Hi All,
Not sure if anyone noticed but I wasn't at Blue Mountain this weekend. A week or so ago Nancy, who invited herself to sausage Sunday a few weeks ago, threw out the idea of heading north since the weather wasn't looking great here in PA. Well after consulting the various weather models I agreed and the trip commenced.
We met at her place near Bala Cynwyd on Friday night after work and loaded her car. Loading up is notable in this case because of the real star of this trip the Stag Rack. Brand new roof rack, I helped take it out of the box and set it up. The Stag Rack is a car roof rack that quickly and easily changes from ski, to bike really quickly. Also it sticks to the roof of your car using vacuum cups. I was sitting in the car ready to research new gear because I was convinced that there was no way this thing would work and there would be shreds of skis and snowboards all over City Ave before we even hit the highway. Needless to say the rack worked like a charm and was rock solid the whole way.
Well we drove up without a real solid plan and made better time than expected so we snagged a room at the Holiday Inn in Rutland around 12:30am and crashed.
Up bright and early and cruised up to Sugarbush. Got there right at 9 and booted up in the lot and walked to the lodge. Grabbed my ticket and nearly killed Nancy when she said she wanted to run to the bathroom. When we got on the snow it was a quick trip up the Gate House express Quad and then right up the North Lynx triple. Started with a trip down birch run and back up the triple. Came back down the other side of that on sunrise next and then continued down Sleeper to the bottom. Back up the quad and a run down Sleeper chutes and sleeper.
Moved over to the Super Bravo quad now and lapped this chair twice doing birdland to lower jester and then lower organgrinder (or 'organizer" to Nancy). Third run from this chair we kept it moving and tried all of lower jester.
Next chair to try was the valley house quad. Disliked the fact that it was a fixed grip and the strange moving walkway thing for loading but the terrain here was fun. Only used this chair for two back to back laps when some locals let me know that we should try the Heavens Gate chair for some steeps. It seemed like to this point we were stuck in pods of mostly blues.
The weather was cloudy all day and the summit was socked in with fog from the second I pulled in. Heading up Heavens Gate was a trip into the storm. Visibility was next to nothing and it was a little windy up there. Any exposed spots up that high were wind blown and icy. Regardless of that it was still really fun. I couldn't see a thing at the top of Sigis Ripcord and made a hard turn where I shouldn't have and took a little spill that ended up in a 150 foot slide. Not too bad actually and lower than that the snow was pretty good. Tried jester next and it was fun but the trip back to the Heavens Gate chair was long and winding and took some effort of you were a rookie at the mountain. At this point my left foot was hurting a little but so we took organgrinder too to bottom and ran to the car for a quick lunch of mandarins, granola bars, a few beers, and string cheese.
Back on the hill and a few more laps on Super Bravo chair. At this point the mountain was foggy, there was a bit of sleet and things were fairly skied off. Getting a little tired as it was the longest session of the year but we decided to pop over to Mt Ellen to see what that was all about around 2pm. Drove over since the slide Brook chair that connects the mountains was closed. Got there, parked montage style close to the chair and went right up the Green mountain express chair. Off at the top and got right on the Summit quad. This lift ride was unbearably long due to the fact it is a fixed grip chair and it was windy, sleeting and you couldn't see anything past the chair in front of you. The summit of Mt Ellen made me think of a nature documentary where they show where no animals actually live. The wind was blowing so hard that it actually stopped me at one trail intersection and if I squared up against it it would blow you back a bit. FIS looked miserable (as much as I could see through the dots of ice on my goggles) so it was down Rim Run to Elbow to The Cliffs and Straight Shot. My legs and foot were on fire at this point so that was the end of the day.
Ran into the lodge at Mt Ellen for a beer and to enjoy the band before heading back to Sugarbush to listen to the band over there in the main Lodge and hang by a fire pit.
Short Version
Snow- not great but not terrible. Varied from nice snow to scraped boilerplate to ungroomed trails that had some dirt showing. Some of the natural snow trails didn't look skiable to me but that didn't stop scores of people from being on them.
Crowds: absolutely insane. Lines were enormous all day and really didn't let up much. The singles line was definitely my friend.
Terrain: since the whole Castle Rock area was closed and a lot of the diamonds and doubles were natural snow only and were really thin the place seemed to skew more towards blues if you didn't want to hit up the thin trails. I tried a few and they weren't as bad as they look bit still not great. The whole place skied like a bunch of different mountains all stitched together. Fun but kind of annoying with the lack of high speed chairs and the fact that you had to take two lifts to get to the summit anywhere. I would be curious to try it out again after a lot of snowfall but otherwise wouldn't be clamoring to get back.
Also I saw a guy wearing the same boots as @enjoralas dad. Never saw another pair of those so that's cool.
