bdfreetuna
New member
Used a couple vouchers for Mount Snow today. Might have chosen to go further north but most of my other passes are blacked out on MLK weekend, and I have prepaid my entire year of skiing as much as possible.
Last night was depressing. Driving through sheets of rain and freezing rain in western Mass. I thought the destruction would be total. Woke up to see Mount Snow saying they got 4" of snow from it (after some rain). Either way, my girlfriend has only been skiing about 10 times, she's not exactly a powder hound just yet. I figured any chance of reasonable conditions and we'd have a good day.
Drive up was kind of icy and sketch. Got to Mount Snow and realized one of us had forgotten our helmet and goggles (her). So I gave up the helmet and she got a new pair of goggles at the shop.
I'll get to the point though. Some of the trails were scratchy. One of them in the Sun brook area or whatever it's called was laughably hard packed. I just skied down it sideways for laughs. There were a few other areas like this. I haven't sharpened my edges in a while, nor am I master of carving ice sculptures, but I found even on the slickest trails I could get an edge with a little gusto.
Other trails were great. A few over on the Sunbrook area actually had some good powder stashes on the sides, it was a lot of fun blasting through those. Overall the mountain was very skiable. MUCH better than the first week of January,
So like I said Patricia is still working on intermediate status, but she handled the blues all day even the scratchy ones pretty well. I decided to take some runs on the North Face and left her at the top lodge to have a beer. I ended up heading over to the woods to the left of Olympic.
Lets just say that was a total game changer. Absolutely fantastic. I've never been in those woods before (actually I'm just starting to figure out where things are at Mount Snow) but WOW these woods are up there with some of the best. Wide open, a little steep and tight up top, with a little bit of a hairy entrance (well, I like that stuff)... then it really opens up. These woods cover some decent acreage. I didn't think Mount Snow had it in 'em. The POWDER was here and while it wasn't insanely deep, it was powder and the fact that it wasn't actually that deep on top of the base made it even easier to choose any line with total abandon. Deep enough to float, tracked out enough to slip and slide. Great woods.
So I basically slayed those woods, then decided to go back up to the top and get Patricia. Nothing could top that, and she had to ski it too. She's never really skied a black diamond before, and she has ducked into a few shorter and lower angle woods with me before but generally she avoids them. It took another beer and a bit of convincing but she followed me down whatever trail it is that gets there, cut across to Olympic (that cut across is definitely hairy for new skiers) and into the woods. Things were a bit tricky at first but we basically traversed as far as we could, I led the way on basically the least hairy way down. She had a couple tumbles but she was having a blast... in her words "It's like an enchanted forest!"
So consider me a happy guy. Here's a few cool pictures and a couple corny ones.
Last night was depressing. Driving through sheets of rain and freezing rain in western Mass. I thought the destruction would be total. Woke up to see Mount Snow saying they got 4" of snow from it (after some rain). Either way, my girlfriend has only been skiing about 10 times, she's not exactly a powder hound just yet. I figured any chance of reasonable conditions and we'd have a good day.
Drive up was kind of icy and sketch. Got to Mount Snow and realized one of us had forgotten our helmet and goggles (her). So I gave up the helmet and she got a new pair of goggles at the shop.
I'll get to the point though. Some of the trails were scratchy. One of them in the Sun brook area or whatever it's called was laughably hard packed. I just skied down it sideways for laughs. There were a few other areas like this. I haven't sharpened my edges in a while, nor am I master of carving ice sculptures, but I found even on the slickest trails I could get an edge with a little gusto.
Other trails were great. A few over on the Sunbrook area actually had some good powder stashes on the sides, it was a lot of fun blasting through those. Overall the mountain was very skiable. MUCH better than the first week of January,
So like I said Patricia is still working on intermediate status, but she handled the blues all day even the scratchy ones pretty well. I decided to take some runs on the North Face and left her at the top lodge to have a beer. I ended up heading over to the woods to the left of Olympic.
Lets just say that was a total game changer. Absolutely fantastic. I've never been in those woods before (actually I'm just starting to figure out where things are at Mount Snow) but WOW these woods are up there with some of the best. Wide open, a little steep and tight up top, with a little bit of a hairy entrance (well, I like that stuff)... then it really opens up. These woods cover some decent acreage. I didn't think Mount Snow had it in 'em. The POWDER was here and while it wasn't insanely deep, it was powder and the fact that it wasn't actually that deep on top of the base made it even easier to choose any line with total abandon. Deep enough to float, tracked out enough to slip and slide. Great woods.
So I basically slayed those woods, then decided to go back up to the top and get Patricia. Nothing could top that, and she had to ski it too. She's never really skied a black diamond before, and she has ducked into a few shorter and lower angle woods with me before but generally she avoids them. It took another beer and a bit of convincing but she followed me down whatever trail it is that gets there, cut across to Olympic (that cut across is definitely hairy for new skiers) and into the woods. Things were a bit tricky at first but we basically traversed as far as we could, I led the way on basically the least hairy way down. She had a couple tumbles but she was having a blast... in her words "It's like an enchanted forest!"
So consider me a happy guy. Here's a few cool pictures and a couple corny ones.
