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Sunday River 12/4/18

Zand

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Dec 30, 2003
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Probably shouldn't have even gone up there...I was kind of on tilt because other than 5 runs on an untracked Walking Boss last Tuesday, I totally missed out on last week's powder bonanza due to work and finally got a chance to get out 1 day too late. But I do have some bones to pick with Sunday River's snow reporting.

Knowing full well I was heading into a frozen over mess, the snow report listed 48 trails as open and 40 groomed this morning so figured it'd be worth skiing cruisers for the day. Yes I understand with the uppers and lowers and connectors that it's not really 48 trails but it wasn't even close.

For starters, White Cap had a handful of trails listed as open and a handful more with snowmaking listed as "scheduled" (and naturally they count those as open in the trail count...bullshit). All day I kept going over there because I thought it would be nice to ski under the guns and find some softer snow. Turns out that all day the only run you could take from White Cap was the run back to Barker and then Roadrunner back to White Cap. Nothing else opened all day over there. BTW Roadrunner is listed under Locke trails so White Cap should've had ZERO trails open on the report.

T2 and Monday Mourning were closed for racing the entire day even later on when they were done racing. There's 4 more "trails" listed as open that were never actually accessable. If they're closed for racing for the entire day, take them off your trail count. BTW, how can Bims Whim be open if the Locke Triple is closed? Is there a secret cutaround I don't know about?

Aurora was on wind hold the entire day and the Chondola was down after 1130. So take out another 20 trails, not that you can fault them for the wind. So pretty much you had the Punches, Cascades, Right Stuff, Lazy River, American Express, Risky Business, and a few South Ridge trails. Suppose you could turn that into 20 trails somehow but not 48.

What was open was obviously groomed hard pack. Whatever the sun hit was decent for a bit, but the sun doesn't hit much this time of year. Punch below the midstation was a mess...probably worst trail of the day. Really would've been nice to take a few runs on Tempest under the guns especially since it was listed as open, but oh well.

Guess I'm just mad at myself for wasting a day on the Ikon when I could've just gone to Wachusett which was probably better today. Seeing all the trails frozen in time on the natural trails and in the glades was just salt in the wounds. Just not a fan of bad snow reports. Even Killington posted a picture that said "snow is firmed up and skiing great!"...stop trying to sugar coat it. Although maybe they actually let people ski under the guns. I guess in March when Oz has knee deep snow and I'm out of SR days so I have to go to Stratton, I'll think about today lol.

The good news is they're blowing from the top of White Cap and all over Jordan so they'll have a nice selection this weekend. Natural base is huge right now so hopefully snow will come soon but not looking promising in the next week.
 

Edd

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Thanks for the report Zand. Makes me feel better about not heading north today.


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speden

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Nov 18, 2008
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Yeah, I had a feeling things were going to be in bad shape this week. Everything was saturated with the rain and warm temps and now the hard freeze...

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Bumpsis

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Mar 25, 2004
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Thanks for the report Zand, I'm sorry you got skunked. The only good aspect of this is a report such as this. It brings real value to being on this board - truthful reporting on what's out there (snow wise, I mean).
 

Zand

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Someone from SR must've read this because suddenly the trail count is down by 8 and...surprise...all the White Cap trails are listed as closed. Too bad all the mountains don't have the honesty of MRG until they get called out.
 

snoseek

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Jun 7, 2006
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Its been awhile since I was a regular there but I always said they can be downright mean to the midweek skier there sometimes. Its the place to be a few days after a freezup. Sounds like they were putting things back together.
 
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