My Carv summary this year put me in the top two percent for number of turns. I may not make pretty turns, but I sure do make a lot of them. 😜

With the shitty snow year, only Brighton and Snowbird are left standing, with next week being closing for both.

Brighton was luring people up with $40 lift tickets.  Since I still had IKON passes to use and the wife with only a new IKON, we decided to head up for some fun.

Arrived at the lot at 9 since they’re not opening until 10 with temps in the upper 50’s and only a few clouds.  Out in the sun it felt far warmer.

The wife is still getting used to the terrain out here, so we just lapped the park which is pretty much the entire Mount as they have features everywhere.

By 1pm, the place was packed with park skiers and it was getting spicy trying to avoid so many of them bonking off anything available.

Hung out in the parking lot for a while for a couple of beers.  Overall a fun day skiing in May, which is probably what I’d been doing back in PA.

I wrapped a meeting on Friday afternoon and got on the road a little before 2:30. Powered up to my hotel in Williston with only a brief stop for gas. I was tired after that so I just grabbed a pizza and went to sleep. 

Day 1. Sunshine and Singing the Blues

Woke up the next morning and was the first person in the lobby to grab a quick breakfast and drove the 35 minutes down the road to Stowe where they reported a dusting of new snow overnight. 

As I got close to the resort there were big flashing signs telling me that the notch was closed, but more importantly Paid Parking was in effect. Since it was just me I pulled into the parking lot at the Toll House area and booted up. There were some solid vibes in the lot and it was clear that the people that park here aren't the wallets who drive the rest of the way up the access road. A few uphillers getting their skins on too. 

Not that many people really hanging around and I got right on the Toll House double and headed up. This is a painfully slow 1.2 mile 15 minute ride on a fixed grip double but it drops you off at a point where you can get down to the main base area. 

I kept hanging a left and got down to the base area and hopped on the Gondola to go up to the top. The singles line was empty and I walked right on. First lap down Perry Merril on the suggestion of the people I was riding with and it was pretty fun, a nice cruiser to start the day. The sun was shining and it was a gorgeous day but still really cold. Snow was OK. I did 2 more gondola laps doing Gondolier and Switchback and then took Cliff Trail to Nosedive and went to the Four Runner Quad. It was a lot colder and windier at the top of Four runner, low teens to single digits. I did two laps here and then hung a little too far of a right and ended up at the Sunrise Six chair. Got caught in a loop of doing this chair 3 times and then took a quick break in the Mansfield Base lodge to take a work call. After that I headed back up Sunrise Six and went back over to the Four Runner. At this point I decided to take the only black diamond trail open that day, Hayride. It was in rough shape. Very scraped down to boilerplate and not great. Stuck to Blues the rest of the day. 

A little more over on the Gondola Side and it was time for lunch. One of the outcomes of my work call was that we could cancel the afternoon one, but I could only get that done from my laptop so instead of getting something to eat at the Mansfield Lodge I took the long ride down Lord to Jakes Ride and then Easy mile and got back to the car. There are essentially no services at the Toll House area so I sat in an empty conference center and had some food I had in the car and some water while I worked for 15 minutes. I was planning on grabbing the shuttle bus back to the base, but it came and went as I was packing the car back up so I just went for the ride on the Toll House again. Everything was getting really skied off and slick at this point so I took the Over Easy gondola to Spruce Peak where that snow had been in the sun all day and fared better. After an hour or so if lapping Spruce I headed back to Mansfield and at this point most trails were a minefield of frozen crud and pure ice. Took a long cruise down Toll Road, which is not nearly as flat as I remember, and back to the car. 

From talking to people up there it seems like they had a thaw last week and some rain before it snapped back to frigid temps so essentially anything overly steep and ungroomed was closed so it was a full day of nothing but Blues. 

Arrived at the lot at 9:15 with temps in the upper 40’s.  Hit the ticket office to get her pass printed and booted up.  The snow was super soft already and many out in shorts and short sleeves.

Had the wife lap the Link to get her ski legs back.  The snow was buttery cream cheese hero snow.  What few clouds there were upon arrival were now gone and temps climbed into the 50’s.

Did a few laps on the Moonbeam and her legs were shot, not having skied much this year and the heavy snow didn’t help.

Out in the parking lot the temps rose into the 60’s under bright sun.  Lots of tailgating and jocularly going on in the parking lot, there was even a graduation party going on.  By the time we got back to the house, it was already 80’ out.

Just another day in paradise…

Looks like ample freshies are in bound, and I will probably be getting buried in the perder. Thankfully I have my RTMs this week which are the perfect powder ski. It seems I hit the weather jackpot once again, since last year the conditions were also out of this world (just like outer limits, my favorite trail).

Interesting place...they have goats and a highland cow at the base.  Rode until 12 30...got a beer, chili, and 2 Moscow mules and back out for more runs.  Left shortly after 3 and getting beers and an early dinner at Fulton Chain brewery now.  Staying old forge NY tonight and planning to hit Mccauley mountain tomorrow.   Its been snowing most of the afternoon and not supposed to stop until tomorrow afternoon so I should have better conditions tomorrow 

Landed this morning and was on the snow <90 minutes later at Brighton. Zero percent chance of snow these next few days but they just got a pretty good storm so things are really nice. Plentiful sun, groomers were cruisers, and snow in the trees and up top in steeps were still really fun. I skied runs off of the main lifts, Great Western, Snake, Crest, and of course, Milly. Taking it easy for the most part so in a weird way I'm kind of glad it isn't storming because I would want to get spicy off trail. The lots were pretty packed but surprisingly didn't wait more than 2 minutes in a lift line. I did not take many pictures for some reason but will do better tomorrow. It has been a long while since I've been out here so it feels good to revisit some of these hills.

PennDOT did a real nice job the roads were totally clear all the way up including Hollow Rd. which is a back road. 

Got a parking spot across the pond right by the bridge. Not a big crowd today. Only Tomahawk the high speed quad lift was running. No wait until maybe noonish and then a little crowd showed up. Still got on in less than a couple minutes each time in the singles line. 

Lots of ungroomed powder chop. Was fun to bounce around on that. I don't know the names of the trails. There's two steeper trails near the bottom. One is under the high speed quad the other is under the fixed grip quad. Trail edges had pow and the woods had pow. The steeper parts had bumps forming up to bounce around and over since they were so soft. 

Lots of tracks going into the woods. I followed a few and it was pretty fun. I followed one and ended up in a creek though so I had to walk back up. 

Last time I was here was 2005. I think then they had an arcade in the lodge. Now there's a bar. I don't remember if the bar was always there or not. 

Real nice place. I'll probably go back with my Indy Pass sometime. 

With the recent snowstorm this week and all the snow the canyons got, decided to avoid those shit-shows and use up one of the Deer Valley tickets on the IKON and get the wife a little more snow time.

Arrived at the mountain about 7:20 and got front row parking as the wallets don’t get up early.  Temps were in the upper 20’s and bluebird skies.  Roaming up to the snow, there were lots of kids in bump pants and IDOne skis.  Looking across the beginner area, they indeed had a comp bump run set up.

Even with the recent storm, this side of the Wasatch is still hurting for snow as many of the lower runs were still closed with hardly any snow on them, but it didn’t stop a couple from getting married up there.

Left the wife to her devices on the greens and I wanted to make my way out to check out the new expansion,   Unfortunately even some of those runs were closed due to lack of snow.  I do get to see the new lodge being built.

Made my way back up and down the lifts to meet back up with the wife.  Headed back to watch some of the teens in the bump comp.  Pretty impressive kids coming down a WC level bump run and throwing flips and corks off the jumps.

Headed out to the lot for some beers and check out the cowgirls coming out of the St. Regis.

Got to gondola and pass wouldn’t scan in my jacket, had to take it out. I will have to play with that next time. Didn’t have to scan it the rest of the day from mid mountain. 
 

We did get snow over the weekend but surprisingly it was scraped off and icy in spots. The bumps looked treacherous especially for day one. One side was a bit better conditions then the other. Don’t really know trail names yet. No lines, hardly any people, bright sunshine and warm. The last run down to the base was very icy. I remember now that when we did our bump class last Dec, they had us download each day. The reason being that December sun doesn’t hit the bottom half of the mountain and it gets pretty icy, especially on tired legs. 
 

Aspen girls gonna Aspen. Note the pink twins. 

jadip

Fun little hill. Poked around for three hours and skied every run with repeats of my favorites. Nice place with a major old school feel which I always enjoy. No lift lines or anything even though the lot was pretty filled. I'm not sure it gets much more crowded than it was today. The place even had a little on-mountain eatery. Light snow fell the entire time but accumulated to nothing. Just purely good for the vibes. While I was there I heard talk of them closing tomorrow because of the winds and it looks like that is now official. 

If anybody wants to check out a small spot on the Indy pass and appreciates the old school feel, I highly recommend. Because of all the snow this year the cut glades and other random areas were all in play and had some good snow even with the warmer temps last week. 

Woke up to about 6" of snow and saw that Berkshire was reporting the same. By the time I got there around 8:15 about 2" more had fallen and probably another 2-4" of powdery chalk fell throughout the day. Another Indy Pass gem. Lots of really great runs here. Plenty of steeper trails, really great trees to dip into, and all around fun spot. By far the best ski day that I have had this season.

After lunch we had the great idea to make the drive to check out Bolton Valley only to find that Indy redemptions are limited to one a day. Implementing Plan C we slummed it with a few beers at the Alchemist.

A few more inches overnight and diminished winds gave the green light for Saturday morning, finding everything from a few inches on corduroy to knee deep snow all over the mountain.  Lines moved quickly except for the tram (which we skipped - again!)

It was hard to contain my powder frenzy but I did so enough to get my fill of trees and get MrSnoBunSki in and out of her comfort zone. My best day at Jay with no wind (’cept on the Flyer lol), deep blower, sun and snow showers.

Dumping again when we left for home Sunday morning, we made a stop  at Berkshire East which had gotten around 6" or so. More great snow but the lines were a little long so we only got 6-7 runs in before heading south  to watch the Birds annihilate the Chiefs -GO BIRDS!!!

My wife’s family is from the North Country of NH, practically on the border with Canada, but they had grown up skiing the Balsams, and when it closed, had always thought Sunday River was the next closest resort.  I hadn’t been to Canada since 18’, so I had been looking for a new resort nearby that I might be able to add to the list.  I did some research and found that Orford was only about an hour twenty five away (assuming a smooth border crossing) as opposed to an hour forty to SR, so we decided to give it a try.  We went Monday and had a great day, so we decided to go back Thursday.

Certain parts of the North Country, especially in northern Coos County, are basically in a snow globe most of the winter.  Every day we were there it snowed a couple of inches.  They had a few clippers in Canada, so along with consistent cold temps, they were having one of the best early seasons for natural snowfall in the last decade.

We had a smooth border crossing and made it to the mountain right around 10:30.  The main lot, which holds a couple hundred cars, was mostly full and they had received 6 or so inches of fresh snow overnight.  The snow would continue intermittently throughout the day with another inch accumulating while we were there.  We snagged our lift tickets for $80 CAD ($55 US) and headed out.

I don’t know if this is standard practice for them, but they had closed down the main lift and peak, Mont Orford, Monday-Wednesday for resurfacing.  This peak allows you to ride their entire 1,933 ft vertical in one run off a very nice chondola.  It had some long cruisers and some nice steeps as well.  They had a mix of natural ungroomed trails along with a healthy dose of groomed trails.  There were plenty of freshies throughout the day no matter what trail you were on.  The fresh snow was light, fluffy, and gave you that great floating sensation.  The other lifts had less steep cruisers.  There were lots of consistent pitch woods shots filled with freshies to be found everywhere.  The unmarked woods were better than most of the marked glades, which were mostly narrow and steep one or two route luge runs, but the coverage was deep on everything.  There were definitely some sudden unmarked cliff drops in there, so you needed to be careful.  Head on a swivel as they say.

The lifts were ski on ski off all day.  There were some empty chairs, but overall almost every chair had at least one person on it. The main lifts out of the base are all fairly modern and had the annoying loading carpets.  Luckily most people there knew how to use them and there weren’t many stops.  The lodge was nice and modern but was under construction.  The ski resort itself is more like a day area with some vacation homes starting to pop up on the access road.  The closest city is Sherbrooke, but I didn’t get the feeling that the place gets overrun on the weekends either

We logged about 4 nonstops hours on Thursday.  The legs were definitely spent and sore the rest of the night.  I am definitely glad we found the place, and it’s significantly cheaper than 90% of US ski areas, even the cheaper ones.  The ski area food is better and cheaper and the ski school looks to be cheaper too, assuming you can find someone that speaks English well enough.

That puts my Eastern Townships list at 3 including Bromont and Sutton.  I could see Owls Head from one of the lifts, and I’m told it’s much more old school, but there’s a lake in the way, and even though “it isn’t far, you can’t get there from here”.  It would be hard to justify the extra 40 minutes of drive time, but I’m sure I’ll do it this year or next.   I’ve still had my best east coast days at Charlevoix, but the eastern townships are definitely worth a day or two if you’re already up there and looking for something new.

As always, pics below:

Sorry not  much for picture stoke but the ther crew was there a week earlier. I am definitely feeling more comfortable in the side country off Rendevous (don’t go if you don’t know lol … all were beeping and has shovel and probe).

best run of week was Beartooth line if you hike Headwall   It always seems to hold snow well and doesn’t get much sun or wind.