granite
Member
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2013
- Messages
- 213
- Points
- 16
Cannon Mountain at 5:30 am, the slopes must have really firmed up overnight. I did office work from 6 am to 9 am while listening to random songs from my iTunes on my PC. There was one particular song that caught my attention.
On the drive to cannon the mountains came into view with their snowcapped summits. The snow had a silver tint to them against a bright blue sky. I began to ski at 11 am. On Tuesday I skied only the upper mountain so today I headed to the front five beginning on Extension to Avalanche which was a mixed bag of everything. There were small bumps, big bumps, smooth snow, and groomed snow, firm in some places and soft in other places. Second run was on Zoomer Lift Line, loaded with big soft bumps. Next up was Paulie’s Folly, skier’s right where the sun is filtered by the trees top to bottom leaving a snow surface partially in the shade and partially in the sun. For me, it can be described as perfect. Small mounds of snow we're forming there, think of a baseball pitcher’s mound but twice as big. I skied around them over them or just plain right through them! It’s not the first time that I’ve done laps on this run in the spring time, there’s just something about the angle of the slope and the combination of partial sun and shade. I lapped it four times. On the traverse over to Paulie’s, I saw for the first time since early January that patrol had finally roped off echo woods glade. Not to worry. I continued the traverse across Avalanche to the top of Banshee Glade. The steep entrance, almost cornice like, to the glade is a blast and easy to drop into. The snow pack is deep and obstructions few and far apart all the way to the bottom. Even the flat at the bottom of the front five back to the Zoomer lift is smooth and fast, a result of the cold temps the night before. Before heading to the summit trails, I even did a Banshee, it was so smooth and silky that I lapped it twice. Skiing down to the Peabody I was surprised at how good the snow was, even at the bottom by the lift the snow remained very skiable for such a warm day, again a result of the cold night.
Arriving at the summit I hit skiers right on cannonball first, hit it real hard ripping the maize to pieces, carving it up with my skis. I must have skied that line ten times today. All the other summit trails were skiing great too, still plenty of snow just about everywhere. I did a quick jaunt into Upper Cannon Woods and found creamy, smooth snow there. The views into Vermont were fantastic, all of the Green Mountains had that silver tint to them, maybe a result of the cold temps last night too. I ended the day by doing two top to bottom runs, non- stop, Taft slalom onto Upper ravine to Short Fuse onto Lower Hardscrabble to Blue Ball and then Turnpike to the base, I could do it all day. The snow all the way to the bottom was fantastic, no slush anywhere on the entire mountain.
That particular song I listened to in the morning was a classic from the early seventies, Richie Blackmore's Man on the Silver Mountain. Today, I was the man on the silver mountain.
Come down with fire
And lift your spirit higher
I'm the man on the mountain
The man on the silver mountain
I'm the night, the light
The black and the white
The man on the silver mountain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9nfVrusSMg
1st photo banshee glade
2nd photo filtered sun light on Paulie's
3rd photo killington from taft slalom
4th photo banshee, smooth and silky
5th photo upper cannon trees
On the drive to cannon the mountains came into view with their snowcapped summits. The snow had a silver tint to them against a bright blue sky. I began to ski at 11 am. On Tuesday I skied only the upper mountain so today I headed to the front five beginning on Extension to Avalanche which was a mixed bag of everything. There were small bumps, big bumps, smooth snow, and groomed snow, firm in some places and soft in other places. Second run was on Zoomer Lift Line, loaded with big soft bumps. Next up was Paulie’s Folly, skier’s right where the sun is filtered by the trees top to bottom leaving a snow surface partially in the shade and partially in the sun. For me, it can be described as perfect. Small mounds of snow we're forming there, think of a baseball pitcher’s mound but twice as big. I skied around them over them or just plain right through them! It’s not the first time that I’ve done laps on this run in the spring time, there’s just something about the angle of the slope and the combination of partial sun and shade. I lapped it four times. On the traverse over to Paulie’s, I saw for the first time since early January that patrol had finally roped off echo woods glade. Not to worry. I continued the traverse across Avalanche to the top of Banshee Glade. The steep entrance, almost cornice like, to the glade is a blast and easy to drop into. The snow pack is deep and obstructions few and far apart all the way to the bottom. Even the flat at the bottom of the front five back to the Zoomer lift is smooth and fast, a result of the cold temps the night before. Before heading to the summit trails, I even did a Banshee, it was so smooth and silky that I lapped it twice. Skiing down to the Peabody I was surprised at how good the snow was, even at the bottom by the lift the snow remained very skiable for such a warm day, again a result of the cold night.
Arriving at the summit I hit skiers right on cannonball first, hit it real hard ripping the maize to pieces, carving it up with my skis. I must have skied that line ten times today. All the other summit trails were skiing great too, still plenty of snow just about everywhere. I did a quick jaunt into Upper Cannon Woods and found creamy, smooth snow there. The views into Vermont were fantastic, all of the Green Mountains had that silver tint to them, maybe a result of the cold temps last night too. I ended the day by doing two top to bottom runs, non- stop, Taft slalom onto Upper ravine to Short Fuse onto Lower Hardscrabble to Blue Ball and then Turnpike to the base, I could do it all day. The snow all the way to the bottom was fantastic, no slush anywhere on the entire mountain.
That particular song I listened to in the morning was a classic from the early seventies, Richie Blackmore's Man on the Silver Mountain. Today, I was the man on the silver mountain.
Come down with fire
And lift your spirit higher
I'm the man on the mountain
The man on the silver mountain
I'm the night, the light
The black and the white
The man on the silver mountain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9nfVrusSMg
1st photo banshee glade
2nd photo filtered sun light on Paulie's
3rd photo killington from taft slalom
4th photo banshee, smooth and silky
5th photo upper cannon trees
but I could get through this since the descriptions were very close to what I experienced just a day before (Wed ). The cover was amazing and corn dry. It did get mushy by later part of the afternoon, but that's a small detraction from the overall satisfaction with my last day.
