polski
New member
Bradford (Haverhill MA) offered $1 lift tickets tonight to mark its 60th anniversary and if that wasn't enough to turn the place into a zoo, the terrain park and triple chair serving it were closed because of a power outage (apparently a problem with Haverhill's grid). I took my kids -- no, strike that, they paid for MY ticket this time ;-) -- and they quickly went off with their many friends so I avoided many a ridiculously long lift line by skiing single.
The event definitely brought out numerous people who hadn't been on skis in many years, but with aggressive traffic control in the lift lines and lots of ski patrol, it actually was pretty under control all in all.
Conditions were surprisingly good -- they'd groomed the loose granular down to sugar and in plenty of places it was 3-4" deep or more and eminently carvable. Very few scraped-off spots and no visible ice/boilerplate. My boys actually thought the surface was better than MRG yesterday and in some respects I could not disagree.
I wish I had brought my video camera to capture the scene atop the red chair as two ski patrollers stood at the end of the ramp and kept order, helping people up as they fell, ordering laggards to move along and keep the ramp clear, etc. It was like a bowling alley up there. Very funny. Patrol earned its keep.
After about 8:30 a lot of the crowd went home and it got pretty close to ski-on-ski-off. I had a blast working on aggressive slalom turns in the sugar on the edges of several trails.
We skied until closing and all in all I figure my cost for the evening (well, my son's cost) was about a nickel a run.
Happy B-day Bradford.
The event definitely brought out numerous people who hadn't been on skis in many years, but with aggressive traffic control in the lift lines and lots of ski patrol, it actually was pretty under control all in all.
Conditions were surprisingly good -- they'd groomed the loose granular down to sugar and in plenty of places it was 3-4" deep or more and eminently carvable. Very few scraped-off spots and no visible ice/boilerplate. My boys actually thought the surface was better than MRG yesterday and in some respects I could not disagree.
I wish I had brought my video camera to capture the scene atop the red chair as two ski patrollers stood at the end of the ramp and kept order, helping people up as they fell, ordering laggards to move along and keep the ramp clear, etc. It was like a bowling alley up there. Very funny. Patrol earned its keep.
After about 8:30 a lot of the crowd went home and it got pretty close to ski-on-ski-off. I had a blast working on aggressive slalom turns in the sugar on the edges of several trails.
We skied until closing and all in all I figure my cost for the evening (well, my son's cost) was about a nickel a run.
Happy B-day Bradford.
