Stratton, VT 12/11/99

<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 12/15/99. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>Actually was able to drag my carcass out of bed at 8:00 on Saturday and decided early on to head to Stratton instead of Mt. Sneaux. Their snow report had promised more open expert terrain and deeper base depths than Mt. Snow and I hadn't been there in years, so off I went. The drive to Stratton via the back roads off Rt. 100 in West Wardsboro was somewhat harrowing. Those roads are not very well maintained, so the 2-3" on new snow combined tires balder than Kojak made for some serious white knuckle action. Nonetheless I got to Stratton around 9:00 and was surprised at how much development had gone on there in the last 5-6 years. Intrawest has really sunken some bucks into this place. <BR> <BR>Stratton basically had two lifts open - the American Express 6 pack on the lower mountain and the North American quad on the upper mountain. The Gondola was wind hold all day, and believe me, that was extremely prudent. The inds were howling all day with gusts in excess of 40-50 mph. Both lifts were running at 2/3 speed (if you've ridden he Nor Am quad on a normal day, you know how slow THAT can be). On the bottom, there were maybe two ways down with Suntanner and Lower Standard available. Suntanner was full of hits etc... while Standard was a bowling alley full of timid beginners shying away from that stuff. The upper mountain featured North American, Upper Spruce, Upper Liftline, and Upper Slalom Glade. You got back to the lift form the last three by taking a cat track back. <BR> <BR>The skiing was OK pretty much all day, and b/c they were blowing snow on just about every trail, it got better and better, even with half of it blowing into the woods. I sampled all four upper mountain trails with Slalom Glade starting out as the best, but itgradually got skied off. I then switched to North American and finaly Spruce. Though all these trails are rated expert, or even double black in the case of Spruce, I can't imagine any of them would rate more than an intermediate trail north of Granville Gulch. I was disappointed to see that they had widened North American by about 20 feet since I last was here. Though always a liftline trail, it used to have a little character with some twists and turns here and there. Now it is just another McTrail. <BR> <BR>I did manage to get some info on Stratton Master Plan that was approved this summer. For one thing, the new Ursa Express 6 pack is not ready and the chairs haven't even been hung yet. It was suposed to replace both the Nor Am quad and the old Grizly double. Lucky for Stratton, they are a little behgind schedule, allowoing them to use the quad on days like this. The word is that when the 6 pack is up and running, the quad has been sold to Magic. Not quite sure what they would do with it, but it certainly isn't long enough as currently configured to span all of Magic's 1600 verts (ciurrent lift is about 1100). Eventually, Stratton would like to turn the Sun Bowl quad into a detachable lift (4 0r 6 seater) with a mid-station at the current terminus and topping off at the peak. The bone chilling Kiddebrook quad would then be removed, much to the delight of anyone who has ever riddn that torture machine. There are also plans for a couple of intermediate trails to skiers right of the current Kidderbrook trail. They would partially go down into a a ravine on that side of the Kidderbrook area similar in topography to the ravine to skiers left of Kidderbrook into which Bear Down and Free Fall (possibly the two "steepest" trails at Stratton) fall. Unfortunately, the skiers right of that new ravine is apparently inhabited by Stratton "beloved mascot" Ursa and most of the area will not be touched - Stratton is destined to remain a cruiser's mountain.