Dan Barron
New member
<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 12/8/99. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>In a nutshell: <BR>- Spring conditions <BR>- Empty (Monday with a low trail count and rain in the forecast will do that I guess) <BR>- Big. <BR> <BR>Adding up the three positives there made for a great day. <BR> <BR>Getting there: Everybody always says it's far from anywhere and they're right. I was in Waterville, Me., the closest city there is to Sugarloaf (right?), and it still took 1:15. And that was taking the speed limits as suggested minimums. Actually, the 1:15 was for the return trip, on which I *didn't* get lost. On the way there, I did some creative map-reading and ended up with a grand tour of Wyman's Lake. Added 50 miles to the trip and kept me *way* off the first chair but actually was a very enjoyable little scenic excursion. <BR> <BR>Maine--if an outsider may offer his $.02--is beautiful in a very different way from Vt. Less exquisite, more big. Things just seem to go on and on, which includes roads that numb you into a rolling hypnosis of woodland appreciation (keep yer eyes on the road there, buddy). And also includes ski resorts. To jump ahead, Sugarloaf seemed just plain big. But let me catch back up to that in a minute. <BR> <BR>Got to the 'loaf and, since there was practically no one there, drove right up <BR>to the closest parking lot. Damn. It was one of those ASC "reserved parking only" deals. "All others will be towed." Said f that, what-the-hell, and parked in the even closer "60 Minute Drop-Off Only" section. An employee said, don't say they said so but it was probably alright, and by the end of the day, it was. <BR> <BR>Trail count: 2.5 ways down. Only uppermountain lift running was the Superquad, from which you could go skier's right to Spillway (black) or left to Kings Landing which was a very interesting blue and would have been black at more than a few rating-inflated resorts. At bottom of Kings Landing (1/2 way down mountain) you had a choice of continuing on Candy Side, which is just about the dippiest, turniest green I have ever seen, or taking Peavy X-cut (traverse) over to Boardwalk (green) which was also the way you had to finish Spillway, since none of the mid-mountain chairs were running. Boardwalk was filled with, what? Too tiny to call them moguls. Call them ripplets. Made the long runout a bit more lively. Had fun practicing quick quick quick shuffle turns on them. <BR> <BR>(CandySide aside. A very unhappy team of Japanese racers had come to SL for early season training. They were reduced to running gates on green circle CandySide. They came halfway around the world for the privielege. I promise I <BR>will never again complain about disappointing conditions. I promise I will never again complain about...) <BR> <BR>Trail conditions. More then a few rocks sticking through and several short places where you pretty much had to ski the brown . Especially on King's Landing, which by afternoon had a 2 foot section I refused to ski over and chose to sidestep. And I am not a ptex primadonna. But those few sections aside, snow was beautiful, soft, spring conditions. King's had two nice sections of bumps. <BR> <BR>All of Spillway was a blast with big rounded mostly soft bumps and no deep troughs. You had to steer around some rocks but no problem. I found the bumps perfectly aligned for checking some speed by skiing up on one side of the <BR>bump, getting unweighted, then kicking a quick, semi-jump tele right on top of the mogul and sliding down the back, to line up for the next one. Maybe this is old news for a lot of listers but for me, they were the easiest big bumps I've ever skied. Truly fun stuff. <BR> <BR>Now back to "big." Maybe this was me too, but it seemed that distances at SL were deceiving. All day I'd ski a section hard, run out of breath, look back to where I came from and go, "that's it? that's all I skied?" Is that a recognized SL phenomenon or am I just gettin old? <BR> <BR>Other thing about SL. Mountain is definitely big and the base lodge is pretty massive, but the feel of the place was pretty small and friendly. Nice. Could have been the totally uncrowded day, though. Also did a chairlift and a run with the director of grooming there. Nice guy. Excellent telemarker. He was a big tall guy and made his turns look big, smooth and totally effortless. <BR> <BR>Wore myself out skiing till last chair then dragged my sorry legs into a live music, reggae party. Lots of single women dancing around (some kind of three-day restaurant workers promo going on) so old tele-geezer here was forced to pull his skate-dancing repetoire out of winter mothballs and keep the ladies entertained. Let me tell you, my dance card stayed plenty filled, yessireebob. Of course, the party ended at 6:30 (*PM*) and I drove home most definitely alone.