Stratton Pond 3.29.13

[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