Mad River Glen 4/8/2008

[polski]

Date(s) Skied: Tues 4/8/08

Resort or Ski Area: MRG

Conditions: I cannot fathom how spring skiing can get any better than this. Sunny skies, temps to 45 at the summit of General Stark and ample corn everywhere. I think they may have groomed Duck and that was about it. Hero bumps on just about every trail and great cover in the woods.

Trip Report: This is Polski reporting live from the deck outside Gen. Stark's Pub @ MRG.

Gotta love spring. I'm fine with my 5 a.m. departures for powder days but it was sweet to be in absolutely no hurry to get here today -- let the surface soften and I figured my legs would be good for 4-5 hours or a full afternoon. Saw my kids off on the school bus, then drove 3 hrs to MRG. On the way up I figured out an initial plan -- I would take my first foray into Gazelle Glades on the first run and try to hit as many other black diamonds that I had not yet skied here. Maybe even Paradise ??? In any event, I counted my trip Sunday to overgroomed Cannon as my warmup for today so I planned to waste no time.

Cannon on Sunday = night, MRG today = day. Not a single run I did at Cannon prepared me for anything I skied today. I was quickly and deeply humbled.

Shortly before noon I did ride Sunnyside to Gazelle Glades for my first run and that was fine but I was having trouble in the bumps. My skis (Atomic Beta Ride 8.20, only 66 cm waist, I forget what the tip and tail are but it's a sharply shaped ski) kept grabbing the troughs. A trip up the single and a wrong turn off Fall Line and I found myself on Chute (same thing happened last time I was here, week before last) and I must say I did not handle it well. Quite the psyche-out. Then I hit Upper Canyon which has cured such blues in the past but this too did not go well. At one point as I caught my breath another guy skied up and we started talking. He saw what my problem was, said he had the same problem the day before (claimed to even have the same skis) and showed me the demos he was using, a pair of fat (~100 cm waist) K2s. Long story short, I wound up demoing a pair of Dynastar Legend Pro Riders in (124-97-116) in 179 length which may have been slightly short for me but boy were they ever fun. Not just the floatation but the shoveling action was just what the doctor ordered.

First test was Antelope top to bottom. I quickly fell in love with these skis.

No, I never did hit Paradise (though when I stopped in the Stark's Nest before my last run I chuckled at the sign stored inside: "Paradise Closed Today") but I now can say there is no other marked black here that I have not skied. Four times through Gazelle Glades, descents of Partridge/Slalom Hill and Panther, and my first adventure into the glades to skier's right of Cat Bowl on a run followed by Upper and Lower Glades. Trees top to nearly bottom. Last run of the day was another great one, Cat Bowl > bottom half of Upper Antelope > Lynx > Beaver. Glorious.

I stopped for lunch a little before 3. Great conversation with strangers. "How's it goin'?" "Great, and it's only getting better."

Life is good.

OK, it's starting to get chilly so I'm out of here.

 

[polski]

Really, I think I may have died and gone to heaven. That's how great this afternoon was.

Oh, one other thing -- on the ride up on 89 I passed Whaleback, which is closed, and I laughed out loud to see not just a lot of bumps but even a seeded bump run. Compare to the inexplicably groomed-out Cannon. For a moment of insanity I thought maybe I'd try to earn turns on it on my way home. (I actually asked myself: "What Would GSS Do?") Obviously that isn't happening but it was a fun thought. As was the notion of Whaleback putting Cannon to shame, except for the actually being open part.

 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Excellent report..the wide skis vs skinny skis are like night and day in spring snow. I'm glad you had a blast.

 

[polski]

Thanks. Home now and a couple more notes:

-- another advantage of spring/clear weather is I could take the small (2WD) car, which gets 50% better mileage than the 4WD. Spent the savings in the Hyde Away on the way home ... Taco Tuesday!

-- ditched the shell after the second run so the attire for the rest of the afternoon was basketball shorts under ski pants and long-sleeved first-layer undershirt under a light fleece vest. Ahhh springtime.

-- talked to my boys on the cell on the drive home. Each of them asked: "Did you ski Paradise?" "No, not yet ..."

 

[polski]

correction, courtesy of my 10-year-old:

No, I never did hit Paradise (though when I stopped in the Stark's Nest before my last run I chuckled at the sign stored inside: "Paradise Closed Today") but I now can say there is no other marked black here that I have not skied.

Haven't done Liftline either. Now that I'm getting more comfortable in glades, hucking cliffs is my Final Frontier ...

Meanwhile, as I read up on the Pro Riders I see bumps are not considered one of their strengths, although for me the improvement over my own skis still was dramatic. I've also been eyeing the Dynastar Mythic Rider and think these probably would be a slightly better match for the kind of skiing I do. I'll try to demo the Mythic Riders next time I'm up; curious if anyone else has skied the Mythic and the Pro and can say anything about how they compare.

 

[bvibert]

Nice TR! Sounds like a good time.

 

[Trekchick]

My biggest regret for the season is that I let an opportunity to go to MRG slip through my fingers the one free day I had in the east.

 

[jack97]

Oh, one other thing -- on the ride up on 89 I passed Whaleback, which is closed, and I laughed out loud to see not just a lot of bumps but even a seeded bump run. Compare to the inexplicably groomed-out Cannon. For a moment of insanity I thought maybe I'd try to earn turns on it on my way home. (I actually asked myself: "What Would GSS Do?") Obviously that isn't happening but it was a fun thought. As was the notion of Whaleback putting Cannon to shame, except for the actually being open part.

Funny you mentioned Whaleback, I skied there this season, more like hacking it up. That place reminds me of a smaller version of MRG. After the snow dumps they left some of the trails alone and had some nice powder stashes, lots of skier made bumps on those trails. Some of the trails that open was steep and challenging. BTW, the bump course facing 89 was skier made. Evan Dybvig who runs the place does not like seeded runs.

Good vibes in the lodge, tickets are cheap and not crowded (please keep that a secret), depending on how things work out, I might start making that place my regular haunt.

 

[polski]

BTW, the bump course facing 89 was skier made. Evan Dybvig who runs the place does not like seeded runs.

Wow, it looked absolutely perfectly symmetrical, at least as I drove by at 70 mph ... there was one smallish strip maybe 6-8 bumps wide and a couple hundred yards long, along with a whole lot of somewhat more irregular bumps elsewhere.

 

[jack97]

Wow, it looked absolutely perfectly symmetrical, at least as I drove by at 70 mph ... there was one smallish strip maybe 6-8 bumps wide and a couple hundred yards long, along with a whole lot of somewhat more irregular bumps elsewhere.

Evan was a former wc bumper and 2x Olympian, he sets the turns on that course and other skiers (members of his freestyle team) follow his turns. The upper section of that trail has more irregular bumps. Either way, Evan was rippin it, the guy is amazing.

Talking with him, it would not surprise me that he leaves a lot of the trails alone, I got the impression he likes it that way. But he might have to bow to the inevitable groomers and racing crowd.

 

[riverc0il]

Haven't done Liftline either. Now that I'm getting more comfortable in glades, hucking cliffs is my Final Frontier ...

Yea, mon. You don't even have to "huck" per se, but taking a stylized drop off the rocks on a steep trail with bumps and trees is the culmination of most important technical aspects of skiing. Terrain incorporation, love it.

Meanwhile, as I read up on the Pro Riders I see bumps are not considered one of their strengths, although for me the improvement over my own skis still was dramatic. I've also been eyeing the Dynastar Mythic Rider and think these probably would be a slightly better match for the kind of skiing I do. I'll try to demo the Mythic Riders next time I'm up; curious if anyone else has skied the Mythic and the Pro and can say anything about how they compare.

Yea, I was scratching my head when you thought the Pro Riders were a ripping ski for a spring bump day. Mythic Rider would certainly be a better choice but for east coast tree and bump skiing, I still find the Legend 8000 hard to beat when conditions are less than powdery (or powdery but not deep). I have not been on the Pro, just not the type of ski I would find useful.

 

[polski]

Yea, I was scratching my head when you thought the Pro Riders were a ripping ski for a spring bump day. Mythic Rider would certainly be a better choice but for east coast tree and bump skiing, I still find the Legend 8000 hard to beat when conditions are less than powdery (or powdery but not deep). I have not been on the Pro, just not the type of ski I would find useful.

The rental shop @ MRG had sold the Mythic Rider demos they had so this was pretty much what I was left with. If I can get up there again this spring I'll demo Mythic Riders from a shop in town that I know has them. Let there be no mistake, I am not a ripping bump skier at this point though I do enjoy trying ... and while the Pro may not have been the ideal choice for the day, they still were a tremendous improvement over my own pair for the conditions..

 

[polski]

p.s.

Yea, mon. You don't even have to "huck" per se, but taking a stylized drop off the rocks on a steep trail with bumps and trees is the culmination of most important technical aspects of skiing. Terrain incorporation, love it.

Generally speaking, I've got a LOT of work to do to get to "stylized" in tough terrain. I do feel increasingly comfortable with my crude survival skills though ;-) ... like in the glades to skier's right of Cat Bowl, where I will admit I had to sideslip through a couple particularly tight/steep spots (and it was clear I wasn't the first to do so).

Love the challenge, and at the end of the day being able to say I've done something I'd never done before -- or that something I have done before, this time I did appreciably better (in this case, Upper/Lower Glades and Lynx). It helps to have supremely forgivable spring conditions, of course.

 

[polski]

p.p.s. That shot awf has chosen as his avatar (see the 4/5 MRG TR) reminds me that by far I crashed more, and in sometimes fairly spectacular fashion, on Tuesday than any other day out (I'm in the high teens) this year. To my way of thinking, that actually meant I must've been doing something right ... this was easily my most challenging ski day all season.