Mount Snow 1-3-09 Unexpected Powder Day

[drjeff]

Date: 1-3-09

Resort: Mount Snow

Conditions: Temps in the teens/low 20's, breezy, 4 to 5" of fresh blower quality powder this AM which was quickly tracked out by the MASSIVE crowd

Report: Weathermen over night was calling for maybe an inch or 2, woke up to 4 to 5" of real quality blower! Hit the hill about 8:10 for a couple of quality father/daughter powder runs before I dropped her off at snowcamp. Lots of fun watching her score fresh tracks down Lower Canyon in what at times was close to boot top deep snow(okay we're talking kids boot top deep snow here ) After I dropped off my daughter at snowcamp, I joined up with my wife and off we went to wait in line to get Mount Snow tracked out REAL quick over most of the mountain today due to a MASSIVE and generally speaking early arriving crowd (10 minute lines in the base area quads by 9:15AM ) As I was waiting in line and talking with one of the guys overseeing the line at the grand summit express, he said that they had 11,000 people yesterday and were expecting 15,000 today (very believable).

We managed to find some refuge from the crowds using Sunbrook(although that had some of the biggest lines for Sunbrook that I've ever seen), Ego Alley and Sundance once it spun. The nice thing we found today is that while the park crew loves their jumps, they IGNORE the sides of the trails/jumps leaving great untracked snow long after the rest of the mountain was tracked out!

Should be adding a few more trails maybe tommorrow, since Mount Snow fired up the guns on Fallen Timbers, Choke, and Lower Nitro within the past 24 hours as well as continued to hammer Mineshaft, Snowdance, Drop, Inferno and portions of Cooper's Junction and Beaver Hill.

Youth Pay their Age Day tommorrow, who knows what that will mean crowd wise

A couple of crowd pics taken around 11:30

 

[2knees]

how was beartrap looking?

 

[drjeff]

how was beartrap looking?

Still scraped to the bullet proof stuff with randomly spaced things that with ALOT of creativity could resemble a bump. Even the freestyle kids this AM were having a tough time trying to do something that resembled bump skiing over there. Mountain Ops really needs to shut down Beartrap for a few days and 1st blow skiers left of the lift towers for a day or 2 and then pull the guns back for another day or so on skiers right of the towers to get Beartrap going.

Good news atleast is that Yardsale was starting to bump today(okay it's a short line) and they started to blow the headwall on Nitro(hopefully they'll let that bump up in the Carinthia scheme of things). Rumor also has it that the rope drop on after a 36+ hour snowmaking run on Fallen Timbers will happen tommorrow. My guess would be that they'd leave Timbers "au natural" as both Chute and Freefall are bulletproof/wind scowered right now.

 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Nice report..serious crowds but it's good you found some quiet trails..

 

[hardline]

thinking about comming up tomorrow

 

[drjeff]

Just a little video of the soon to be 5 year old kid tearing up the fresh on Lower Canyon first thing this AM

 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Dr. Jeff..your kid is really freaking good..high five for stoke!!!!

 

[billski]

woah, that kid is fast - you must be pretty proud of her!


holy bleep - that is one freakin huge crowd. what was the longest wait? One look at that and I think I'd be headed for the hills! How crowded were the trails?

Nice to see they got 6", seems that the higher el's did OK today. But as you say, a large crowd can kill good conditions quickly.

 

[WoodCore]

Just a little video of the soon to be 5 year old kid tearing up the fresh on Lower Canyon first thing this AM

Awesome!!

 

[Glenn]

Holy crap! We'll be up tomorrow; bright and early thanks to this thread.

Having a little trouble posting via by blackberry; hopefully this goes through.

 

[Glenn]

My balckbeery is acting up bad.

We'll be up tomorrow...along with xx,000 other people. LOL!

 

[drjeff]

Dr. Jeff..your kid is really freaking good..high five for stoke!!!!

Thanks GSS, she LOVES her skiing! What really freaks me and my wife out, is that our younger one, who just turned 3 last week is much more fearless and has better balance than big sis does. I can see that he's going to cause me to loose alot of hair in the coming years, whereas my daughter has enough of a sense of fear in her that she keeps my wife and I from going too crazy while watching her!

 

[drjeff]

woah, that kid is fast - you must be pretty proud of her!


holy bleep - that is one freakin huge crowd. what was the longest wait? One look at that and I think I'd be headed for the hills! How crowded were the trails?

Nice to see they got 6", seems that the higher el's did OK today. But as you say, a large crowd can kill good conditions quickly.

Thanks Billski, she definately keeps me and my wife smiling when we're on the hill together.

Crowd wise, the longest we waited(on a few occasions) was about 15 minutes. Trail wise, most trails weren't too bad, it seemed like the lines at the base area had sooooo many people in them that they somewhat self policed the trail denisty, and IMHO having the parks all at Carinthia makes a HUGE difference this year.

 

[drjeff]

Awesome!!

Thanks woodcore!

 

[Newpylong]

Darn, what a great little skier!

And double darn, that's pretty much the biggest line I've ever seen on the Summit Quad. Thank god I bet for the Triple chairs being open... were people smart enough to ski over to Ego Alley?

 

[drjeff]

Darn, what a great little skier!

And double darn, that's pretty much the biggest line I've ever seen on the Summit Quad. Thank god I bet for the Triple chairs being open... were people smart enough to ski over to Ego Alley?

If you look in the first pic of the line for the Grand Summit Express, the people on the right in the foreground standing around were the end of the line for Ego Alley .

What made the base area lines even worse then(and this was an hour BEFORE the 1/2 day ticket crowd hit the hill) was that they had temporarily lost the summit local and didn't get what ever was wrong with it fixed until sometime after 12. Shortly before I took those pics, my wife and I were commenting while riding up Tumbleweed about how full the parks lots were. The 3rd level of the outer parking lots by Snow Vidda on the right side of the North Access Road was almost full, and the lower lots near Snow Lake was atleast 75% full

My wife ran down into Bennington this afternoon to pick up some stuff for our place, and on her way back heading up 100 around 4PM, the line for the light in Wilmington was as she put it "comfortably past" Northstar Bowl. Just wait until Next Weekend when the Dew Tour is here. If the weather is nice, it's going to be 1 heck of a traffic jam

 

[vcunning]

Great video Jeff.

Hopefully the Sunday crowds will be lighter. I know at Mount Snow daycare, they only had 4 kids coming into the 2-year old class (which has been running around 12 lately).

We skied until about noon yesterday and never once waited in line. We jumped on the Summit local first thing and stayed away from the main face express lifts. Unfortunately, my son wanted to spend time in the trees. We need a few more inches in those areas.

Glenn, if you get a chance to read this, take a ride on heavy metal and you can see the jumps they've built on Inferno in preparation of the Dew Tour. They are absolutely huge!

 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

There is alot of Dew tour buzz down here in PA..it's huge!!!

 

[arik]

Ego alley was closed saturday afternoon for slalom race training. Saturday afternoon at Mount snow REALLY sucked due to the ice, the crowds, and loud painful to ski through snowmaking on almost every trail. I brought a big group of friends up that day and I was hard pressed to convince them its usually decent.

 

[drjeff]

Ego alley was closed saturday afternoon for slalom race training. Saturday afternoon at Mount snow REALLY sucked due to the ice, the crowds, and loud painful to ski through snowmaking on almost every trail. I brought a big group of friends up that day and I was hard pressed to convince them its usually decent.

While daytime snowmaking is a nuissance sometimes(especially when its cold and windy and crowded!), if you had seen the snow conditions back on Thursday compared to Saturday, you'd be happy for those guns, even those loud old school air/water ones .

BTW Arik, you can tell your friends that the crowd they witnessed at Mount Snow yesterday was in the top 1 or 2% in terms of large crowds they get.