Ragged 2/6/11

Conditions: icy, low 30's, gusty

Pretty disappointing day at Ragged. I hoped they had avoided the rain last night, but they didn't. Looks like they groomed early, and let the freezing rain during the night turn everything rock hard. I should have gone yesterday or somewhere else today.

Outside of the groomed parts, it was an icy crust over powder, so even worse than the groomed.

A few pics:

It was fairly busy on the green trails. Here's the village green. The traffic broke up some of the ice, but not much. The blues and blacks were deserted and remained icy cord most of the day.


In the base area the ski racks were full, but the lines at the lifts weren't bad.


Trail of the day for us was Easy Winder. They didn't have it open at first, but when it opened we were glad to get off the busy trails. They had just groomed a narrow strip which was icy and pretty treacherous in the top section. Was kind of an interesting trail in those conditions.


Here's Cardigan. I tried it after lunch and it was frozen like everything else. Definitely the worst conditions I've encountered all year, especially after skiing in 9" of fresh powder at Wachusett last week. What a contrast!

speden's report is mostly accurate, but I'd like to add that despite being icy, there was enough loose snow/ice pelletes/broken up cord so for the most part, it was quite skiable. One could dig edges in and actually make fairly enjoyable turns.

The temps in the afternoon went up a bit and it felt like the surface softend up a bit. On some of the natural cover trails, enough people plowed through the broiler plate crust and uncovered the softer snow that was beneath.
A few of the natural trails got opened up for the last few hours and they were a blast, well, at least a welcome diversion from ripping down somewhat busy groomers.

Birches, trail off the Exhibition had a fine set of moguls that just rocked. The same for Raggae Glades.
It was just pure fun and a good payback for the less than stellar first half of the day.

Speden, your second picture captured a portion of my back (gray parka with a fanny pack), and the rest of my family, also with our backs to you. My wife on my left in red parka and white helmet, my older boy next to her and my younger one ahead of us. What a coincidence

Ugh! Thanks for posting that up. Sounds like you would have to go pretty far north to avoid that nasty crust.

Hey Bumpsis, that's pretty funny you ended up in a random picture.

I thought it might soften up more quickly than it did, but the sun didn't seem to want to stay out. We left about 1:30 or so. Sounds like the bumps ended up being the best place on the mountain that day.

Much the same yesterday at Crotched. Not too bad but never really softened up top....

powbmps said:

Ugh! Thanks for posting that up. Sounds like you would have to go pretty far north to avoid that nasty crust.

Click to expand...

You would. The Loaf had about a foot of fresh Sunday.