Wachusett - 12/23/09

[speden]

Date skied: 12/23 - Wednesday
Conditions: loose granular/powder, packed powder, 20 degrees, variable winds

Headed to Wachusett today thinking most of the schools would still be in session. I guess not as there were a lot of young kids and teenagers there today. Lift lines weren't too bad though, and it wasn't very crowded by Wawa standards.

Surfaces and coverage are pretty good. The trail grooming is a little haphazard in places, but nothing too bad beyond the occasional hole, rut, or frozen patch. A few trails aren't open yet, even though there seems to be plenty of snow for it. Seems like the grounds crew needs to catch up with things, but there was very little grounds activity going on today that I could see.

I was out for about four hours and had a good workout. My legs suddenly ran out of steam around 3pm, so called it a day.

From the parking lot, you can just make out the mogul field near the top of 10th.

Top of Indian Summer, snow was somewhat hard packed on this side of the hill.

The line at the Polar Express lift was like this most of the day, with the singles line being the longest.

Look Mom is covered with big whales and closed. Here at the bottom is the future half pipe I guess. Not sure what they are waiting for to build the park. There is plenty of snow and no further snowmaking was underway that I could see.

Ralph's is lightly groomed with the whales pretty much intact. If you like skiing off whales, this is your trail.

Bottom of Challenger had a little NASTAR course set up. I think it was open to anyone who wanted to give it a go.

Challenger, surface was pretty good.

Hitchcock, skied the same as Challenger.

Top of Confier. The snow was nice and soft all the way down Conifer.

I was looking for the new wind turbines at the top of the Polar Express, but couldn't see them. I guess they are somewhere down on the backside, so I couldn't see them from here.

 

[billski]

me too!

Hey Speden!
I was there all day. I saw what you saw. Nice pics. I was on the beginners slope "Indian Summer" with a couple of young-uns all day.

Conditions over there are perfect for lessons and learners. It is about 1" of mm packed pow over packed/churned frozen granular. No lines, though we did notice lines forming at the upper mt. lifts. Morning was nice and warm - sunny. When the clouds came it, it got brisk.

From what I could tell, most of the "kids" are collegians home for break. I have a college-age and a high schooler, and even I have a hard time telling the difference. Isn't age and separation marvelous?? :lol:

There were a few young families, mostly I suppose from independent schools who got out last week for break.

It's been a good 15 years since I was last there. That place is one huge money machine. I was surprised to see no prime for-fee parking today.

The cats came out at 4pm for their twice daily groom. It's the only place I know that gets so much skier traffic, combined with a night program that it needs a 2x grooming.

 

[speden]

Hey Bill, it was a pretty good day on the slopes for December. Sure am liking these consistently cold temps.

I hope you didn't have to ride that lift for Indian Summer too many times. I did a warm up run over there and that thing is brutally slow. It's a nice beginner trail though, but then Wawa has kind of a gap once people are ready to move up to something a little harder.

I think a lot of the younger folks probably were college age, but as you say it gets harder to tell all the time. My own kids still had school today, so I figured most other schools would also.

 

[wa-loaf]

Hey Bill, it was a pretty good day on the slopes for December. Sure am liking these consistently cold temps.

I hope you didn't have to ride that lift for Indian Summer too many times. I did a warm up run over there and that thing is brutally slow. It's a nice beginner trail though, but then Wawa has kind of a gap once people are ready to move up to something a little harder.

I think a lot of the younger folks probably were college age, but as you say it gets harder to tell all the time. My own kids still had school today, so I figured most other schools would also.

My kids had a 1/2 day, so I imagine a few other schools did too. My nephew who goes to a local private HS has been done since Friday.

 

[hrstrat57]

great report and thanks for the pics....

nicely done.....

 

[neil]

I was there tonight. Very similar conditions to what you described. Hitchcock wasn't that nice though - skied off, and had a ton of death cookies at the top.

Ralph's probably had the softest snow of any trail I went on. Shame it is so flat.

Conifer was the ROTN for me though. Good conditions, not too crowded, and good fun.

 

[billski]

I hope you didn't have to ride that lift for Indian Summer too many times. I did a warm up run over there and that thing is brutally slow. It's a nice beginner trail though, but then Wawa has kind of a gap once people are ready to move up to something a little harder.

I was on that lift alllllll dayyyyyy. It didn't bother me because it wasn't about me yesterday. I was there to help a couple of under-confident kids build up their hours on the slope. Especially with kids you have to check your own desires and focus on encouragement and support, so that someone else might embrace the lifelong love of the sport. I told someone, "Don't worry about me. Tday is all about the kids. I'll get my time"

You make an excellent point about that trail gap from rank beginner to solid, confident green skier. I always try to see the mountain from the vantage of the skill level skiers I am with. I stared at the maps for Wawa, Pats and Crotched trying to choose one which we had enough choices. Wawa still has one of those greens from the top that empties into a blue, at least for some distance. In the end, our skiers looked at the maps and trails themselves and decided not to venture further afield. Too bad, I had hoped to buld more confidence.

I just happend to have a Cranmore map open as I was penning this response. Cranmore has a progressive beginner area which has several choices for trails, all located in close prxomity. I suspect that this was by design back at the formation of the resort, having a strong, experienced ski instruction leader at it's school helm.

The bold and brazen beginners, those that have no fear and will try anything cause me no concern about trail layout. I know there are other areas that have sequestered beginner areas, (hey, even MRG does) that work well. After many years of working with learning/progressing beginners (including managing a club with 300 in a lessons program), it's clear that certain resorts are better than others for learn-to-ski, most especially for those of little confidence.

We started my oldest kids first at Bradford, then (after we moved) at Nashoba for after-school sessions. We then graduated to Ragged, Bretton Woods and then did a long run at Cannon for day trips. The older kids skied with confidence at Stowe.

The youngest one is the least confident of the group and has stayed on greens far longer than anyone. Everybody is different; not every girl wants to be Hannah Tetter. She has kind of deliberately stalled; it's that confidence thing. Rather than pushing her too far too fast, to recognize "you CAN do it" I'm letting her take the lead. It is working - she has developed an enthusiasm for the sport, but recognizes her limitations. Now I have to get her to take some chances. For her, Bolton Valley has been just fine. But after our experience with other skiers yesterday, I'm fairly certain that she is far more advanced than she gives herself credit; it's all so relative.

It seems to me that Wawa is a good place to learn the fundamentals, but when they are ready to make that next step, I'd take them somewhere else.