Shawshank tells me that the lifts at Stowe will start running at an incredible 7:00 A.M for Sunday. OK, I’ll be there bright and early. Recording a possible record arrival, I get myself to the quad before 7:30 and find it humming right along with people returning from runs. After a warm-up attempt to get some freshies on Liftline/National, I ran into Andor & co. right in line. The rest of the morning consisted of Goat, Queebs, traverse, learn, Chin Clip, Goat?, Starr, Starr or something like that. I found myself happily buried more than once. At lunch we met up with Shawshank, ate some food and went back at it. Shawshank reported a multitude of freshies on hayride earlier in the day, so awaaaaaaaaaay we go. In my head and body I’m thinkin’ “Gawd I’m tired, a couple more runs should do it for me, I mean 7 something A.M was a long time ago.” Whoops look what we found, more fresh woods. Any thoughts of leaving were gone as we plowed our way through virtually untracked freshies on “Oh Shit”, “Major Jones”, and others. By connecting everything right, we had found top to bottom fresh woods off the quad “Who could leave?” The stake near “Oh shit” read 3 feet, 6 inches of snow and I whole heartedly believe it. When it finally became too dangerous to ski anymore, we called it. Through the magic of powder, I had managed to reel in over 30,000 vertical without ever realizing it. Now that’s a drug.
OK, back to reality. There was a harsh wind blowing up top, 0 degrees air temp + wind = -38 degree w.c. The wind was also blowing some of the snow off the trails and exposing the ice underneath (more reason to stay off-trail). Lines were a bit long in the noonish hours, even the gondola had a line. I don’t know about the big streambed, but a lot of little ones are still visibly flowing, maybe from all the insulating snow. More poachers getting nabbed on lower lift line, Lookout wasn’t open (100%?) and the Tollhouse lift wasn’t running.
(A friend of mine ended up there on his first day of snowboarding, apparently crossing no ropes, and had to get a ride back. The guy who gave him the ride said “Yeah, that’s been happening a lot today” ?What’s up with that?)
But I’m certainly not complaining.
Next weekend I’m skiing in NH “yikes” and I’ll send in one of those “out of state” reports
J. “There’s skiing in other states too” Spin
