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Tin Woodsman
12-19-2005, 10:02 AM
We only had one day to ski due to various conflicts on Sunday, so we tried to make it count. Got on the lifts by 8:30 and skied hard through until about 1PM when the early season muscles and late season football schedule intervened to bring our day to an end. Surfaces were powder and poacked powder everywhere. IIRC, we did a total of 9 runs, about half in varying states of powder, the other half somewhat groomed.

Started off with a cruise on Snowball to get the legs going. Surfaces were tricky here. It was a tough mix of the new stuff from Fridayand lousy man made (the garbage SB was producing on Saturday was WAY too wet, IMHO). Hadn't really been groomed, so you couldn't let them go. Tough on the legs as a first run, trying to watch out for the quick changes in snow surface etc...

Next run we treid out some trees in the 2300'-3000' elevation range. The snow from Friday had begun to set up already and was quite heavy. It was laying on top of perhaps 18" of pure sugar from previous storms. It was a tough combo b/c the skis wanted to stay down in the sugar. Got a few nice turns in here and there, but the woods at that elevation range still need another 12-18" of base to really open up. Subsequent forays off of Heaven's Gate proved to be more successful in that regard. Upper elevation woods, where properly maintained, were nicely filled in with few lurking gremlins. It should be noted that eyewitness reports from friends indicated that Hughies received significant damage from the October storm. Reportedly many downed trees blocking most of the lines in there.

Run of the day was a reserved Paradise. Aside from the top 50 yards, it was blown in to a depth in excess of 2 feet. Got in two fantastic runs in deep powder before it began to get discovered, but still good times and deep turns were found on run 3. Other highlights in cluded a very powdery/chowdery Twist. Lots of fun springing from bump to bump in all the soft snow.

Rumor has it that a few folks spend the day hiking over to Castlerock and doing laps there in epic conditions. We considered and rejected that idea, much to my disappointment. Can't have it all I suppose.

Treeskier
12-19-2005, 09:51 PM
Mad River Saturday was deep also....did not last but fun.