondi all morning. A lot of the snow had blown from the trails, but as was said elsewhere, they groomed several dozen trails during the evening which preserved some of it. There was no deep pow to be found on the trails on the Gondi side. It was decent pp on the skiers L, but skiers right was often scratchy. A bit disappointing. We popped into the woods and surprise, surprise, it was heaven. 2-3' solid everywhere. It skied magnificently in every place we ducked into. On the gondi side, windslab could be found here and there.

Made out way to the quad to find out our first run would be our last - the quad shut down at 2pm, no explanation given. We had just come up on the chair and it seemed fine to me. The lift was running about half its normal speed. By this time of day, all the powderhounds were gone, we had Mani nearly to ourselves. Amazing to see Chin clip with nobody on it but us in the morning. After the shut down, we skied over on the triple for some time. Amazing runs with wall to wall pp - you could open it up and do what you wanted. When we got down at 430 from out final run, I'd say that 90% of the cars had cleared the lot. wimps. ;)

By 4pm the winds had subsided and the skies cleared making for a brilliant sunset. It was cold, in the single digits to low teens all day. Tomorrow and the weekend should be awesome for the woods. Most trails should be excellent thanks to Stowe's ability to churn the pp with the extant base.

I'll be back in another week to check out my mountain! :spin: Plan to hit Sugarbush, Jay and Stowe. Give a shout if you'll be there.
 

Euler

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Southern Vermont
Sounds kind of "meh" compared to what I saw at Killington/Pico. Why would the conidtions on the trails be so different? Less snow, different wind exposure?
 

billski

Active member
Joined
Feb 22, 2005
Messages
16,207
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38
Location
North Reading, Mass.
Website
ski.iabsi.com
Sounds kind of "meh" compared to what I saw at Killington/Pico. Why would the conidtions on the trails be so different? Less snow, different wind exposure?

It was more meh than I had hoped. No boot+ deep on the sanctioned trails, which was disappointing.

I would ask the others about wind conditions, but the bottom line is that their climate is somewhat different than the Mad River valley and K. The winds were howling all night and most of the day.

We still managed to scrape it together a fun day and it turned out to be my best - I took my age-appropriate buddy on some adventures that took him out of his comfort zone - Chutes, woods, non-obvious trails and vacant trails where you could just wail and flail. He really had a blast.

When I read the other reports I was regretful. I would like to hear reports from Jay and Smuggs.
 
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