Wachusett - 1/13/10

Rolled in to the parking lot right around 7:00. Had to park in the very back of lot 1 (Row 16, there isn't even a sign for Row 16). I looked for something closer with no luck. Though when I was making the long walk from the car, there were a few spots opening up, so I missed decent parking by 10 minutes. Oh well, the walk was nice.

Wachusett was it's usual groomed PP self last night... As Zand reported in his thread, everything was like it always is...

Looks like they re-did the bumps on 10th, the bottom 1/3 of them look to be spaced out a little far. I generally stay out of them anyway (need something lower angle to master first).... Smith was it's usual scratchy self on the steep part (except skiers right which was very nice.

I was on my non-Wa skis tonight (Watea 84s), which like to run a bit more than I'd like for a crowded not very big hill like Wachusett. When we were leaving Sunday River a couple of weeks ago, I asked my gf to 'grab my skis' from the locker. I didn't notice until we were unpacking the car at home that she had grabbed the Wateas and not the K2 Silencers that I was going to abuse at Wachusett, so I spent the night working on getting the Wateas to make consistent tight radius turns. Was getting it down pretty good when I got a bit over confident, crossed the tips and had a nice spill on Hitchcock. I can still feel it in my shoulder this morning (even after some Ibuprofen), so hopefully I didn't do anything too severe...

I got several comments about my skis, mostly people believing that no one skis anything that big anymore (they're 184s)... And one kid about 18 or 19 asking me why I broke out the powder skis... :beer:

All in all, a good night, and I'm glad I got out.

-w

The lower 1/3 of the bumps on 10th are junk. Unless they finally fixed them, they aren't bumps as much as they are frost heave type things that are hard to see and impossible to miss. The bump lines end rpighly when the pitch starts to flatten out before the road. I wish they'd fix them so they could end better as I'd be a bit more comfortable letting them run in the last few. Instead, I have to come in off the lines straight into survival skiing.

I heard that they put some smaller features up in Look Ma... did you see those at all? I'm hoping to get up there Sunday night one more time before I head back to Vermont.

Since It was my first time up of the year, I'm not sure what was set up in the past and what might be new...

There was one fairly large jump at the bottom of look ma (where the hip was most of last year), then just above that, two decent sized jumps... and I only remember a few big rails above that... not sure though, wasn't paying too much attention.

-w

I was there last night and ski'd the Terrain park as well. There was one new feature to Look Mom that I could see. They had replaced the box with another feature I'm not quite sure how to describe. It was like a quarter pipe about 6' up, then a flat high portion with a wooden bench object on it followed by the same quarter pipe down.

EDIT: I should add that the new feature was closed when I was skiing