• Welcome to AlpineZone, the largest online community of skiers and snowboarders in the Northeast!

    You may have to REGISTER before you can post. Registering is FREE, gets rid of the majority of advertisements, and lets you participate in giveaways and other AlpineZone events!

Sunday River 1/22/20

Zand

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 30, 2003
Messages
4,109
Points
113
Location
Spencer, MA
*1/21/20

After 44 days of telling myself I've been working too much to ski, I don't feel good, the weather sucks, it's a holiday, it'll be crowded, etc etc etc and continuing that theme right through Monday, I decided yesterday to get off my ass and go. Naturally I decided to do that at 9:30 so after a 3 hour ride I pulled into a dead Barker lot at 12:45 and finally put an end to my streak of laziness and futility. Felt like starting from square one again and I definitely need to get back in shape before Jackson in 17 days.

Started off with Last Tango which was decent up top, but got increasingly thin and boney so I got out at the first chance I could. Obviously a lot of traffic since it snowed Sunday and not much snow to begin with so wasn't expecting anything great. Needs one good dump to be in great shape but unfortunately this weekend's storm is trending the wrong way.

Worked my way over to Jordan via the Chondola, some icy cruiser, Aurora Quad, Cyclone, and finally to Jordan. It was my first time skiing Sunday River 100% open on a non-holiday and holy hell does it feel like a broken layout with all those lifts closed. First run over there I went to go check out Poppy Fields which was a waste of a run because it had closed since I had last checked the snow report. That meant having to go all the way to Aurora and back on a traverse. Fun.

Next run was Wizard's Gulch and that was much better. The snow report listed it as closed but there was no rope and it skied like no one knew it was open. Nice and soft for the whole first half. Would've been better off staying in the liftline on the 2nd part as it got boney in that section but overall a fun run.

Headed over to Supernova next which was pretty bad. The entrance sucked, then got a little better further in. Should've known better than to cross into the 2nd half, but yikes. Most of it looked like a DR Field and Brush mower commercial and tons of rocks everywhere. I actually ended up traversing way out and skied some untouched "lines" in some thick trees. Probably shouldn't even call it skiing, more like carefully stepped around all kinds of trees. But better than skiing on rocks.

Skidded down Vortex which was literally unedgeable, then made my way back towards Barker. Headed for White Cap with a detour on Upper Cut which was a bit hard packed, but fun bump lines. First run on White Cap I wanted to ski Hardball which was listed as open, but none of the entrances off Shockwave were open and Shockwave was about as bad as it gets. It was ungroomed but the manmade base was just rock solid, the occasional bumps were all ice, and you probably could've heard the scraping all the way from Mt. Abram.

On the ride back up I noted Hardball was actually open from the White Heat entrance, so I headed down. White Heat got the gun treatment on Monday so it was much softer unless you got too close to the guns where it got pretty slick. But the middle of the trail was nice and I ended up going right by the Hardball entrance. Next run I decided to take Obsession and get the hell away from Ice Cap (other than White Heat which was nice).

It was getting late and the light gets flat in Maine by about 10 am, so at 3:15 it was impossible to see. Took one more run down Agony which is a great liftline (Sunday River's biggest strength is the amount of quality liftline trails it has). Slick in some spots with the manmade base, but a lot of loose soft snow on the left. Even a nice bump line about halfway down. Would've done a few repeats but could barely see by that point so it was off to the pub.

6 hours of driving for 12 runs probably wasn't my finest choice but I was sick of watching winter go by so just needed to get back out. Hopefully won't even go a week without getting back out the rest of the season, nevermind 6.
 

Edd

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 8, 2006
Messages
6,537
Points
113
Location
Newmarket, NH
1245? Not on my watch. It’s January, not April.


Sent from my iPad using AlpineZone
 

Zand

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 30, 2003
Messages
4,109
Points
113
Location
Spencer, MA
1245? Not on my watch. It’s January, not April.


Sent from my iPad using AlpineZone

I apparently slept through my alarm and knew it was way too light out to get there at a decent time when I woke up. But I'd had enough sitting around this weekend.

For an awesome powder day I have no problem finding the motivation to jump out of bed at 4 am and get up there, but for this current pattern? Nah.
 

Tonyr

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 6, 2019
Messages
782
Points
63
I'll give you credit, 6 hours of driving in one day is pretty aggressive! I'm glad you had a good time.

Tony

Sent from my SM-G960U1 using AlpineZone mobile app
 

bdfreetuna

New member
Joined
Jan 12, 2012
Messages
4,300
Points
0
Location
keep the faith
sometimes you gotta pull yourself out of a rut and start up the routine again. You pulled ahead of me on days early season but now you got some catching up to do ;) Speaking of feeling sick, I think I've had a cold more often than not since November. I think having a 2 year old doesn't help in that regard.. A couple really shitty ones too. Fighting one off as we speak. Cheers to the rest of the season.
 
Top