Mount Snow 3/17/07

[loafer89]

Area skied: Mount Snow, Vermont

Date skied: March 17th, 2007 from 8:00am to 9:30am

Surface conditions: Powder with an icy crust, packed powder where groomed.

Weather: cloudy and 21F with freezing drizzle and fog (read miserable)

My son and I went to bed last night in Bennington with the promise of a fresh powder day the next morning, but this was not to be. We awoke at 6:00am to freezing rain mixed with snow:uzi: :smash: :angry: and an unplowed parking lot of our hotel loaded with 10"+ of cement like snow. After digging out my car and getting stuck in the parking lot we where on our way to Mount Snow, hoping for the rain to change to snow as we got there.

The drive across the Green Mountains on Route 9 was an adventure as a 9% uphill grade + freezing rain + 17F air temperatures = white knuckle driving. We arrived to an icy Mount Snow but did our best to enjoy what looked like soft snow.

Our first run was down Upper Canyon/Canyon/Standard which had been freshly groomed and had great soft snow and packed powder even with the freezing drizzle. Next up was Deer Run which was a disgusting mess of cut up and frozen powder.

We took a run down Name This Park which had semi-frozen snow. We wanted to ski an ungoomed Titanium, but after watching people ski on it and do multiple face plants after getting caught in the icy crust, we decided to pass.

We skied back to the Grand Summit Express at 9:05am and we where three rows from boarding the lift when it stopped for quite some time and was subseqently closed due to icing, or so we where told.

My son and I where cold and ice encased, so we made the decision to leave Mount Snow and drive the 70 miles to Pico in hopes of finding better snow and no freezing rain.

 

[Grassi21]

Bummer man. Sorry to hear about the conditions.

 

[Newpylong]

Yup, yesterday wasn't the best. Snow snakes galore....

 

[marcski]

I'm not sure where you guys were skiing. But it sounds like a completely different Mt. Snow than where I skied.

Got to the mtn at 8:15 to more than a foot of snow with a slight freezing mist. Whilie the first 2-3 hours were a bit foggy and you needed to scrape off the goggles, the freezing mist stopped by 11 and skiing was fantastic. There was a very very thin crust on top of some extremely light and deep pow. I got to the north face by 8:30 skied plummet, which had super soft snow. Challenger on the north face was perhaps the trail of the day...but other than plummet and jaws, I didn't ski any other trails. The woods were just stupendous. Trials, Ephiphany, Sap tapper and some some other secret woods stashes.

While, I did hear some people complaining that "there was too much snow", I couldn't stop grinning and hollering all day!!!

We had a pleasant surprise of some 5" of fluff on top of what there was friday night. Skiing today was perhaps even better. The woods were once again super and the trails, which were able to be groomed sat night, were even better.

 

[reefer]

Marcskis' report is quite accurate. I agree and witnessed what loafer 89 described, which made it even better for marcski and company. You gotta know what your doing and be prepared on days like Saturday.
Marcski do you go to Snow a lot?Based on your itinerary we had to pass one another at some point over the weekend. Was on the same trails. Have to hitch up some day.
Keith.

 

[loafer89]

We where plenty prepared for whatever the weather threw at us, which was just about everything, but we made the decision to leave Mount Snow in search of deeper and better quality snow at Pico and never looked back.

I could care less if I skied on crushed ice, which we did the day before, what really got us down was the constant freezing rain and fog.

 

[Newpylong]

Marcski, you sure you weren't a 100 miles north? Lol. Like most days, I was there too. It was more like, don't bother using goggles.... I wouldn't have called it extremely light pow with a thin crust at all though. I would call it an inch of sleet on top of a foot of cement... that wasn't light pow by any shape of the imagination! But, it was better than a day before (some trails completely bare), so who's to complain.

Anyway, I don't know what magic happened overnight, but the snow entirely dried out today and was entirely much better...

I'm not sure where you guys were skiing. But it sounds like a completely different Mt. Snow than where I skied.

Got to the mtn at 8:15 to more than a foot of snow with a slight freezing mist. Whilie the first 2-3 hours were a bit foggy and you needed to scrape off the goggles, the freezing mist stopped by 11 and skiing was fantastic. There was a very very thin crust on top of some extremely light and deep pow. I got to the north face by 8:30 skied plummet, which had super soft snow. Challenger on the north face was perhaps the trail of the day...but other than plummet and jaws, I didn't ski any other trails. The woods were just stupendous. Trials, Ephiphany, Sap tapper and some some other secret woods stashes.

While, I did hear some people complaining that "there was too much snow", I couldn't stop grinning and hollering all day!!!

We had a pleasant surprise of some 5" of fluff on top of what there was friday night. Skiing today was perhaps even better. The woods were once again super and the trails, which were able to be groomed sat night, were even better.

 

[marcski]

Marcski, you sure you weren't a 100 miles north? Lol. Like most days, I was there too. It was more like, don't bother using goggles.... I wouldn't have called it extremely light pow with a thin crust at all though. I would call it an inch of sleet on top of a foot of cement... that wasn't light pow by any shape of the imagination! But, it was better than a day before (some trails completely bare), so who's to complain.

Anyway, I don't know what magic happened overnight, but the snow entirely dried out today and was entirely much better...

IMHO, here's my take on teh conditions at mt. snow and people's perceptions thereof. I never came across 1" of crust. Never, the entire day. Granted, I spent most of the day in the woods. Like I said, earlier, there was a crust...but it made for a nice sound in the quiet of the woods. The powder, (which the mtn reported at 15") was very light and fluffy beneath the thin crust. Again, I have a built-in scraper on my gloves, and it was needed on the goggles until about 11 a.m.

I think, if people were having problems with the conditions, to put it simply...they just weren't keeping their tips pointed downhill. In other words they were overcompensating with all the snow by overturning....putting too much weight on the downhill ski and coming across the trail and thus encountering the lower layer of hardpack/ice. (BTW, I'm not sure if you all realize, just how much rain they had earlier this week?) Powder skiing requires one's weight to be more evenly balanced over both skis, with subtle movements of the feet to put the skis on edge. These days, with fatter, more shapely skis, the skis do most of the work. Once one has obtained this skill, .powder skiing is truly effortless...which it was on saturday at Mt. Snow.

Oh and reefer, I have skied mt. snow for many many years. I have not skied it much in the past 5 years, but usually get a few days in every year.

 

[reefer]

What marcski said...............................................Saturday was a great day to ski! Sunday better, but Saturday rocked, what's a little freezing rain.........was no layer of ice on the snow, just a firm coating of sleet - no problem!

 

[loafer89]

Well our take was that the freezing rain was annoying and that the snow on the blue and green trails(what one ski's with a 7 year old) was sub-par, but to each his own.

 

[marcski]

Well our take was that the freezing rain was annoying and that the snow on the blue and green trails(what one ski's with a 7 year old) was sub-par, but to each his own.

This perhaps is true. Took my 4 y.o. out late in the afternoon on sat. over at carinthia. Down, long john to whatever and back to carinthia base. She got down despite the bumped up fresh, ungroomed 15". Took about an hour...with multiple stops so she could eat some of the fresh. Daddy "eats the fresh" in a different way.

 

[drjeff]

About the only negative thing I experienced at MS on saturday was that i didn't have one of those goggle squeege things to keep the lenses clean in the AM. The Northface was beyond nice, anything lower angle and ungroomed could get a bit challenging. Just a great day, which got even better the rest of the weekend.

If last weekend turns out to be the last mid-winter conditions weekend this season at MS, boy did it go out with a bang!

 

[mlctvt]

I agree with DrJeff- The only bad thing this weekend was the freezing drizzle and fog Saturday morning. My wife wears glasses and she couldn’t keep her goggles and glasses clear of ice so she headed back to the condo and left me at the mountain. I’m glad I switched to contacts earlier this year. Sunday was GREAT! Somehow overnight the heavy snow turned into nice soft powder and the added inches Sat night and Sunday morning helped too. Since I was skiing as a single I heard lots of complaining even Sunday. They all wanted flat corduroy and they didn’t like any bumps at all. I added that everyone can look good on fresh corduroy and conditions like this helps you improve your skiing, but people still bitched. I thought Sunday was one of the best days of the year at Mount Snow.