Sb 12/13

[Madroch]

Nice first day. Up SB over to CR as HG was on wind hold. Middle Earth was nice, pretty bumpy for the limited snow they had, and several real bony spots that must have been wind blown or scraped off. Middle Earth was an interesting way to open the ski season, and it really tried to suck the life out our legs early. Headed back to SB, Birdland was okay too, decent bumps up top but real bony at spots, Murphy's glade at top was ROTD, couple of decent bump lines but real bony getting down to lift-- lower organgridner or jester were both pretty bare. Twist next, nice up top with a couple of bump lines, decent down bottom save some grass and leaves. Moonshine was similar to twist. Spring Fling more of the same, small bump lines-- but had a little more snow down to lift. Basically repeated that line up over and over. HG opened but it was real breezy and supposedly really thin up there. As it was, I have a lot of base repair work to do. Snow rolled in around 1:00 which added to the ambience. Skied 9:30 to 3:00 mainly lapping runs off of Super Bravo with only a couple of short breaks-- legs are shot. We didn't find a groomed run all day-- which was great but exhausting- it was work from top to bottom. Only had to wait for the chair twice-- first two runs-- after HG opened bravo was clear.

 

[WWF-VT]

Good weekend at Sugarbush. Seems like we hit the same terrain on Sunday. Here's my report :

The mountain was really busy Saturday and a lot quieter on Sunday. Because there is minimal base Sugarbush only groomed a few trails that they had already hit with the snow guns which left 45 trails ungroomed with variable conditions. Warm up was Downspout/Lower Jester which was the traditional New England groomed hard and fast snow. Heavens Gate chair was on wind hold so we hit Murphy’s Glade, Birdland, Twist and Moonshine, Lower Domino and Spring Fling. Though there were a few thin spots there was still a lot of soft snow. It’s much different and “quieter” skiing on all natural snow that has not been subject to the freeze/thaw cycle. Hit a few rocks along the way with minimal damage to my skis. After going hard on Saturday we called it a day about 1 PM on Sunday.

 

[polski]

It’s much different and “quieter” skiing on all natural snow that has not been subject to the freeze/thaw cycle.

I thought about this after writing my TR for Bretton Woods 11/29 - that was a slightly deeper and much denser snow so there was really no such thing as getting "scraped off" - even in higher-traffic spots it just scraped down to new fresh never-thawed/refrozen base. Yesterday at MRG was a drier snow and thinner base but yes, sweetly quiet ... except for the occasional sound of rock ...

A little surprised to hear of the Heavens Gate wind hold. In the a.m. at MRG there were very occasional stiff gusts (saw a patroller in the middle of a snow devil on Gazelle on our first ride up Sunnyside - that spot often gets those little vortices) but really not bad at all. More frequent and stronger gusts arrived with the snow after lunch but didn't affect lift ops. SB has in essence the same aspect as MRG so it must be something very local about the terrain -- or maybe that ~300' higher elevation at SB made a difference.