Francis Piche Invitational at Gunstock 3/15/08

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Not going to participate in the races but I will be skiing there that day...any input on how the crowds will be? The last time I was at Gunstock I think the same races were going on, and there weren't too many people around outside of the race area.

 

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OK, I'll provide my own input...

Was at Gunstock yesterday and, aside from some more crowds in the lodges and not being able to ski one trail, it worked out just fine. Lift lines for the HSQ never exceeded 2-3 minutes, and with the 2" or so of snow from the night before the conditions were real nice. Even the woods had good cover. Only downside weather-wise was that there were low clouds at the summit and visibility was a bit poor.

Only operational complaint is that they still stop running the HSQ at 4PM even though there's plenty of daylight out...I know that night skiing is limited, but couldn't they try to run the HSQ a few hours later?

 

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I haven't heard an official closing date yet but they usually stop the Lifts at the end of March so they probably see no need to run them a little longer for a couple of weeks only... I stayed away because I thought it would be crowded to the max .. I think the weather probably kept the crowns down usually by 10 AM they are into the over flow parking lot.

You missed out on a fine day...summit visibility issues aside, the conditions were real nice and only got a bit too soft and sticky later in the afternoon.

 

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You're right I should have went .. I took them up on the pass offering for next season. I plan on them becoming my main night riding mountain. Did you hit Red Hat? My favorite trail during the night time as Recoil is during the day. I plan on going a few times for some night riding this week also..

Yep...only trails in the front area we didn't hit were Lower Cannonball and Ramrod.

I think we made it on part of Recoil...there was a trail that we went down that was called glades but was really a bunch of moguls with a few trees in the middle. Does that exit into Recoil?

Wish I could have made it to Gunstock more than once this season...plenty of interesting stuff for this intermediate skier.