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View Full Version : Castlerock Opening 12/22/05



Lostone
12-27-2005, 01:12 PM
Date 12/22
Conditions: :D

Report According to me. :wink:

There had been talk on the forum that they had opened yesterday, but I’d heard it was to be today, so I hoped I was right, but knew either way, the first runs would be the best.

I got up way early. I was at the bus stop 2 minutes early. 5 minutes later I decided that it was already gone or not coming and headed for the Village chair.

Got there in time for it to open. It took a few minutes to open. It was only a few minutes, but in dog years…

About 7 sets of people were ahead of me, but I noticed that there were 3 pairs, then an instructor, then more pairs and me. I asked the instructor if I could ride with her and jumped up. As we got on the lift, I said that it was a little early to be trying to get around people, but that I’d heard a rumor. She said it was true. (Don’t you just love skier communication?) I asked if it had opened yesterday, and she said that it was today.

At the top, I was off, and over to Bravo. My legs were asking for a warm-up before heading to the rock. I assured them they would have a good long run. My legs pointed out that the run from the top of Bravo to the Castlerock lift was not really a full run, but I told them to enjoy it.

At the top of the entrance I found two others heading to the lift and 3 people in line. I got to the lift and rode up with the guy who was the single in line.

Now, I knew I was late getting to the lift, but not too late, because on the way up, there were only 2 sets of tracks. As we got further up, people started blasting down. I pulled my camera out to get some pix of people blasting down Liftline on untracked. Would have been great! The camera didn’t work. Got weird error symbols, but it kept flashing like it was trying to write to the card, and wouldn’t stop. I finally stopped it by removing the batteries. Tried again, same results. Called time and put the camera away.

Off the lift, decided that Middle Earth was my best chance of finding freshies. To my surprise, the beginning seemed to have been groomed. Nice to not have those weird bumps at the beginning, but starting to worry how far down they did it. A little further down, freshies started to appear on the edges. At first I didn’t think it was steep enough to get thru. Then it had a grade change and I jumped into it. At first it was a little crusty, but quickly turned into a soft, fluffy powder. It was only boot deep, but would have been enough to declare the day a success.

Then the trail turned right, and… it was waiting for me! If I wanted to order a consistency of snow for the rock, this is what I would likely have ordered. There were a few spots where the wind had packed it a little too tightly, but there were large stretches of untracked powder. Not the light stuff I was enjoying at the beginning, but stuff you could blast thru and let them fly, knowing it was soft enough to get them to grab whenever you wanted, yet dense enough to know that it would be around for a number of solid runs.

On the lift again, I started doing things with my camera. Tried powering down when it is running and removing the memory card with the camera on. All of a sudden, it started working. I was able to get a few pix on Liftline, but now it was later, and I’d lost most of the untracked shots. (Doesn’t take long! :roll: )

http://static.flickr.com/9/78056979_5838d392a1.jpg


Off the lift, Middle Earth was still calling my name. Hard to resist. I didn’t. Somehow, it was more tracked than last time, but still had large strips of untracked. I thought of leaving them for some poor unfortunate who hadn’t gotten any. Then I realized that if I did, some other powder hound would get to them before the poor unfortunate, and as long as the unfortunate wasn’t going to be there, I reverted to powder rule #1. Me first! :D

When I pulled it up and tried to desperately get some oxygen into my lungs, I looked out at the large amount of soft powder with the rest of the mountain in the background. Great pic! Then I heard myself saying to me that if I stopped to take out the camera with that much snow around, people were going to get to the soft snow before me, and I would throw myself into a snowbank and leave me there… or something. In any case, the camera stayed away and I continued to the bottom. This time, at the last Troll Road crossing, I switched over to Cotillion, which had even less traffic.

Next run I did Middle Earth again. This time I stopped to take a couple pix. Snow was still great, but now was at the point where there were no freshies around. The snow was still great, but I was pretty sure I was guaranteed good snow for longer than I could handle it, now. 8)


http://static.flickr.com/40/78056980_370032cdaa.jpg


Next, I switched to Castlerock Run. Again, the first part seemed groomed. The bumps were much smaller, but the snow beneath was very carveable. Just as I started to wonder, the snow started. There was no untracked, but the bumps were still in their formative stages and there was tons of soft snow around.

http://static.flickr.com/6/78079326_e7e6787370.jpg

At the end, my total was 4 runs Middle Earth, 1 run Castlerock Run to Cotillion, and 2 runs Castlerock Run to Troll Road. (Playing in the powder!)

For any who wish to see a few more of my pix from the day, I've made a set on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lostone/sets/1671755/). There is a link on the top right of the page to view as a slideshow. 8)


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kcyanks1
12-27-2005, 02:23 PM
Great report! Thanks for the details and pics. Wonder how well it's held up after the r**n.

smootharc
12-28-2005, 11:34 AM
thanks.

Strat
12-28-2005, 04:12 PM
Nice report Lostone. Bet it doesn't look like that anymore... but I'm glad you had a good day. 8)