polski
New member
Date(s) Skied: 1/25/2009
Resort or Ski Area: Ragged Mountain NH
Conditions: cold (single digits a.m.) but sunny and calm until a breeze picked up mainly at higher elevations late in the afternoon. Surface predominantly PP but ...
Trip Report: No I can't really label this a powder day given that Ragged got just 2" Friday night and no snow before that since MLK Day ... but considering the long stretches of boot-deep if low-angle untracked on the last run of the day, I would give it an asterisk. Really a fun day for my 8-year-old son and me.
I've skied Ragged once before, in the late 1980s in a poor snow year, so this was effectively a new mountain for me. I was impressed. Utterly uncrowded, nice facilities, decent prices (Liftopia helped, saving us nearly $25) and, most importantly to us, THEY DON'T GROOM EVERYTHING OUT. That said, they also do a nice job with the grooming that they do, and undoubtedly surface conditions were helped by decent snowfall MLK weekend, no thaws since, and a little refresh the other night. With the very cold temps, the morning corduroy was crunchy and eminently carvable -- as fun as cord gets.
Favorite trails including Birches (ungroomed black nearly top-to-bottom, several stretches with decent pitch, some double fall line, lots of the kinds of irregular moderate-sized bumps I like), Reggae Glades (widely spaced trees with some bumps, lotta fun) and Cardigan/Turnpike with plenty of ungroomed along the edges (some of it kinda stiff -- good for working on the skillz ...). Ungroomed trails -- and I counted at least four in this category, compared to zero at Sunapee the week before last -- had their thin spots but no open trail was so sketchy that we wouldn't do it again. And because of light crowds there were very few skied-off spots on the groomed stuff.
My son and I also did what was the toughest run for him yet in his five years on skis -- the black diamond glades Tree Hugger into Devil's Den. Only at one point did he get nervous and side-slip briefly down one short narrow chute. Proud daddy here. The available routes were pretty tracked out but we found some, well, mostly "binding-deep" in there, occasionally a little deeper than that.
Showboat, under the Spear Mountain triple, was closed as they were blowing snow on it top to bottom. Looks like pretty good steeps there. Generally Ragged has some interesting terrain in various places, with rock outcroppings & little cliff drops possible even on the sides of some of the groomed green circles.
Funny story: During our 11 a.m. lunch break we were studying the trail map and plotting runs. A guy sitting nearby overheard us talking about Easy Winder, a long green circle that runs from nearly the top to bottom to far skier's right. He warned us against that one, saying it was icy with exposed rock and even a couple downed trees -- a contrast to the well-groomed runs elsewhere, he said. So without thinking too much about it we mentally crossed that off our list ... until we were on what was to be our last run of the day, heading to Reggae Glades, where Blueberry Patch turned off and Easy Winder begins. There was a bamboo stake there with a sign saying "ADVANCED SKIERS ONLY / THIN COVER" and a minute or so later, as we were about to enter Reggae Glades, the dim little light bulb went off over my head: "Wait a minute, the runs we've had the most fun on today ALL had THIN COVER warnings." So I asked my son if he wanted to do one more run after Reggae Glades, to check out Easy Winder. He didn't hesitate.
Well, first of all I was going to say the top of Easy Winder is seriously mislabeled as a green circle -- but now that I look at the trail map again I see what happened. The top of Easy Winder actually was closed so the only route down at first was Big Rock, a black diamond. (In the trail conditions report Easy Winder is, confusingly, listed as a black diamond and groomed -- actually only the lower, flatter part had been groomed down the middle.) Big Rock did have plenty of sketch, but nothing we couldn't ski around. As we descended into Easy Winder proper there were wide swaths of ungroomed on either side, lightly tracked or even untracked that went to boot deep! At one point I made fresh boot-deep tracks that had to be more than 100 yards long -- this being a week after the latest substantial snow and second day after a 2" snowfall. My son and I were laughing to ourselves that we almost missed this based on a recommendation from someone who no doubt was sincere but just goes for a different kind of ski experience than we prefer.
Great day and we'll be back to Ragged.
(No pics; I do have some video but doubt I'll have time to process it for a while.)
Resort or Ski Area: Ragged Mountain NH
Conditions: cold (single digits a.m.) but sunny and calm until a breeze picked up mainly at higher elevations late in the afternoon. Surface predominantly PP but ...
Trip Report: No I can't really label this a powder day given that Ragged got just 2" Friday night and no snow before that since MLK Day ... but considering the long stretches of boot-deep if low-angle untracked on the last run of the day, I would give it an asterisk. Really a fun day for my 8-year-old son and me.
I've skied Ragged once before, in the late 1980s in a poor snow year, so this was effectively a new mountain for me. I was impressed. Utterly uncrowded, nice facilities, decent prices (Liftopia helped, saving us nearly $25) and, most importantly to us, THEY DON'T GROOM EVERYTHING OUT. That said, they also do a nice job with the grooming that they do, and undoubtedly surface conditions were helped by decent snowfall MLK weekend, no thaws since, and a little refresh the other night. With the very cold temps, the morning corduroy was crunchy and eminently carvable -- as fun as cord gets.
Favorite trails including Birches (ungroomed black nearly top-to-bottom, several stretches with decent pitch, some double fall line, lots of the kinds of irregular moderate-sized bumps I like), Reggae Glades (widely spaced trees with some bumps, lotta fun) and Cardigan/Turnpike with plenty of ungroomed along the edges (some of it kinda stiff -- good for working on the skillz ...). Ungroomed trails -- and I counted at least four in this category, compared to zero at Sunapee the week before last -- had their thin spots but no open trail was so sketchy that we wouldn't do it again. And because of light crowds there were very few skied-off spots on the groomed stuff.
My son and I also did what was the toughest run for him yet in his five years on skis -- the black diamond glades Tree Hugger into Devil's Den. Only at one point did he get nervous and side-slip briefly down one short narrow chute. Proud daddy here. The available routes were pretty tracked out but we found some, well, mostly "binding-deep" in there, occasionally a little deeper than that.
Showboat, under the Spear Mountain triple, was closed as they were blowing snow on it top to bottom. Looks like pretty good steeps there. Generally Ragged has some interesting terrain in various places, with rock outcroppings & little cliff drops possible even on the sides of some of the groomed green circles.
Funny story: During our 11 a.m. lunch break we were studying the trail map and plotting runs. A guy sitting nearby overheard us talking about Easy Winder, a long green circle that runs from nearly the top to bottom to far skier's right. He warned us against that one, saying it was icy with exposed rock and even a couple downed trees -- a contrast to the well-groomed runs elsewhere, he said. So without thinking too much about it we mentally crossed that off our list ... until we were on what was to be our last run of the day, heading to Reggae Glades, where Blueberry Patch turned off and Easy Winder begins. There was a bamboo stake there with a sign saying "ADVANCED SKIERS ONLY / THIN COVER" and a minute or so later, as we were about to enter Reggae Glades, the dim little light bulb went off over my head: "Wait a minute, the runs we've had the most fun on today ALL had THIN COVER warnings." So I asked my son if he wanted to do one more run after Reggae Glades, to check out Easy Winder. He didn't hesitate.
Well, first of all I was going to say the top of Easy Winder is seriously mislabeled as a green circle -- but now that I look at the trail map again I see what happened. The top of Easy Winder actually was closed so the only route down at first was Big Rock, a black diamond. (In the trail conditions report Easy Winder is, confusingly, listed as a black diamond and groomed -- actually only the lower, flatter part had been groomed down the middle.) Big Rock did have plenty of sketch, but nothing we couldn't ski around. As we descended into Easy Winder proper there were wide swaths of ungroomed on either side, lightly tracked or even untracked that went to boot deep! At one point I made fresh boot-deep tracks that had to be more than 100 yards long -- this being a week after the latest substantial snow and second day after a 2" snowfall. My son and I were laughing to ourselves that we almost missed this based on a recommendation from someone who no doubt was sincere but just goes for a different kind of ski experience than we prefer.
Great day and we'll be back to Ragged.
(No pics; I do have some video but doubt I'll have time to process it for a while.)
