ckofer
New member
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2006
- Messages
- 2,635
- Points
- 0
- Location
- Strafford, New Hampshire
- Website
- www.skicheapordie.com
We (wife, 2 kids) drove up the night before and stayed outside Burlington. It was a chance to check out UVM for my son. There is basically no snow on the ground there.
In the morning, we managed to screw around long enough so we didn't on the mountain till about 10. We had watched the local news and lots of schools were cancelling classes though it was just cloudy in Burlington. We caught up with another friend who had been up there the day before too.
Now this was our first venture to Smuggs. It's a cool, old-school kind of mountain. Unfortunately, their cover is not so great and quite a bit is closed. On the second run we ventured down the trail with this sign:
This quickly lead us to a windblown, steep, icy trail. Fortunately, it had starting snowing hard and piles were forming on the edges. This isn't the ideal conditions for exploring a new place...
We ventured around until around one and concluded that the narrower trails were fairly reliable for soft cover. After a quick stop, we ventured over to the lower, green section by the condos lower on the mountain just to see what was there. Great way to waste time!!! After a trudge/skate which was long, we finally got to a slow double chair which takes you to the top of that area. We had no desire to ride that chair again so we took the trail back to the main area. This chair seemed to take us high enough so that we'd have a little pitch to get back. Yeah right.
The snow had turned to frozen rain and the wind was blowing toward us at what seemed like 40 mph. We assumed gaper tuck positions and barely got back with out poling and skating.
Anyhow, we took a few more runs on the main mountain and called it quits at 2:30 since we could see how bad the drive back to southeastern NH may be. It took us 3 hours to get to White River Junction in the sleet.
Now that I got this whining out of the way, I have to say that I'd like to ski it on nice day. It looks like it must have some outstanding terrain and has a nice vibe (Estimated Prophet was playing in the lodge when we got in).
I do have one more trail report to post for this day.....
In the morning, we managed to screw around long enough so we didn't on the mountain till about 10. We had watched the local news and lots of schools were cancelling classes though it was just cloudy in Burlington. We caught up with another friend who had been up there the day before too.
Now this was our first venture to Smuggs. It's a cool, old-school kind of mountain. Unfortunately, their cover is not so great and quite a bit is closed. On the second run we ventured down the trail with this sign:
This quickly lead us to a windblown, steep, icy trail. Fortunately, it had starting snowing hard and piles were forming on the edges. This isn't the ideal conditions for exploring a new place...
We ventured around until around one and concluded that the narrower trails were fairly reliable for soft cover. After a quick stop, we ventured over to the lower, green section by the condos lower on the mountain just to see what was there. Great way to waste time!!! After a trudge/skate which was long, we finally got to a slow double chair which takes you to the top of that area. We had no desire to ride that chair again so we took the trail back to the main area. This chair seemed to take us high enough so that we'd have a little pitch to get back. Yeah right.
The snow had turned to frozen rain and the wind was blowing toward us at what seemed like 40 mph. We assumed gaper tuck positions and barely got back with out poling and skating.
Anyhow, we took a few more runs on the main mountain and called it quits at 2:30 since we could see how bad the drive back to southeastern NH may be. It took us 3 hours to get to White River Junction in the sleet.
Now that I got this whining out of the way, I have to say that I'd like to ski it on nice day. It looks like it must have some outstanding terrain and has a nice vibe (Estimated Prophet was playing in the lodge when we got in).
I do have one more trail report to post for this day.....
