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Hunter Mountain - 1/15/2007 (MLK Day)

Greg

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Date(s) Skied: Monday, 1/15/2007 (MLK Day) - 10:30 am - 3:20 pm

Resort or Ski Area: Hunter Mountain, NY

Conditions: Slushy wet snow, hero bumps. Light to moderate rain all day; breezy. No crowds.

Trip Report: I made the decision last night to simply stay local and ski at Sundown in the morning. It didn't even occur to me to check the ski report this morning as I figured they'd definitely be open being MLK Day. The rain had moved on early this morning and I made it to the mountain around 8:15 am and was surprised to see no cars in the lot. I was even more surprised to see the entrance partially blocked with a portable gate. This was not looking good. I called the snowphone and sure enough, closed! :blink: I remembered I had my Hunter pass with me as that was today's initial plan so I pointed the Jeep west on Route 44 to 7 to 23 towards Hunter.

Roads were just wet although I noticed some icing on the trees in the Hudson valley. Made it to Hunter from Sundown in just under two hours. Not bad. I clicked into my skis around 10:30 and boarded the quad. The rain was steady all day. I've only skied in the rain one other time and after today, I will have no qualms at all about doing it again. The right gear and a good attitude made all the difference!

I recalled from kcyanks1's post in the Mogul Alert thread that there were some good bump lines to be found; I wasn't disappointed. The best bumps were on Wayout and Hellgate/Eisenhower. There was also some bumps at the Minya turn and some fun lines on Lower Crossover and also on Broadway. Huega and East Side skied similarly and didn't have much in the way of bumps. I stuck mostly to H/B/E and Wayout. Wayout in particular was a ton of fun with nice medium sized bumps. The bumps on the Hellgate turn were pretty deep but I stuck to the ones on Hellgate-proper after the turn. The upper part of Ike had great low angle lines and on the steeper section they were pretty gnarley - big and deep. Still forgiving though.

Did many runs on Wayout - great trail! Riding the Z lift with basically only me on the entire line over a pretty much totally brown West side in a moderate rain was somewhat surreal. A nice quiet time to think and rest. I took a short lunch break around 12:30 and kept bashing the bumps until around 3:20. I was shot after almost 4 1/2 hours of bump skiing. The runs really started to click after lunch. I waited only once for a chair and that was a three chair wait. The rest were ski-on. All in all - a great mogul day. In retrospect, I'm kinda glad Sundown was closed... ;)
 
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mitchmac

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I was at Hunter yesterday too and had a blast. Soft snow and no crowds. (I think only twice during the course of the day was the chair in front of us occupied!) Rained all day, but never hard enough to make my son or I quit. Brought some clothes for the ride home, so no real problems there. Only problems are with my thighs today!!
 

Greg

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One thing I noticed yesterday is that boarders are more hard core than skiers. I think there were 3 riders for every skier braving the rain. I didn't get that soaked. I was probably wetter from the inside out due to sweating all those bumps.
 
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