Mad River Glen 12/17/2010

[eatskisleep]

Date(s) Skied: December 17th, 2010

Resort or Ski Area: Mad River Glen

Conditions: Boilerplate, Ice, Hardpack, Grass, Rocks, Nothing to ski here

Trip Report:
I'll let the pictures do most of the talking.

We got there early, and the parking lot was full!

Looking over to MRG you could tell that tons of people had already started going up!

Lift lines were long... really really long... so we decided it would be much quicker to just skin up the mountain. First route was towards the top of the Sunny Side double.

Some other people were fed up with the liftlines too! Next time we'll just to go K-Mart instead! They have a better park anyways!

Finally we arrived at our destination, it was time to consult this trail map to find the easiest, flattest way down the mountain. I couldn't find the terrain park on the map though... hmm weird

That's odd... we beat the first person on the Sunnyside Double to the top of the lift! Guess we were skinning pretty fast!

As you can tell by Austin floating on the snow, there was no powder to be found here, just ice:

Finally I decided it was my turn to go down this ice-skating rink... Hopefully I would be able to stop in time, man do they need to get some snow before this stuff is skiable!

Me making some (G)S turns down that hardpack "snow"

Two more pics for the Sunnyside!

Time to hike back up again due to the long lift-lines... Crazy for them to be so long early season! Only thing crazier is the lines on Blue Hills on a race night!

While on the way up, we encountered these odd animals... never seen anything like them before, but they seemed to love the snow!!

 

[eatskisleep]

These furry animals were really playfull too

Continuing the hike up. Things on chute looked scraped off... pretty rough shape for the afternoon.

Self-portrait from the hike up:

Still gaining elevation:

A sure sign that I am almost there:

Arriving to a crowded summit area. Elevation 3,637 feet:

Sun trying to come out:

Well, it was starting to look like time to begin our descent again.

Austin decided to start things off by levitating over all the grass and ice:

Which resulted in this moments later:

It looks kinda steep at this angle right?!

It was then my turn to make a turn down Chute:

As you can tell, the trail was super crowded, as was the chairlift:

At which point we reached some rocks that needed to be navigated around... there was no other way down

Next, I decided to slowly pick my way down the mountain, Austin captured me doing so in these next few photos. The first of which shows me skiing on grass:

More thin cover:

I think that is me... I tipped over... of course after I stopped as usual :doh:

Next we decided to head over to Upper Glade since the trails weren't skiing too good at all. Here are is a picture I got of Austin floating:

 

[eatskisleep]

And a few shots he got of me:

Another "Artsy" black&white photo to finish things off for the skiing pictures for the day.

The store is open daily 10-4:

Crowded parking lot at the end of the day... No wonder we couldn't find any powder!

As you can tell from the pictures, there wasn't exactly all the much Ice, grass, hardpack, etc. Luckily, they got a few days prior. This rain condensed the couple feet of cold smoke snow into about a several inch thick hardpack base. On top of that, there was some good snow to be skied! Overall it was a great day, if you couldn't tell from our pictures

Reply with some comments and let me know what you think!

Pray for snow!

 

[Steve]

Hey! Great post! Thanks for sharing!

Great pics! I don't know how you dealt with the crowd.

 

[billski]

Sorry to hear you had such a lousy time. You're a good photographer anyways. Maybe you got a tan. I'm really surprised to see you guys smiling so much on such a rotten day.

Better luck next time.

 

[Warp Daddy]

Aw crap sorry the conditions were so marginal . I mean you guys are hardcore skiing on that crap , well anyways at least you worked up a sweat .

And the camera worked so at least the pics came out ok

Sure hope MRG gets some luv soon

 

[eatskisleep]

Haha thanks for the comments guys... Hopefully it provided an entertaining read for you all!

 

[powpig2002]

sucked being you

 

[bigbog]

You guys..."hardpack"..what a couple of lurkers..LOL. Nice stuff...crud over the good stuff = good to gear for = nice pics.

 

[Ice Queen]

Wow. That looked awesome. Great pics!

 

[oakapple]

As Yogi Berra famously said about MRG, "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded."

 

[snowmonster]

Terrible. I hope they made good on their "good snow guarantee" and gave you your money back,

 

[powbmps]

Damn that looks good!

 

[kingslug]

Hopefully there is some left when I get the chance to get up there.

 

[bvibert]

Sorry you struck out with the crappy conditions. At least you got some okay pictures out of it.

 

[severine]

Love the creative trip report! Gorgeous pics! Thanks for sharing it with us!

 

[rocojerry]

Good stuff!!!

I'm a bit confused by folks on the single chair, mountain ops testing out the lift?

-Jerry

 

[eatskisleep]

Ski Patrollers and a few of their friends... testing out the lift, doing some work around the mountain with a chainsaw too.

Thanks for all the comments guys. It was a great day for sure.