Okemo TR 3-21, 3-22

[im rick james]

Being the least avid skiier on this forum I always feel obliged to do a TR when i ski so here goes..

Went to Okemo this past weekend with my family. We left on thursday morning prepared for a 7 hour drive from AC. When we got into vermont, it was raining pretty hard and there was no snow on the ground; it was looking dismal. GPS said we were 20 miles away and still NO SNOW and plenty of rain falling. And just like that, when we turned onto i think it was VT rt 100, it was heavy snow falling with a solid foot on the ground. Up closer to okemo the snow cover was very deep and 6-7 foot high banks on the side of the road were common.

Friday morning we walked over to the slopes from our condo which was situated at the top of the learning hills/green circles. We made fresh tracks on one of the green circles and it turned out ot be one of the best runs of the day- wide open with about three inches of fresh snow on it. Once I got down to the base area my sister and I separated from the rest of the family and decided to take advantage of okemos ski free the first hour thing. They do not check for tickets until 1 hour after opening to give you an opportunity to check out the conditions before purchasing. Since the base area was very crowded, we decided to go over to jackson gore. When we got to the bottom of jackson gore i noticed it was 10AM so I needed to buy my ticket there before getting back on the lift. They had one ticket window open and a very long line and it ended up taking close to a half hour just to buy my ticket. This made me mad.

15 degrees at the summit with 20-30 mph sustained winds made for an interesting weather day. Despite the high wind warning all of the lifts were running from what i could tell. I skiied pretty much everything except for the double blacks and ungroomed trails because neither I nor my sister are good enough to ski/ride them. But I did notice that the black diamonds were relatively simple. Some of them might actually be considered blue squares at a place like stowe?? All in all the trails at okemo seemed very redundant. Crowds picked up quickly so we stopped for lunch at 1. We ate at the summit lodge for like 45 mins then skiied til closing which is 4pm. What is with the 4 oclock closing? Im guessing most if not all of the mountains in VT close at 4 when it gets dark at 730? Plus, they start shutting lifts down at 330. It seriously felt wierd having to leave the mountain so early.

Saturday was an absolute nightmare. Crowds were ridiculous but shouldve been expectd being easter weekend and easter being so early. The snow was scraped off on most of the trails by 11AM and it was an icy mess. Thought i was at good old camelback for a second. Found some good snow on south face on stump jumper and off the rim. There are three diamonds all right next to eachother on the south face that were the best trails on the mountain IMO. Things got crowded quickly so the afternoon was spent dodging people for the most part.

Ive now been to stowe, killington/pico, and okemo and okemo was my least favorite. Stowe still rules but i have plenty of mountains left to visit.

I have quite a few pictures of the mountain and the ridiculous amount of snow they have but I didnt know you needed to be a rhodes scholar to post pics on here, so if anyone can help me with that I will post them.

[Johnny Law]

cool TR - use to post your pics

 

Biglines is a good host but everyone prefers something different

[im rick james]

I didn't realize they needed to uploaded to a third party site. I feel like an idiot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Johnny Law]

Nice man I think that is the most snow I have ever seen Okemo have.

[snoskier]

nice report.

[romemadman]

ah ledges is such a good carving trail

but the sachem quad is the worst lift