TR Sunday River 3-29/3-30/2014

[guitar73]

friends of ours are season pass holders at sunday river and invited us up to their condo this past weekend. we had a good time overall and def are putting sunday river on the "must ski again" list.

 

overall impression: "someday bigger" is an accurate, yet incomplete nickname for the river. yes, SR skis short (max vert off any one lift is approx 1600 ft), but it has loads of terrain (amount and varity). SR is very spread-out (8 peaks), but it doesn't feel like it, unlike killington. i think the trail and lift layouts help contribute to that feeling. we spent most of our time near the back of the resort on Aurora, Oz, and Jordan Bowl to avoid the crowds and to get to the most interesting terrain. Barker also had some good stuff as well, but it's near the middle of the resort (and the crowds). White Cap was nice as well, but not a lot of trails there. we chose the White Cap lodge as our base of operations since that parking lot is not too packed and very few people use that lodge....it was also closest to the condo.

 

conditions: 3/29 was classic spring skiing. mid 40's, loads of sunshine, soft snow. SR has ridiculous coverage, so the trees were still very much in play. at the base of the mtn, there's a good 2 to 3 ft of snow everywhere....a lot more up on the mtn. my guess is that they will still have a good amount of snow on the mtn until july. 3/30 was a bust...3-4 inches of snow overnite with another 1/2 inch of rain/ice on top. very foggy/ cloudy, so it was poor visibility all day long. everything was crusty on top, but nice underneath. conditions improved once the crust was broken off.

 

lodging: our friends condo was pretty nice, a one-bedroom place about 3 minutes down the access road from white cap lodge.

 

travel: maine is a long ways away....and SR is way up there in western maine. gotta make sure to leave at the right time...it took us 10 hrs to get up there (yay friday afternoon rush hour) and 9 to get back (no traffic at all). gotta say, the free lodging really was the deal breaker to going up there. not sure if i would have considered it otherwise.

 

 

anyhow, glad we went....had an awesome time.....def recommend it if you are up that way for other stuff, or if you like to drive a long, long time.

[Ride Delaware ?]

If you ever need any insider tips, hit me up. Outside of Jordan, the best variety of terrain, size, and lifts is Barker. On the weekends South Ridge and Barker will be mad houses. Whitecap has some good woods terrain, but the trails are so so. SR has phenomenal woods all over. It's incredible that it's taken them this long to clear them. The pitch and underlying growth is perfect. It would be a tree skiing mecca if it got the snow VT or even Sugarloaf got. On the weekends I stick to Whitecap, Aurora, and Spruce because the crowds all prefer the high speeds. It definitely has lots of spread out traversing, but I loved it there. Glad to hear you feel similarly.