Mount Snow 12-20-09

[drjeff]

Well, the storm didn't make it up here But with a bunch of running all over the mountain there was some decent soft stuff to be had! Cold out there today with the temps never making it out of the teens and the winds building to the point that they had to close the grand summit express shortly after 1 today

Great cruising today down Snowdance which was closing in on 48 hours straight of being hammered with the fan guns (and still running!) Also Inferno was 99% great as a cruising trail (1 fan gun was running a bit wet). Beartrap, while still not bumped was pretty fun to make some short slalom turns on some grippy, chalky manmade (pretty sure I saw Glenn and Mrs Glenn enjoying the chalky snow there about 9AM).

My run(s) of the day though was using Canyon quad to acces Lodge to Somerset road to Drop(rope drop today and groomed out) to Yard Sale (rope drop today with guns running and big, soft whales that you had to be a little carefull in at first, but were creamy goodness when you found the center of your skis!

Supposedly there was going to be a rope drop on the Nitro headwall today (rope still up around 11 when I last rode Nitro quad, but it looked ready under the guns) plan on checking that out when I get out Monday AM for a few hours

Winds are still building as of 6:30PM So I'm guessing the the fan guns that mountain ops just turned on on Cascade within the last 30 minutes will have a bunch of their product landing somewhere around South Bowl/Hop! :lol:

Getting pretty good at Mount Snow right now. With decent looking temps this week, things should be in really good shape for X-mas week, and if the cycle of some upslope flurries starts to drop some natural, you'll likely see a bunch of natural snow terrain opening up with maybe another 6" - there's about a foot of natural on the ground now with a "nice" 1" thick layer of crust on it that's just set up the trees and natural trails for some opening and being quite good with just a little help from mother nature.

I'll have a bunch of pics probably Monday night when I get back to CT, as the USB cable for my camera is sitting on my desk back in CT right now

 

[billski]

How does this compare to same time last year? I think we had more snow all around due to a bountiful December.

 

[Glenn]

LOL! I thought I saw you and Mrs. Jeff skiing down Beartrap when we rode the lift up! I should have yelled!

Great day yesterday. We got there around 8:30 and easily got front row at Sundance. We hit Thanks Walt a few times and there were some great rollers on that. Beartrap wash chalky as Jeff said...but it was cool to ski it without the bumps. Long John was consistant from top to bottom. Snowdance had a ton of Fangun Fresh on the skiers left. Ridge was great at the top; got a bit scratchy towards the bottom. Uncles was all natural...semi bumped and a very hard surface.

It was COLD yesterday! The wind really whipped up good. Around 1ish, they shut down the summit lift due to the wind. However, the mountain was empty yesterday. It was litterally ski on to the lift all day. That's pretty uncommon for a Sunday. I bet the snow down south kept everyone at home.

The fan guns were blasting yesterday. I'm thinking it's going to be a great Christmas Vacation week at Mt. Snow.

Bill...I can't remember exactly. I think last year, they were still cleaning up from the ice storm at this time.

 

[RootDKJ]

Pics? Anyone?

Glad you got out Glenn

 

[Glenn]

I have a few on our digital...I'll try and upload some tonight. Most are of my wife standing on Ridge. That's the trail she hurt her ACL on last year in December. Skied it like a champ yeterday.

 

[RootDKJ]

I have a few on our digital...I'll try and upload some tonight. Most are of my wife standing on Ridge. That's the trail she hurt her ACL on last year in December. Skied it like a champ yeterday.

That's great.

 

[MommaBear]

However, the mountain was empty yesterday. It was litterally ski on to the lift all day. That's pretty uncommon for a Sunday. I bet the snow down south kept everyone at home.

My husband and son were this this weekend but bailed Sunday morning. Between the cold and not finding what they like (no bumps for the hubby - other than Ledge, and no one to play with in the terrain park for my son) they decided not to ski/ride Sunday. In light of the lift issue, it was probably a good choice. Salt in the wound was finding 9 inches of fresh powder in the yard when they arrived home to CT.

Hoping to make it up there for Thursday this week. Passes blacked out for the rest of the break. :evil: Will probably use a few of the discounted tickets between Christmas and New Years. It still works out to be cheaper than buying the more expensive pass.

 

[Glenn]

My husband and son were this this weekend but bailed Sunday morning. Between the cold and not finding what they like (no bumps for the hubby - other than Ledge, and no one to play with in the terrain park for my son) they decided not to ski/ride Sunday. In light of the lift issue, it was probably a good choice. Salt in the wound was finding 9 inches of fresh powder in the yard when they arrived home to CT.

Hoping to make it up there for Thursday this week. Passes blacked out for the rest of the break. :evil: Will probably use a few of the discounted tickets between Christmas and New Years. It still works out to be cheaper than buying the more expensive pass.

Yep! Same thing here! Got back to CT a little before 9....snowblower was fired up at 9.

Yeah, we're blacked out as well. No biggie though. We'll spend some time up there this weekend after Christmas.

 

[jaywbigred]

Had a lot of fun this weekend, the snow conditions, though quite varied from trail to trail and even within trails, were good, overall, imo. Favorite run of the weekend was feature-less Inferno, though I didn't get to explore as much as I wanted to. Also, I will need to do a better job learning the names of trails now that I have a "home" mountain. I'm not sure of the names of most that we skied this weekend.

Our guests who said they were arriving at 11 pm rolled in after 1 am on Fri, and we did some beer drankin' til about 4. This put us on a weekend schedule that had us getting late starts both Sat. and Sun.

On Sat, we weren't on the hill til after noon. Sometime after 3, Summit Express stopped-started-stopped for approx 10 mins, and the gf was already cold at that point. She got cold enough that it brought tears. Needless to say, that was the end of our Saturday, and I have to admit that my body was pretty spent after 3+ hrs of skiing (no breaks) on the first ski day of the year.

Sunday I was plenty sore, we got out a little bit earlier, but the cold was biting and the light was tough. Took a break around 2, skied another couple runs, then had to head home to a holiday party. We had a ton of fun though, and from the looks of all the snowmaking going on, the mountain will be in good shape shortly.

In other news, we were ECSTATIC about the distance from our door to the lift. This was the first time we've done the walk with snow and the first time since the lifts have been running. We were able to walk out our door, across Handle Road and kind of skirt between the orange fence that lines the road, the woods, and the lift line ropes to wind up right at the base of the lift. There were footprints of people who had taken this route before, so all we had to do was follow 'em. Pop on the skis, get on the Grommet lift, and in a minute or two we were on the Nitro Express. We were worried we would have to walk all the way around the orange fence (walking south on Handle Road) and access the Grommet snow from the Glen Run condo parking lot, and that possibly the road-side ditch would be a big obstacle. But this was not the case, to our great joy.

We also were very happy with the contracting work we had done in our place, knocking down a closet wall and putting up a new wall to turn what was once a big bedroom with a huge closet into 2 good sized bedrooms with normal closets. Our guests reported complete comfort in one of the new rooms.

I wound up getting the skis tuned at Sports Odyssey, as the place across from 7-11 (World's Best? or something like that) was closing and couldn't have the skis ready by the morning. Sports Odyssey was open and could have them ready, so I ran to the condo to get the skis and came back. The guys there (Terry and Steve, I believe) were very friendly. Before paying for the tune, I perused a little bit, and like a magical ray of light my eyes spied a used pair of 169 cm K2 Public Enemies on sale for $329! I took a good look at the bases and edges, which looked immaculate, and grabbed them. Terry said he put them out "that afternoon." I paid for them, and Terry asked if I had my boots with me so they could quickly adjust the bindings. I said no, so he said something like "no worries, just bring them back in the morning, we'll take care of it real quick for ya." My understanding was that it would be free. I came back in the morning around 9, and Terry told me that they had already had 2 people come in and ask what happened to the Public Enemies. I brought the skis downstairs for the binding adjust, where they told me it would take an hour. So I kicked around town for about 40 minutes, came back and perused the clothing section, looking for a midlayer on direct orders from the gf that the blue EMS fleece half zip I've been wearing since 1999 would no longer be accepted under her regime. Found a nice North Face brown fleece half-zip on sale for $40, and grabbed one of the under-the-helmet beanie things for my buddy ($26), and went to check out. I was a little worried from things the shop guys were saying that Terry had forgotten that my binding adjust was going to be gratis, but I didn't know how to bring it up when he was ringing me up, esp. since he had been so nice the prior night and that morning. Sure enough, when I got in the car and looked at my receipt, he had charged me $25 for the adjustment. I was a little peeved...here I had spent $329 on skis, $80 on tunes, $66 on clothing in his store, pushing $500 in total merchandise, and he couldn't throw in a $25 binding adjust on the new skis I bought?

He had been so friendly that I didn't want to go back in and complain, but still, it stuck in my craw a little bit. What would you guys do in that situation? Is it customary when you buy used skis to also pay for the ensuing binding adjust?