Pico 1-28-11

[Ride Delaware ?]

The last day of the trip finally arrived. I would like to say it is bittersweet, but that would just be a lie. I would stay for as long as I could. But alas, the final day had come. Unfortunately, since the drive back home is so long, I was restricted to only a half day. Since I had spent the past 3 days at Killington, and had been lucky enough to find untracked powder on Thursday, I figured the closed midweek less busy trails of Pico would be excellent Friday morning. I arrived at 9:15 to maybe 50 cars in the parking lot and quickly headed over to the Golden Express Quad. Most of the terrain off of that lift is for beginners and intermediates, but it was still perfectly groomed so I decided to do a couple runs off of it to start my day.

 

My first run of the day was straight down Expressway underneath the lift. It has some great rollers at the top and was pretty fast. The corduroy all over the mountain was soft packed natural powder with no ice or hardpack to be found. Here is a shot of Expressway looking down the Golden Express liftline:

 

 

Next run was a run down Panhandler. Same conditions as before:

 

 

After a couple more runs, I decided to head over to the Summit Quad. When I was here several years ago with OutCold and Afroman7, the terrain off of the Summit was some of the best. The top section of the glades is a little tighter and off map, and the bottom two sections are either classic New England glades or open beginner glades. Here is Fools Gold heading over to the Summit Express:

 

 

While there were skiers and boarders coming down off of the summit, I was dismayed to find a closed lift sign at the front of the lift. When I was here a couple years ago, there had been a slight warmup, and it froze over, so they didn't groom the top, and never opened the lift. I was afraid the same thing was going to happen. After talking to the liftie, we found out that there was some maintenance issue, and the lift would reopen in about an hour. Looks like I was going to have to stick to the bottom a little while longer. I took several more runs off of the Golden Express and then decided to head back over. They were just opening the lift when I arrived, and I was the first one back up. I scoped out entrances to the off map woods on the lift, and headed down Upper Pike (liftline) down to the woods. Upper Pike was ungroomed and bumpy with some hardpack and ice in between the bumps. I found my entrance and immediately slid inside. I immediately noticed the quality of snow inside. Nobody had been in since the last snow, and there were easily 3-4" of untracked on top of everything. The glades were a little tight, but the coverage was excellent. Here are two shots from when they opened up just a little bit:

 

 

 

Coming out of the woods there is an incredible drop off that was coated in fresh. You have two choices here, go down the intermediate Birch Glades, or go down the expert Birch Woods. The Birch Glades are hardly glades. It is a wide open ungroomed trail that has little patches of trees in the middle. You can go through the trees or around them. I decided to try out the Birch Glades first. The snow through this section was amazing. Mostly unbumped slightly skied powder. I took the path less traveled through the little tree patches, and had a blast, although it can hardly be called challenging. Here is a picture of it from the top of the drop off:

 

 

I got back to the top of the mountain, and immediately wanted to try out the off map glades, but since I started at the top so late, and had to leave soon, I decided to try out a different trail. I decided to go down Upper KA and took this shot at the top of it:

 

 

Upper KA was incredibly challenging. It was all natural with huge bumps and a bunch of decent sized brush popping through the bottom of the bumps. The brush gave me some new base scratches, but nothing too substantial. Another foot of snow (which they may receive this week), will cover all this brush and easily put this back into play for the majority of skiers and boarders. Mid KA, which is right below it, is a groomer and was much easier to traverse. Here is a shot of it near the bottom:

 

 

I was nearing the end of my day, but I had time for one more run off the top, and one more off the mid station lift. I went back in to the off map glades and took a different line closer to the liftline. It was untracked and yielded the same awesome snow as the first run. Here is a shot from that line:

 

 

After I got out of the woods there, I decided to try the Birch Woods. It was much more open and had pretty good snow. I ended up hitting a small branch in a bump valley and it gave me a 12' base dent, but it didnt cut deep, so I think I made out pretty good there too. They were fun glades, but were way more tracked out than the previous glades. Here is a shot to show the difference:

 

 

I went to the Golden Express Quad and decided to bomb it down Expressway as my last run. I got to the bottom at about 12:35 after about 3 hours and change on the mountain. We loaded up the Explorer and hit the road by one.

 

Overall it was a great trip. I decided to finally use my rock board for rocks, and while I picked up some good dings and scratches, I think it was well worth it, and nothing a good sharpening and wax won't be able to fix. They are having a great year up there and are expected to get a decent snow this week. That should put everything back into play and make those woods even more spectacular. I may give Killington a tough rep, but it definitely came through this time. I don't know if I'll be back again this year, but if the conditions stay like this, I wouldn't mind it.