Dad and I headed down to big 'ol K this morning. Drove up to K1, cloud covering the peak. Got ticket. Went up K1. Took a token run on Juggernaut-Sassafras to get to Bear. Actually decided to ride the Skye Peak Express to take a warmup run, and have a look at the park (just for comparison... I don't ski much in the park).
Then rode up Bear Quad. Skied Outer Limits. Lame, from a mogul skiing perspective. It was groomed for the holiday weekend, and the "bumps" on skiers' right were atrocious... just big piles of "puff" with 25' sections of hardpack/chaulkdust/icy snowmaking between them. Back up Skye Peak quad and down Skyelark... more piles of puff with bad patches between.
Back up K1. Skied over to the Snowdon area. Up Snowdon Quad, over to Northstar, only to find it basically flat (Great Bear looked about the same). A patroller was skiing by, so I asked him if there were any real bumps. His answer? "Not really." Guess they groomed the whole mountain for the holiday weekend. He said the only real bumps he could think of were on Conclusion. The patroller was very cordial, and even apologized for the total lack of mogul terrain.
Took one run on conclusion. It was mediocre. Steep, natural bumps. But crappy, irregular bumps. Walls and gnarly ruts (<- not good gnarly, BAD gnarly). They have a nice looking bump course for KMS there, but the natural bumps were not very good. In fact, I think I inadvertently offended one of the KMS coaches. I was talking to my dad, saying how unfortunate it was that these were the "best" bumps on the mountain, and I didn't notice the coach standing at the top of the course until he gave me a dirty glance! At least I had a good run after that, so I didn't look like a total idiot. And it was actually a fun run, just not the greatest bumps.
So, after a thorough disappointment, and only a handful of runs, we left. Visibility was pretty rough, and conditions were just not that good. There was a couple inches of fresh on top of hard, overtilled snowmaking. I realized today how lucky I am to live in the MRV.
It was particularly disappointing for my dad, who was a supervisor at Bear Mountain in the late 80s. To see the deferred maintenance (i.e. Devil's Fiddle Quad line equipment), plus the total and complete lack of mogul terrain (Bear was his mogul haven in the day; even when he was a supervisor in the Upper Basin, he would sneak to Bear for his mogul fix)... quite sad, really.
I try not to be too nasty about other resorts, but the only thought that kept going through my head was, "this place is a joke!" I probably hit it at the wrong time, but that's irrelevant. If they go grooming every bloody trail on the mountain for each big holiday, I think that's unfortunate (not to mention detrimental to snow quality). And to see the remains of various old lifts (Devil's Fiddle, Needle's Eye, lower Northeast Passage) rotting away doesn't exactly lend the best appearance.
The mountain still has the "potential" to be an incredible ski area, and it still is incredible, from a scale perspective. It's a huge resort, and a neat combination of infrastructure. But it's certainly not any sort of "beast." It was fun to get out for a day and ski somewhere different, but I can't wait to get back on the mountain here tomorrow.
Took the camera, but nothing was really worth photographing today. Poor visibility + boring terrain = bad pictures.
If you like the concept of wide groomed runs all over the place, then you'd probably enjoy K. Not my thing.
Then rode up Bear Quad. Skied Outer Limits. Lame, from a mogul skiing perspective. It was groomed for the holiday weekend, and the "bumps" on skiers' right were atrocious... just big piles of "puff" with 25' sections of hardpack/chaulkdust/icy snowmaking between them. Back up Skye Peak quad and down Skyelark... more piles of puff with bad patches between.
Back up K1. Skied over to the Snowdon area. Up Snowdon Quad, over to Northstar, only to find it basically flat (Great Bear looked about the same). A patroller was skiing by, so I asked him if there were any real bumps. His answer? "Not really." Guess they groomed the whole mountain for the holiday weekend. He said the only real bumps he could think of were on Conclusion. The patroller was very cordial, and even apologized for the total lack of mogul terrain.
Took one run on conclusion. It was mediocre. Steep, natural bumps. But crappy, irregular bumps. Walls and gnarly ruts (<- not good gnarly, BAD gnarly). They have a nice looking bump course for KMS there, but the natural bumps were not very good. In fact, I think I inadvertently offended one of the KMS coaches. I was talking to my dad, saying how unfortunate it was that these were the "best" bumps on the mountain, and I didn't notice the coach standing at the top of the course until he gave me a dirty glance! At least I had a good run after that, so I didn't look like a total idiot. And it was actually a fun run, just not the greatest bumps.
So, after a thorough disappointment, and only a handful of runs, we left. Visibility was pretty rough, and conditions were just not that good. There was a couple inches of fresh on top of hard, overtilled snowmaking. I realized today how lucky I am to live in the MRV.
It was particularly disappointing for my dad, who was a supervisor at Bear Mountain in the late 80s. To see the deferred maintenance (i.e. Devil's Fiddle Quad line equipment), plus the total and complete lack of mogul terrain (Bear was his mogul haven in the day; even when he was a supervisor in the Upper Basin, he would sneak to Bear for his mogul fix)... quite sad, really.
I try not to be too nasty about other resorts, but the only thought that kept going through my head was, "this place is a joke!" I probably hit it at the wrong time, but that's irrelevant. If they go grooming every bloody trail on the mountain for each big holiday, I think that's unfortunate (not to mention detrimental to snow quality). And to see the remains of various old lifts (Devil's Fiddle, Needle's Eye, lower Northeast Passage) rotting away doesn't exactly lend the best appearance.
The mountain still has the "potential" to be an incredible ski area, and it still is incredible, from a scale perspective. It's a huge resort, and a neat combination of infrastructure. But it's certainly not any sort of "beast." It was fun to get out for a day and ski somewhere different, but I can't wait to get back on the mountain here tomorrow.
Took the camera, but nothing was really worth photographing today. Poor visibility + boring terrain = bad pictures.
If you like the concept of wide groomed runs all over the place, then you'd probably enjoy K. Not my thing.
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