Winter Rodeo

[Johnny Law]

Vt on presidents is like a UN meeting and as such I was looking for a place to beat the crowds.

Trackbiker or someone had mentioned the Bowl last week and it clicked in my head that Saturday would be Winter Rodeo.

Imagine a frat party at a ski mtn or Mt Rose's beer fest but with less drinking. The day starts with a big Gs race for all the local colleges and considering who they are that is some very good skiers.

Then by about noon the dj comes out and everyone really gets going. I don't know what the ratio is at Middlebury but had I known about it in my teens I would have flunked out of there for sure. 

Partying aside the bowl delivered the goods, from bell to bell I never waited in line and the trails were mostly empty.

The snow was a mix of super grip groomer and chundery off trail. The off trail was deepish but not easy to rotate in.  

The groomers at the bowl are generally good however their grooming is on par with a college hill and the real star is the tree zones. My favorite is big tree off 11 but all of it was good tail gunning super soft. 

Liftline was the classic VT mix of excellent and shit all at the same time and I lapped that until my back said no more. 

I cannot speak highly enough about the bowl. You want to get away from it all or experience what magic was like before it became magic I say give the bowl a long look.  It's lifts are slow and the vert nothing to write home about but it's classic VT skiing which is sadly becoming a dying art. 

 

[trackbiker]

It's awesome when the Bailey Falls side is open.

Glad you enjoyed it.

[Johnny Law]

I apologize for a word block but the weather sucked for pictures so I didn't take any. 

 

Killington 2/16

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The weather got gnarly Sunday so I went to Killy to ski good Devils Fiddle, which is a Centralia kinda trail. 

4 or 5 inches on the hill and with two town busses crashed and shitty roads the lineup was thin.  

 Growler, Devils Den, Nowhere all the pointy tree stuff are as deep as I ever seen and with a few inches where absolute bliss, I only hit two braches and a rock which for vt is all time. 

Pellets came in hard around 11 and while still very very good it sort of threw a spanner in the works. For large portions of the rest of the day it hurt my face to go downhill......it did however change over back to snow around 4.

 

Killington 2/17

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Around 11pm while still snowing pretty hard the winds went absolutely super sonic so I went Killy again as there is just no way most of anywhere could run lifts and they were claiming skye 2 would run. 

I'd say about 3 to 6 inches fell but only Hurricane Swartz knows as it was blown all over the place in sometimes hilarious drifts. 

It was like biblically windy, if you have skied there the dumbest, stupidest chair that serves the dumbest terrain, Snowshed double, was shut down around 1 as it was blowing so hard they could no longer pulse it up the hill. Also me and everyone else in the line for the gondy fell over like dominoes on a hyper blast that had to be stupid funny from the lifty box. 

This was actually awesome as it marooned almost everyone at ramshead while I was at skye peak. While the terrain was super limited for Killy there was fluff all over late into the day. Outside of the trees or protected areas it was blown to mix of super firm and then almost a wave like wind lip of fluff that made for dope hopping. There's limited good trees over there put the pockets continued to be superb. 

I did almost eat it in a surprise knee high drift and I had to put my face mask under my helmet with two hoods kinda wind but it was tits Mcgee in a strange day kinda way.

 

Edited Monday at 10:55 PM by Johnny Law

[Johnny Law]

2/18 Ragged Mtn

Indigio was here earlier this year and it sparked my interest to check it out.  

Super picturesque and rolly rather than steep, kinda like the Okemo of NH. 

From what I understand it doesn't get very busy and the leftover supersonic winds certainly helped that. You could get a seat for lunch no problem. 

Coverage in the woods was good with everything I found this sort of mid angle rolly.

NH I think is almost always worse than VT as their resorts are lower and the tree snow had a solid three inch super hard layer that made rotating the ski particularly difficult....... though it mostly didn't matter as it had so much drag you couldn't go that fast. 

Groomers were mint and up could arc until your hearts content as they do alot of winding twisty type trails.  

Cool place,  that I think is better than Sunapee which is nearby. Way more mid angle and even it's steeps go flat so I'm sure it's part of the reason the snow was so good. 

[Johnny Law]

2/19 Dartmouth Skiway

I have mad meetings this afternoon and could only swing a half day so I wanted to peep somewhere a bit more intimate.

My first memory of Dartmouth is rich wanna be investment bankers booting and rallying but only a bit after that was I wanted to ski Dartmouth Skiway. 

The logical question is why ? It's like 900 vert and has two old mad slow lifts.....because it's literally ski history, short of getting a DeLorean and going back in time this is as close as you can get. 

The skiway is two pods across the street from eachother so I started on the Holt side as I wanted to ski their big race trail Don Warden Schuss. They only kinda groom and blow snow so I figured this would be by far the best and I was not wrong.

A razors like wide strip of perfection, unlike Ragged it pours the steep on.  When you get to the point were most trails ease off it goes even steeper. I ran this like 10 times it was sooo good and had that dramatic background that makes you feel like your movie skiing.

On the natural snow only trails like lift line the snow was hyper hyper dry and slow which was good because there is a solid layer you can't get through so the surface is quite firm.

After I skied all the Holt trails I went across the street to Winslow. This seems more like the noob area and the lift stopped about 5 times per ride.

More rolling blues and greens this was set it and forget it territory where I wasn't even warming up down the hill.  

It honestly felt like a step back in time, super cool place to ski. 

[indiggio]

9 hours ago, Johnny Law said:

2/19 Dartmouth Skiway

I have mad meetings this afternoon and could only swing a half day so I wanted to peep somewhere a bit more intimate.

My first memory of Dartmouth is rich wanna be investment bankers booting and rallying but only a bit after that was I wanted to ski Dartmouth Skiway. 

The logical question is why ? It's like 900 vert and has two old mad slow lifts.....because it's literally ski history, short of getting a DeLorean and going back in time this is as close as you can get. 

The skiway is two pods across the street from eachother so I started on the Holt side as I wanted to ski their big race trail Don Warden Schuss. They only kinda groom and blow snow so I figured this would be by far the best and I was not wrong.

A razors like wide strip of perfection, unlike Ragged it pours the steep on.  When you get to the point were most trails ease off it goes even steeper. I ran this like 10 times it was sooo good and had that dramatic background that makes you feel like your movie skiing.

On the natural snow only trails like lift line the snow was hyper hyper dry and slow which was good because there is a solid layer you can't get through so the surface is quite firm.

After I skied all the Holt trails I went across the street to Winslow. This seems more like the noob area and the lift stopped about 5 times per ride.

More rolling blues and greens this was set it and forget it territory where I wasn't even warming up down the hill.  

It honestly felt like a step back in time, super cool place to ski. 

 

Ahh, I wanted to hit Dartmouth when we were up there but ran out of time.   Next trip.

Waiting for the Black report... 😉

[indiggio]

Dude! Black is 100% open.  Gotta hit it!

[PSUFrankenstein]

Not that it's really close to NH, but Magic is 100% open also.

Black looks super cool too - I think the owner of Indy Pass, Erik, has been working there a lot since Indy Pass kinda revived the mountain

Edited 17 hours ago by PSUFrankenstein

[Johnny Law]

17 hours ago, indiggio said:

Dude! Black is 100% open.  Gotta hit it!

 

13 hours ago, PSUFrankenstein said:

Not that it's really close to NH, but Magic is 100% open also.

Black looks super cool too - I think the owner of Indy Pass, Erik, has been working there a lot since Indy Pass kinda revived the mountain

I had it next on my list to keep the weirdo tour going but peeps showed up and I wanted to ski with them. 

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2/20 Killington 

Was dope, conditions were prime the sun was out and it was quiet but nothing worth reporting on. 

2/21 Loon 

I will preface this by saying this is snow sports industry type stuff and may be interesting to no one so feel free to stop reading.

If you are familiar with the snow sports industry you are familiar with the Vail vs Ikon/Ksl but there is a third player we often forget about that is blowing unprecedented amounts of money to try and eat both their lunches in the NE.

Boyne at some point realized all of boston is driving by nh and loon to ski the River and the loaf and VT 2 hrs west has people hanging off the rafters. So in 2020 they went all in and announced Loon 2030, their plan to build the most advanced resort in the US. You can read it here if your interested - https://www.loonmtn.com/flight-path-2030

In 2020 they put in the most advanced lift in NA to go 900 vert and like 2/3 of the way up the hill.  Every lift has loading conveyors and two have laser overlays for your loading position. If you know me I had to go check this out. 

What's the verdict ? The lifts are impressive and what they want to do would put an truly insane number of people on the hill.  The 8 can do 3500/hr and there plan is to put in like 6 more. 

The terrain is good with alot of blue twisty crusier types and some reasonable steeps. The views are quite excellent with alot of peakyness around for the NE. 

That's the good but the reality is they don't currently have the lodge infrastructure to support 1/20th of the people they stuff in there and even more importantly the acreage. No where in NH is above 400 and that isn't nearly enough during the week let alone on a weekend. 

Cool place with a dope 4 person gondy and lots of narrow old school NE twisties and there plan is impressive but not nearly there yet. If they really want to play with the big boys they will have to add a sizeable amount of terrain and more expert type steeps.

I would only go there Monday through Wednesday, no shit, though I did have a good day there. 

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I have more skiing to do but none of it is probably interesting in a report kinda way.  It's been awhile since I spent this kind of time up here and I what I'll always come back for is the straight up uniqueness of it all.  There is no state with anywhere near the number of super famous wooden bowl makers or artisinal llama cheese. The snow was most excellent, like February 2014 kinda depth and it was dope as fuck to ski it.