Schif's Spring Skifari

[Schif]

Like many people I talked to over the weekend I bought a few Epic pass days at the end of summer expecting a trip to Vail/Beaver Creek this year but that turned out to be a bad idea. I wanted to get the experience of skiing Elk, but with the drive, so I headed to Vermont. 

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. 

Edited March 31 by Schif

[Schif]

After I left Stowe I drove down towards town and stopped at The Alchemist. Extremely funky building and it was absolutely packed. Tried some new to me beers and both were phenomenal. 

Right when I got on the road I noticed a sign for Von Trapp Brewing. Big beautiful building with plenty of animals on the walls. Beer was all german styles and was just OK. 

 

[Schif]

I've been slacking on getting this finished. 

Day 2 - Stowe

Woke up and headed back to Stowe for a slightly warmer and less windy day. It was still freezing at the top of the Four Runner but fairly mild down at the base. They reported between 1 and 2 inches of fresh snow on the mountain and you could really feel the difference from day to day. More trails were groomed which meant more were open and that was nice. Still some slick spots to be found but not nearly as many. They finally opened some of the diamond trails but still not the natural snow double diamonds that they couldn't groom. By the afternoon though the slick spots were coming back out and trails like Hayride were putting on a show of people losing their edges and sliding out. Everything was riding great in the morning though. 

I took the 2 mile cruise back to the car for a lunch meeting again and wound up finding the Stowe Chapel which was cool. It was open and there were a few people inside. I remember seeing it from a distance years ago but had never actually checked it out. 

Instead of taking the Toll House lift back up I opted to hop on the shuttle bus which honestly took as long as the lift so not sure if that was a time savings, but it dropped me off at the Spruce Peak Village which looks like a complete lift and shift of Vail Village, just smaller. I was looking longingly at the rolling racks for the hotel/condo ski valet and wishing I was on a western trip, but instead I was simply up in Vermont with the people who don't have jobs. 

The Spruce side was actually really fun and was the closest to spring skiing I had encountered on this whole trip. Soft and slushy but not too bad. It even got enough sun that the trees were in play in a few areas which I took advantage of. The most annoying thing about Spruce Peak is that Vail decided to shut off the chair that gets you all the way to the summit over there due to low ridership. There was more than enough snow everywhere so it was disappointing to only be able to lap the same vert there as Blue, but the trails are honestly pretty fun and that side shouldn't be slept on. 

A trip across the transfer gondola and a few more runs off of the Gondola and 4 Runner and I called it a day and took the slow cruise back to the car. I stopped at The Alchemist again, tried some new stuff and got a few cans to go and then headed into downtown Stowe. I was hoping to go to the Lower Bar for some food, but quickly realized that pretty much everything in town was closed since it was Sunday. I hopped on the road and drove down to White River Junction where I got a hotel that was pretty centrally located to get to a different mountain the next day. I drove across into Lebanon, NH to go to a great pub I've been to before, the Salt Hill Pub, but it was so crowded there was a line out the door and not a single seat to be found at the bar. That was disappointing so I ended up with the next best thing which was sitting at the bar at Chilis. Can't win them all, not every ski trip can be amazing I guess. 

Edited April 7 by Schif

[Johnny Law]

Boner city! The beers alone...... are you up this week ? I'm in Killy now. 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

5 hours ago, Johnny Law said:

Boner city! The beers alone...... are you up this week ? I'm in Killy now. 

After this trip he’s going back to Colorado lol

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

5 hours ago, Johnny Law said:

Boner city! The beers alone...... are you up this week ? I'm in Killy now. 

How is it?  I might be at the camel this weekend. I swore off camelback cause it sucks but don’t like driving to Vermont since I have a job so I don’t know 

[Schif]

20 hours ago, Johnny Law said:

Boner city! The beers alone...... are you up this week ? I'm in Killy now. 

This was last week, I'm just slow on writing reports, especially since no one in the PASR world has an Epic this year and would be going anywhere I was at. As much as I do enjoy Stowe I think I'm done with Epic though. I only bought the pack that I did so I could use it on a Colorado trip with my brother in law, but since that didn't pan out it was mostly a waste. 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Nice pictures and report.  One of these years I’ll get back to Stowe.  Where you parked at Toll House used to be the inn at the mountain and there was a pub inside that served reasonably priced food and had a pool table. A couple times I skied down there for lunch and also used the bathroom in there to change out of ski clothes on way home.  That lift sure is slow and long.  
 

 

[theprogram4]

48 minutes ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

Nice pictures and report.  One of these years I’ll get back to Stowe.  Where you parked at Toll House used to be the inn at the mountain and there was a pub inside that served reasonably priced food and had a pool table. A couple times I skied down there for lunch and also used the bathroom in there to change out of ski clothes on way home.  That lift sure is slow and long.  
 

 

I went to Stowe in 11th grade because you recommended it.  Went to jhole in 12th grade cause you recommended it 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

54 minutes ago, theprogram4 said:

I went to Stowe in 11th grade because you recommended it.  Went to jhole in 12th grade cause you recommended it 

Yeah I’m what’s known as an opinion leader.