mbike-ski

quick TR (better late than never): Stratton Pond 3.29.13 After two days at Kmart the group we were skiing with wanted to ski Stratton. Based on info from goodman's book i decided to do an xc out and back ski to Stratton Pond first thing in the morning then catch up with mrs snobunski and the group for lunch and some afternoon turns. I got to the arlington-stratton rd lot just before 9:30 to a balmy 35 ish degrees under cloudy skies. i headed up kelly strand rd about a .25 mi to the catamount trailhead, 300 miles of ski trail that runs the entire lenght of vt. the first 1.5 mile is a gentle logging road climb, the soft but fast snow warmed me up pretty quickly and had me looking forward to the return glide back down. the second leg starts about half the distance to the pond and is where the real fun begins. you turn off the logginig road into some twisty, winding, roller coaster singletrack type trails. lots of little ups and downs but no real major elevation changes make for a challenging but by no means grueling ski. the epoch/3 pin setup is probably a little overkill for the terrain but was a lot of fun working on linking my glides and turns. a few miles later you cross the long/at trail to a fun drop down to the pond. the sun was just starting to poke through i ski'd a little more around the pond before seeing it was 11:00 and figured i'd better head back if i was gonna make lunch. the singletrack was just as fun and fast in the opposite direction. however once i got out of the forest cover and on the now sunny logging road the snow quickly slowed down and was compressing under my weight, slowing my anticptaed fast glide back to a crawl. the long trail doublebag was a fitting de-booting beer before heading to stratton ski area. i parked in the parking garage and found mrs snobunski in the loud crowded bar just before 1 - quite a contrast to to the morning's beauty, peace and solitude enjoyed just before on the other side of the mountain gps track & stats from my tracks: https://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wl

very cool trip and TR, would like to do some of tthat stuff one of these days! anyone doing tuckerman this year?

Stratton pond yesterday

They had blast, tons of pow with some bluebird! They hit whitefish, disco, big sky and maybe bridger. I need to stop looking at yours and their pics - as good as conditions have been here it seems so lame....

damn another nice report there vinny! lots of good times and memories from a few years back skiing thos trees with my son!

great report! i love the bush especially castlerock etc. never got into the slide brook area, sounds awesome. you used to need a guide or at least some local knowledge, is it marked now?

some friends are out there now and posting some great pics as well. stop 1 on a whole montana tour - gonna have to put that on the must do list!

i'd love to make it up for some tunk bumps to use up my kids warrren miller voucher but were running out of time!

i miss pizza shop mussels marinara. that's about it for me. pa pizza's not bad but i do make a stop for a seaside heights boardwal slice whenever i'm in the area. hope it there this summer...

i think salters will ONLY mount markers

Cool pic, surreal looking

nice report, we keep saying were gonna check it out on one of our pittsburgh trips but it hasn;t happend - one of these days.

also check and see if they have any womens workshops or clinics - usually pretty reasonble way to get good group instruction and maybe some new ski buddies. mrs snowbunski started doing these years ago and now gets more days on the snow than me!

looks like a great day! congrats to the wife on kicking sno's ass!

Wrong. Overextended or not, what happened at Greek was their lender folded and no one bought the loans. The FDIC assumed them and forced them to file and now is forciing a sale. Gonna be an interesting march...

Soggy morning, chute bumps were fun twss

5 at the valley

blue sat am, sunday pm sunday afternoon planning on getting in touch with my inner hippy - free range folk (a great local bluegrass/roots band ) is playing in the bar so gonna check 'em out then try to hook up with the blue tele tribe on the 3 pins before heading off to play hockey

fixed it!

meh i would have no issues going alone, obviously not headed back/side/slac alone but you can always find someone to ski with.

really, reliance on gps and smart phones instead of common sense and experiance is probably why most of the joeys are lost in the first place. can be too hard on 'em though - ive been a turn or two away from being lost or beyond the point of no return to the trail a few times myself. it wasn't my innate sense of direction or my mad mountaineering skills that kept me from being one of thse guys but a bit of common sense and fear.

just reminder to those that got passes - theyre good ANY DAY/TIME now! Use 'em up!

i know telebutch has been pushing for'em on fb too - good on them! Greg Straub at the clinic mentioned they were trying to get bumps on chute. Looks like they succeeded! I was looking at the webcams today and salivating at work. congrats on geting it!

shweet! theres bumps on chute?

wow that's a really nice looking well built unit! No, not yours toast, the building! I was the project manager for the construction team.