Bretton Woods - 11/26/21 Opening Day

[speden]

Resort or Ski Area

Bretton Woods

Date

Nov 26, 2021

Snow Conditions

1. Slush or Spring Snow
2. Cord
3. Chopped or Crud
4. Moguls

Bretton did a good job with their opening day. They had two trails top to bottom with surprisingly deep coverage. They must have had a decent snowmaking window since it looked to me like a two foot base or more in most places. They didn't get the trails to full width, but it was fine for day one.

Temps were a little warm early on, somewhere in the mid 30's, but were dropping during the day, and then it started snowing quite heavily. I think they should get some accumulation tonight and can probably start expanding the trail count with another snowmaking window tonight. When driving home it was all rain south of the notch, so the cold air was only on the north side.

The crowd wasn't too bad, but was enough that the softish snow started to mogul up a little bit in the steeper sections of the trails. Today I just wanted to pick up my season pass and start getting my legs back in shape. Not sure how many runs I did, but I called it a day as soon as my legs started to feel spent so that I wouldn't get an injury on day one.

Their covid restrictions aren't too bad this season. They won't let you store anything in the lodge. They have moved the bag cubbies outside. But you can boot up and eat indoors. They seem to have a lot less tables inside for more spacing. They suggest but don't require masks inside, and I'd say only about 15 to 20 % of the people indoors were bothering with masks, and a lot of them were the employees. I started wearing a mask inside at first, but I'm vaxxed and boosted, so after a while I stopped bothering too.

Overall a nice, enjoyable first day for my season.

A few pics:

 

[molecan]

Thanks for the report!

 

[speden]

According to their snow report, Bretton got six to eight inches of snow last night. Not enough to open more trails yet, but good things are happening! Let's fill in those glades please.

The upcoming weather looks like there will be lots of good snowmaking windows. They aren't always that aggressive about opening more terrain early season, but I'd still expect to see some decent trail expansion in the next few weeks.

 

[abc]

Nice. Thanks for the report.

 

[Abubob]

Is that a lake behind the gondola? or is it just ground fog?

 

[thetrailboss]

Nice pics and TR. How is that new gondola? And long live the Bethlehem Express!

 

[speden]

Nice pics and TR. How is that new gondola? And long live the Bethlehem Express!

The gondola is great. The cabins are spacious and comfortable. I was up there last Thursday and it was a drizzly day, and the gondola was a dry refuge between runs. There were hardly any people there that day, so they only put about half of the gondola cabins on the line, and it was still ski on all day. On a busy day the gondola attracts all the less serious skiers and leaves the other lifts with nice short lines.

I kind of wish they'd stop using the Bethlehem. What happens now mid-week is they run the Gondola and Bethlehem and shut down the Zephyr. That's really redundant in terms of terrain so I'd prefer that they run the Gondola and Zephyr. But they'd got that old lodge at the top of Bethlehem so I assume that's why they run it instead of the Zephyr.

 

[speden]

Is that a lake behind the gondola? or is it just ground fog?

I think it's just fog. I don't know of any big lake over there

 

[thetrailboss]

The gondola is great. The cabins are spacious and comfortable. I was up there last Thursday and it was a drizzly day, and the gondola was a dry refuge between runs. There were hardly any people there that day, so they only put about half of the gondola cabins on the line, and it was still ski on all day. On a busy day the gondola attracts all the less serious skiers and leaves the other lifts with nice short lines.

I kind of wish they'd stop using the Bethlehem. What happens now mid-week is they run the Gondola and Bethlehem and shut down the Zephyr. That's really redundant in terms of terrain so I'd prefer that they run the Gondola and Zephyr. But they'd got that old lodge at the top of Bethlehem so I assume that's why they run it instead of the Zephyr.

That does seem redundant. Zephyr gets the west side of the resort while Bethlehem dumps you in the middle of the ski area.