Day at windham

[Glenn]

Background:

Spent today (black friday) at windham with Zaldon. Arrived just 10 minutes after opening and left around 1:45 for a number of reasons. Had a blast while I was there. I think there was about 2 inches of snowfall there last night, but I'm not positive. We spent the day free riding. I worked on carving, and found a couple of natural features to play around on. There was a 6 foot cliff that was alot of fun, but a bit on the sketchy side. It was a game time decision between hunter and windham. With $25 lift tickets windham won out. The crowd (hate to say it DMC) was a bit friendly than my last visit to Hunter, however, from the looks of things it wasn't any less crowded. All in all I'm glad I made the decision to press on to Windham. The price, attitude of the crowd, and the new mountain experience (my first time to windham) made it worth while to me.

 

Snow Guns:

The guns turned on and pointed at the trail we were riding the whole time we were there. Apparently this is common practice for windham as I have heard others report similar experiences with the guns. I suppose it slowed the deteroation of the conditions quite a bit but it was a bit rough on any exposed skin.

 

Trails:

We spent most of the day on the top to bottom blue run (bypass-upper whistler-lower whistler) with 2 runs on a double black (the wall) which connected to upper whistler. A green trail (what's next) was also open but we didn't ride it as it was serviced by a fixed grip double and didn't seem worth our time.

 

Conditions

The conditions were pretty good early in the morning. A very fluffy machine groomed surface was maintained until around noon when some hardpack began to show up in the areas between the snowguns. The double black was totally crud all day, which was the main reason we only took two runs, though for what it was they were fun (the two runs that is). The areas with gun coverage started to get bumped up a little by noon as well. So between the lack of skier ability on the slopes, and the degrading conditions there was a number of people getting taken off the mountain in sleds.

[insomniac]

I love your dog.

[Ski]

Great read, Dthmtl...The Wall's short, but an awesome headwall, isn't it?

[Glenn]

Great read, Dthmtl...The Wall's short, but an awesome headwall, isn't it?

 

 

There was about a foot and a half of complete crud. I'm not sure if it normally has big lumps in the headwall, but they were fun to jump off of since they had 9-12 ft of almost vertical drop directly after them. I think they were probobly just where the guns were aimed and the trail was never groomed. It wasn't quite skied enough to be a bump run, and it wasn't smooth enough to carve a real line. If you got in the back seat and straight bombed that was the most organized way of getting down the trail. It was a blast to watch everyone tumble their way down. As I alluded to ealier, the ability level of the skiers/riders for whatever reason wasn't that great today. Zaldon even commented that "Atomic could even show these people how to carve better." As a result of the lousy sking lots of people ended up falling down more of the wall than actually sking it. I don't think Zaldon or I had any real bad falls on it, but it was sketch to say the least.

 

I'd love to go back when the mountain is a bit more "in the swing of things" but doubt I will find the motivation when more localized hills are open.

 

... if only we could convince phil to do similar

Edited November 26, 2005 by dthmtluncrn

[Ski]

I know we've poked Phil enough about his 20 days that he'll at least be getting to VT more...