Mount Snow 1-10-09

[drjeff]

Date: 1-10-09

Resort: Mount Snow

Conditions: Mix of sun in the AM trending towrads cloudy after lunchtime, temps in the teens/low 20's, LOTS of both still untracked and chopped up powder both windblown and soft with the occasional scraped/blown off areas

Report: I wasn't quite sure how today was going to be crowd wise with the Dew Tour here. Main Mountain/Northface/Sunbrook had regular, maybe slightly less than regulat weekend crowds. Carinthia, the times I was over there had LOTS of folks standing around the Dew Tour venues/village, but reasonable lines for the lifts.

Today was the type of day that I LOVE. I sked basically first chair until around 2 when my wife and I decided that quitting to save some leg for tommorrows powder day was a good idea. All day, with the exception of using them to get to/from things, I didn't ski a single run top to bottom on a snowmaking trail An all natural day, and it was a very good day! Thursday's storm was just about as perfect a storm as Mount Snow could have gotten. A couple of inches of wet snow, some freezing rain over it, and then colder air and 8 to 12" of blower ontop of the great base snow The naturals are in play, the trees are in play(mostly), life is good!

ROTD, and it's tough to pick just one, but I'm going with the great line of soft powder bumps on skiers left of Jaws uptop then over to skier's right down low. Great, great, great.

Folks who didn't venture onto the naturals missed out bigtime! I'll admit that visually some of them didn't look the best as there was some grass sticking through on many of the naturals, but that perfect base snow made bottoming out a non factor unless you actuall saw a rock. Big Dipper, blown in deep on skiers right. Cloud 9, skiers right again. One More Time, great. Overbrook, , South Bowl, Shoot Out, Hop, Uncles, Sundance, Upper Titanium, and on and on and on.

Even better, they turned the guns on on my favorite Northface run, Plummet

Tommorrow, powder day, powder day rules will be in effect!

 

[Newpylong]

Looks like the guns are on South Bowl and Beartrap too, which is great.

 

[drjeff]

Looks like the guns are on South Bowl and Beartrap too, which is great.

I'll be very curious to see if they're actually making snow on South Bowl tommorrow(guns were pulled today and set on parts of S.B. and Sundance) since they had an issue with the waterline right where S.B. becomes Sundance where the connector from the Ego Alley comes in. I didn't get close enough to see if the welding job had been done yet - too much good untracked on the otherside there today Once they do start making snow on those trails, it won't take alot of gun time to get things covered, since the base snow now is GREAT!

 

[Newpylong]

I'll be very curious to see if they're actually making snow on South Bowl tommorrow(guns were pulled today and set on parts of S.B. and Sundance) since they had an issue with the waterline right where S.B. becomes Sundance where the connector from the Ego Alley comes in. I didn't get close enough to see if the welding job had been done yet - too much good untracked on the otherside there today Once they do start making snow on those trails, it won't take alot of gun time to get things covered, since the base snow now is GREAT!

Interesting. On their main web site they have that one panoramic picture of the mountain from yesterday and it looks like there are plumes all around South Bowl.

 

[drjeff]

Interesting. On their main web site they have that one panoramic picture of the mountain from yesterday and it looks like there are plumes all around South Bowl.

That pic may very well have been pre-pipe issues. Today, there was no snowmaking going on on S.B. and mountain ops had pulled the guns back to the side of the trail that had been set yesterday.

Plummet on the other hand was getting hammered with the guns! HUGE whales top to bottom on Plummet. I'll try and post some pics later when if I get around to a TR from today. Legs are shot right now.