madskier6
Member
Date Skied: Tues. Feb. 12, 2008, 11:30 am - 7:00 pm
Resort or Ski Area: Berkshire East, Charlemont, Massachusetts
Conditions: Smooth groomers, tracked up powder, some scratchy ice & rocks poking through here and there. Very little wind, mostly cloudy & overcast, temps in the low to mid 20's
Trip Report: Spent a great day at BEast today. I was there for two reasons. To watch my 15-year old daughter race while I did gatekeeping duty at the Western Mass High School Individual Championships during the first part of the day. Then explore the mountain on my own after the racing was done. The mountain is in very good shape. All the natural trails are open (except The Beast) & they skied real well today. I even ran into some untracked powder in some places in the trees. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures. :sad:
I arrived with my wife & 9-year old son Kevin at about 11:00 & first got on skis at about 11:30. My gatekeeping duties were to start sometime between 12:00 and 12:30 so I really wanted to get a few runs in before discharging my duties. I started on a groomed Flying Cloud, which was in great shape. Then I hit Liftline. It was in very good shape with soft snow in many places. There were also some fairly large windblown piles of manky crud here and there that presented challenges when you skied into a pile. There was some icy spots but overall there was very good coverage with some good quality snow. Liftline is in great shape considering the thaw challenges from January.
I then hit Jug. Jug was very nice with some decent sized soft powder bumps & some untracked patches along the edges. As you first look down the trail you see a BEast trademark in the snow. Lots of pine tree boughs on the ski surface so you end up skiing on snow & pine tree branches. But the surface was soft & forgiving. You couldn't even tell the pine tree boughs were there. This was one of my favorite runs today.
I then had to gatekeep for 1.5 hours. After that was done, I was itching to get back to freeskiing. I met up with my son & his friend who had been skiing all morning together. We then proceeded to ski the best trails the mountain has to offer for the next 3 hours. We hit Minnie Dole, Grizzly, UMass, Competition, War Dance, Blizzard Island, Jug to Tomahawk and East Glades. Our final run before it got too dark was Liftline again. Once again, we really enjoyed ourselves on that run. Those 9-year old boys kept up with me all day long skiing some of the toughest trails on the mountain.
The run of the day for me was Jug to Tomahawk, which is my alltime favorite run(s) at Beast. Tomahawk is a nice tree run & today there were lots of stashes of untracked pow throughout that run. It was a little scratchy at the top of Tomhawk where some of the tree branches weren’t completely covered yet. As you got further down the run, however, the snow coverage & quality increased significantly.
They turned on the lights at about 4:00 & we found out the lifts weren’t closing until 7:00! I thought we’d only be able to ski until 4:30 so I now have 2.5 hours of bonus ski time. It began to snow at about 5:00. We hit the lit groomer trails until closing: Competition, Flying Cloud, Big Chief. They were in very good shape & we were getting fresh, light, fluffy snow to freshen up the surface. It was quite an experience with the snow falling under the lights & skiing on such a good surface.
As we left the mountain, the snow was coming down pretty hard & the roads were getting treacherous. The drive home was slow. It normally takes me one hour to get home (60 miles). Tonight it took an hour and 45 minutes. Hopefully, this snow won’t change over to rain up there in the mountains. Tomorrow should be a great day at BEast with all this new snow. It looks like they'll get a fairly significant amount overnight. I wish I could hit it again tomorrow but today was my day & it was a great one!
Resort or Ski Area: Berkshire East, Charlemont, Massachusetts
Conditions: Smooth groomers, tracked up powder, some scratchy ice & rocks poking through here and there. Very little wind, mostly cloudy & overcast, temps in the low to mid 20's
Trip Report: Spent a great day at BEast today. I was there for two reasons. To watch my 15-year old daughter race while I did gatekeeping duty at the Western Mass High School Individual Championships during the first part of the day. Then explore the mountain on my own after the racing was done. The mountain is in very good shape. All the natural trails are open (except The Beast) & they skied real well today. I even ran into some untracked powder in some places in the trees. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures. :sad:
I arrived with my wife & 9-year old son Kevin at about 11:00 & first got on skis at about 11:30. My gatekeeping duties were to start sometime between 12:00 and 12:30 so I really wanted to get a few runs in before discharging my duties. I started on a groomed Flying Cloud, which was in great shape. Then I hit Liftline. It was in very good shape with soft snow in many places. There were also some fairly large windblown piles of manky crud here and there that presented challenges when you skied into a pile. There was some icy spots but overall there was very good coverage with some good quality snow. Liftline is in great shape considering the thaw challenges from January.
I then hit Jug. Jug was very nice with some decent sized soft powder bumps & some untracked patches along the edges. As you first look down the trail you see a BEast trademark in the snow. Lots of pine tree boughs on the ski surface so you end up skiing on snow & pine tree branches. But the surface was soft & forgiving. You couldn't even tell the pine tree boughs were there. This was one of my favorite runs today.
I then had to gatekeep for 1.5 hours. After that was done, I was itching to get back to freeskiing. I met up with my son & his friend who had been skiing all morning together. We then proceeded to ski the best trails the mountain has to offer for the next 3 hours. We hit Minnie Dole, Grizzly, UMass, Competition, War Dance, Blizzard Island, Jug to Tomahawk and East Glades. Our final run before it got too dark was Liftline again. Once again, we really enjoyed ourselves on that run. Those 9-year old boys kept up with me all day long skiing some of the toughest trails on the mountain.
The run of the day for me was Jug to Tomahawk, which is my alltime favorite run(s) at Beast. Tomahawk is a nice tree run & today there were lots of stashes of untracked pow throughout that run. It was a little scratchy at the top of Tomhawk where some of the tree branches weren’t completely covered yet. As you got further down the run, however, the snow coverage & quality increased significantly.
They turned on the lights at about 4:00 & we found out the lifts weren’t closing until 7:00! I thought we’d only be able to ski until 4:30 so I now have 2.5 hours of bonus ski time. It began to snow at about 5:00. We hit the lit groomer trails until closing: Competition, Flying Cloud, Big Chief. They were in very good shape & we were getting fresh, light, fluffy snow to freshen up the surface. It was quite an experience with the snow falling under the lights & skiing on such a good surface.
As we left the mountain, the snow was coming down pretty hard & the roads were getting treacherous. The drive home was slow. It normally takes me one hour to get home (60 miles). Tonight it took an hour and 45 minutes. Hopefully, this snow won’t change over to rain up there in the mountains. Tomorrow should be a great day at BEast with all this new snow. It looks like they'll get a fairly significant amount overnight. I wish I could hit it again tomorrow but today was my day & it was a great one!
