Middlebury College Snow Bowl 4-3-14

[Ride Delaware ?]

After an amazing spring day yesterday at Gore, I really wanted to keep the party rolling. Unfortunately, temps today were forecasted much lower than yesterday, and I was fairly certain that the top of Sugarbush would still be quite firm. Since I had the Fox 44 discount card, it included a day at Middlebury, and Middlebury has a lower base elevation, I figured I would give it a shot.

 

Since temps dipped into the lower 20's last night and I knew Middlebury was a smaller mountain, I decided to give it some time to soften up and left the condo around 11. The GPS estimated a 41 minute drive, but I ended up making it in about 35. After driving VT 17 yesterday and VT 125 today, I am convinced that they may be the shittiest roads I have ever driven on. There were hardly 30 cars in the lot, and I'm convinced that half of those were employees.

 

I was able to boot up, grab my lift ticket, and make it to the lift by noon. The thermometer read just above freezing and there were still plenty of clouds covering the sun. Middlebury is the first place outside of Plattekill that has ever questioned and required a leash. They even tried to make me sound like I was the weird one for not having one. Luckily I keep one in my pocket, but that's a total pain in the ass.

 

I rode the main lift that services the full 1,000 ft vertical. The backside lift with 7-8 trails was closed for the season. There were 3 main runs off there, Proctor, Ross, and Allen's. They seem to only groom a trail every other day in the spring, so Proctor was pretty firm to start while Ross and Allen's, which are both diamonds, were super smooth. I was impressed with the pitch and headwalls. All 3 of those t2b trails were real fun and had some nice looking glades off the sides.

 

Around 12:45 I decided to go over to the beginner double and check out the trails there even though the runs are very short. 12:45 also seemed to coincide with the disappearance of the cloud cover, and things started softening quickly. All the trails off the double have thinned trees between them that made for some fun little tree runs. Coverage is still prime in there and I witnessed 0 thin spots or obstacles.

 

After about an hour I decided to head back to the triple to hit those runs again now that they had received some sun. They were phenomenal. The groomed runs were so smooth and buttery that you could rip them with almost no fear of catching an edge. It was so much fun to quick carve and really dig an edge in. Proctor still had some firm spots where the sun couldn't get through the trees, but it was much more enjoyable than it had been first thing.

 

Overall, I had a great time. I really like these smaller change of pace places. Middlebury has a small but modern lodge that seems to be built to handle the crowds that would come with the amount of parking they have, which surprisingly was very little. The staff was friendly and crowds were non existent. I know I get crap for not taking any action photos, but there wasn't anybody to take pictures of. I would really like to get there during mid season to try out the backside of the mountain, but that didn't make the day any worse. They have already posted that this weekend is their last, and it is definitely because of a lack of crowds. They have enough snow to last another couple weeks. The mountain also has a bunch of fun looking glades and seems to be very mellow in off trail policy/closed trail enforcement. They also have a very unique mid mountain snowmaking pond to go along with their traditionally placed pond at the base of the mountain.

 

The drive was easy and worth it. Put another great spring day in the books.

 

[Ride Delaware ?]

Don't you get free tickets at other areas for being on ski patrol at Sugarbush? You should try and get up to Stowe..

You can get an industry hookup sometimes, but you never know what you'll get from mountain to mountain. Sometimes it's just easier to get a discount card and not worry about the hassle.

[Johnny Law]

Nice dude, that's a cool place and there are great areas surrounding that place when it snows. Ask Moe but lots of rowdy skiers will spend time at the bowl.