Bretton Woods - 3/10/11

[speden]

Had a bad feeling my chances of finding more powder this season were going to get rained on, so I headed for BW this morning for one last taste. They had about 4" of fresh from overnight and the place was deserted at opening. It was also very windy at the base, and when I bought my lift ticket, they warned there would be no refund if the lifts went on wind hold. But they were nice enough to charge me the discount rate, so it was only $53.

It snowed up until about noon, then there was an hour of no precip, then at about 1 it started to mist and change over to NCP. The wind died down and wasn't a problem. Temps started around 28 and slowly crept up all day to probably about 36 when I left around 2.

Some pics:

I spent most of the day over on the West Mountain. Here I am putting down first tracks on Jacob's ladder. The untracked was so smooth it was like silk. Made the long drive worth it.

Here's a shot of Starr King. The headwall part was windblown down to slightly crusty cord, while the flatter parts were about 4" of fresh, maybe more with the drifting. Had to watch for the transitions since the windblown was fast and then hitting the powder would throw off my balance for a second.

I enjoyed some early runs on Waumbek below. It wasn't windblown, so had lots of fresh. BW seems to attract a more novice crowd than I'm used to, and they were not quick to hit the black trails. So the powder lasted for quite a while on Waumbek since I was the only one hitting it. Kind of typical of BW, it only had one steep section, bracketed by a pretty flat entry and runout, but it was still fun. Another nice trail over on West is Little Tuckerman.

Here's a shot looking down from Upper Swoop with the top of the Bethelem Quad below. Most the the trails were skiing well in the morning, but things slowed down when the temps rose, and the flatter trails (of which they have an overabundance) were a chore to ski and best avoided. Looks like they will be getting some rain on Friday, so will probably do some damage.

 

[snowmonster]

Nice. Looks like you lucked out!

 

[Cannonball]

Good report. We were there today as well and mostly rode West Mtn also. Maybe we crossed paths? Me: Snowboard, camo(ish) colored jacket. Wife: Snowboard, pink helmet, pink flowers on the jacket.

Our day started casually in our living room reading the Cannon snow report. "100% open! Even Tramline and Kinsman....." I was surprised by how promising it sounded given the recent and current weather. We sauntered through our morning routine in no hurry for the 10 minute drive to Cannon. As we drove through the notch we could see that Zoomer wasn't spinning. As we pulled off the highway we could see that the chairs hadn't even been put on the Peabody cable. Damn, closed! They had updated their report just before 9:00. We were unhappy, but I have to admit it was a pretty obvious call given the south winds.

We made a quick U-turn and were off to Bretton Woods. With our passes good at both mountains it didn't matter much. In general, Bretton Woods is not that appealing. It's flat and mostly unchallenging. But the tree lines can be fun and snow preservation is exceptional. We headed straight for West Mtn and the tree lines we like there. In all my years riding I don't think I've ever experienced conditions exactly like this. They had picked up ~8" on Sun/Mon and it must have been pretty wet snow followed by the temp drop on Monday. It resulted in thick but soft crust on top of deepish soft snow. I've experienced lots of different crusts but none like this. It was highly variable. In some places it was unbreakable and you made scraping turns on top of it. In some places it was compressible so that you pushed the crust down into the soft and made for spongey turns, in some places it was breakable and made for a death trap, and in some places it wasn't there at all and boot-knee deep turns were had. On top of all that was ~4" of fresh. It made me pretty nervous in the trees since I couldn't really count on how each turn would react. Luckily the trees are so widely spaced at BW it was possible to take it easy.

We ended up finding more reliable soft pow on the sides of trails like Waumbek and Starr King. We ended the day with two runs over on Rosebrook. Those also had some very nice sections of deeper un-crusted freshies. All in all a far better day than we had expected.

 

[speden]

Nice. Looks like you lucked out!

Yeah, definitely felt lucky to ski some fresh today. I was just hoping to ski some PP, so having some accumulation from last night was a big plus.

 

[speden]

Good report. We were there today as well and mostly rode West Mtn also. Maybe we crossed paths? Me: Snowboard, camo(ish) colored jacket. Wife: Snowboard, pink helmet, pink flowers on the jacket.

We probably did, but I'm not too observant. I did notice the lifts weren't spinning at Cannon on the drive home, but didn't know they had closed.

Early in the morning it seemed like there were only a handful of people over there on West. I tried some of the trees next to Jacob's ladder and didn't like the crusty stuff under the new snow. It kept jolting my skis unpredictably, so I stayed on the trails.

 

[snoseek]

cannonball gets around!

 

[Cannonball]

cannonball gets around!

It's been a good year.