Date(s) Skied: Friday, January 7th, 2011
Resort or Ski Area: Pat's Peak
Conditions: Mid 20s, no wind, flurries, excellent man made snow surfaces
Trip Report:
I had scheduled this Friday off awhile back to get in a 3 day weekend of skiing. Tomorrow I'll be hitting Pico, Sunday, Okemo. I planned on just hitting Ragged on my way over to VT for the weekend. I wasn't too excited about that knowing there would be no bumps and no glades open. After seeing gmcunnis pictures from a recent trip of the bumps on Hurricane at Pat's Peak, I decided to put Pat's on my radar. Monday AZ race crew said they looked icy and solid. However, they didn't groom it throughout the week and made snow on it. So, liftopia ticket in hand, off I went today.
Got there late morning to a reasonably empty parking lot. I booted up and proceeded to ski the blacks in succession from skiers right to skiers left of the mountain. The groomers were excellent, though taking a 7 minute lift ride up to bomb down 600 feet of vert to a long runout in a minute would've have gotten old fast. That's why I think having a run like Hurricane at Pats is so great. Having just 1 600 vert run of good bumps is all a mogul skier needs to keep themselves entertained. The bumps on Hurricane were natural, solid, but very edgeable; no ice, just a perfect coating of an inch or so of man made. There wasn't enough man made to make them super soft, but not once did I hit any ice. Very few people had skied it nor would throughout the day. Well, except for me. After sampling all of the groomers and a cruise through the park, I lapped Hurricane strait until my ticket expired at 4.
Looking up pretty much the whole length of the bumps on Hurricane
A bit closer up
Always a lot of bickering on this forum as to what's better, seeded bumps or naturally formed. They are completely different and both completely awesome for different reasons. These being natural bumps lacked extended zippers to let it rip much longer than 5-6 bumps. There were a few sections of this in the middle of the trail. The variability of the natural bumps combined with the 'whale' areas is what made it super fun. Lots of line adjustments and then blind drop offs from the 'whale' areas. What I really dug the most about Hurricane was the super deep base in the center of the trail created a cool double fall line towards the lift. Ripping down the double fall line and then making a big 'mandatory GS turn'
back to the center is what I had the most fun doing today. In each run, you could do that about 5 times over the course of the pitch.
Picture of that fall line:
Around 1:00 the place started getting busy with elementary school kids. Apparently there are a lot of school programs in the area where the kids get a half day on Friday and spend their afternoon at the mountain learning to ski and board. Around 2:30 the high school students started showing up and as soon as the liftlines started to build, they fired up the other two summit lifts. Both the FIS race trail and Twister were taken offline for races around 3:00.
I was really loving the skiing and somewhat bummed that my ticket expired at 4, but the place turned into a total zoo around that time. So, I had a beer in the bar and split up to VT. I overheard they were expecting 33 buses for the evening.
Zoo of kids at dusk
Looking up at the hill from the bar deck at the end of the day
Just a killer afternoon of skiing. Any bump skier would've loved it. Who would think that after skiing Sunday River a couple of times, Kton a couple of times, Ragged and Gunstock, that little ole' Pat's Peak would provide me my best day of the season so far.
Resort or Ski Area: Pat's Peak
Conditions: Mid 20s, no wind, flurries, excellent man made snow surfaces
Trip Report:
I had scheduled this Friday off awhile back to get in a 3 day weekend of skiing. Tomorrow I'll be hitting Pico, Sunday, Okemo. I planned on just hitting Ragged on my way over to VT for the weekend. I wasn't too excited about that knowing there would be no bumps and no glades open. After seeing gmcunnis pictures from a recent trip of the bumps on Hurricane at Pat's Peak, I decided to put Pat's on my radar. Monday AZ race crew said they looked icy and solid. However, they didn't groom it throughout the week and made snow on it. So, liftopia ticket in hand, off I went today.
Got there late morning to a reasonably empty parking lot. I booted up and proceeded to ski the blacks in succession from skiers right to skiers left of the mountain. The groomers were excellent, though taking a 7 minute lift ride up to bomb down 600 feet of vert to a long runout in a minute would've have gotten old fast. That's why I think having a run like Hurricane at Pats is so great. Having just 1 600 vert run of good bumps is all a mogul skier needs to keep themselves entertained. The bumps on Hurricane were natural, solid, but very edgeable; no ice, just a perfect coating of an inch or so of man made. There wasn't enough man made to make them super soft, but not once did I hit any ice. Very few people had skied it nor would throughout the day. Well, except for me. After sampling all of the groomers and a cruise through the park, I lapped Hurricane strait until my ticket expired at 4.
Looking up pretty much the whole length of the bumps on Hurricane
A bit closer up
Always a lot of bickering on this forum as to what's better, seeded bumps or naturally formed. They are completely different and both completely awesome for different reasons. These being natural bumps lacked extended zippers to let it rip much longer than 5-6 bumps. There were a few sections of this in the middle of the trail. The variability of the natural bumps combined with the 'whale' areas is what made it super fun. Lots of line adjustments and then blind drop offs from the 'whale' areas. What I really dug the most about Hurricane was the super deep base in the center of the trail created a cool double fall line towards the lift. Ripping down the double fall line and then making a big 'mandatory GS turn'
back to the center is what I had the most fun doing today. In each run, you could do that about 5 times over the course of the pitch.Picture of that fall line:
Around 1:00 the place started getting busy with elementary school kids. Apparently there are a lot of school programs in the area where the kids get a half day on Friday and spend their afternoon at the mountain learning to ski and board. Around 2:30 the high school students started showing up and as soon as the liftlines started to build, they fired up the other two summit lifts. Both the FIS race trail and Twister were taken offline for races around 3:00.
I was really loving the skiing and somewhat bummed that my ticket expired at 4, but the place turned into a total zoo around that time. So, I had a beer in the bar and split up to VT. I overheard they were expecting 33 buses for the evening.
Zoo of kids at dusk
Looking up at the hill from the bar deck at the end of the day
Just a killer afternoon of skiing. Any bump skier would've loved it. Who would think that after skiing Sunday River a couple of times, Kton a couple of times, Ragged and Gunstock, that little ole' Pat's Peak would provide me my best day of the season so far.
