Gunstock 1/3 & 1/5

[deadheadskier]

Date(s) Skied: 1/3/12 & 1/5/12

Resort or Ski Area: Gunstock

Conditions: Hardpack and Frozen Granular

Trip Report:

Finally made it out to Gunstock this week. I switched to Gunstock from Ragged for my season pass this season and so far, I'm happy with the decision. It's an easy 1:05 for me from home vs 1:30-1:40 for Ragged. All and all, they are doing a pretty good job of make lemonade with the lemon weather they've received thus far this season. There's a decent amount of terrain open all things considered.

Best snow was on Pistol, Out of Sight and Tiger. Looks like they got Cannonball open for tonight and should have Redhat (don't forget to seed some bumps mountain ops), Middle Gunsmoke and the Park open for if not tomorrow, definitely the weekend. They made a huge amount of snow this week on Blundersmoke, so it looks like the park will open with some massive airs.

They were turning on the guns for Middle Recoil as I took off today, so looks like that trail is next in the terrain expansion. I hope after that, they focus their attention on some resurfacing. The two open routes from the summit, Upper Gunsmoke and Upper Trigger are both skied down to complete frozen base slab. Don't think grooming will get them back skiing well again outside of the 1st half hour of the day. Without a decent edge, they won't be much fun for folks this weekend. Thankfully, I had good edges today and still had a blast on the scratch with my new Fischer Motive 84s. Can't say enough good things about these skis for their hard snow carving performance.

 

[TheArchitect]

Thanks for the report. I'm trying to decide between Gunstock this weekend or Okemo. It'll be my son's second time on skis so I thought Gunstock might be the better choice but given what you said about the upper mountain I'm not sure anymore.

 

[deadheadskier]

well, Gunstock does not offer any beginner terrain from the summit and Okemo only offers Mountain Road, so I wouldn't necessarily base your decision on that information as it should be largely irrelevant for someone's 2nd day on skis.

 

[TheArchitect]

True, but the kid’s a natural and was already skiing some intermediates by the end of his first day. It’s been a while since I’ve been to Gunstock but I figured at least one of the blue trails from the summit would be an option.

 

[deadheadskier]

Gunsmoke would be the better choice from the summit for a new skier than Trigger and it had the better snow of the two trails.

 

[Angus]

With these snow conditions, I'm of the opinion you are better off skiing smaller areas with better snow making and less traffic like Pat's Peak (not sure about their traffic) and Crotched. My son skied Crotched last week over vacation and said the skiing was very good. We skied at Killington on Monday - which was right after a freeze up - and conditions were miserable - no fault of K's, just the weather.

 

[speden]

Seems like Gunstock got off to a slow start this year. They usually have pretty good snowmaking, but maybe they weren't very aggressive during the short snowmaking windows. Glad to hear they getting going now.

 

[drjeff]

Who knows DHS, maybe at some point this year you'll actually get to see that magnificent view that Gunstock has with a completely frozen and snow covered Winnipesaukee!

 

[TheArchitect]

With these snow conditions, I'm of the opinion you are better off skiing smaller areas with better snow making and less traffic like Pat's Peak (not sure about their traffic) and Crotched. My son skied Crotched last week over vacation and said the skiing was very good. We skied at Killington on Monday - which was right after a freeze up - and conditions were miserable - no fault of K's, just the weather.

We were at Pat's Peak last weekend and the conditions were better than I expected. Hadn't been there in literally 30 years.

 

[xwhaler]

2 for 1 at Pats Peak tomrrow with a RSNE card. I'd prob do that in your case if you have a card.

 

[TheArchitect]

With these snow conditions, I'm of the opinion you are better off skiing smaller areas with better snow making and less traffic like Pat's Peak (not sure about their traffic) and Crotched. My son skied Crotched last week over vacation and said the skiing was very good. We skied at Killington on Monday - which was right after a freeze up - and conditions were miserable - no fault of K's, just the weather.

Thanks for mentioning Crotched. It wasn't on my radar but I checked out the snow report and went there today. Great conditions for most of the day. Everything was groomed and got a lot of early runs in on the corduroy while my son had a 2 hour private lesson. A guy on the chair said he was at Gunstock 2 days ago and the conditions at Crotched were much better.