Jay Silveira
New member
<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 12/27/99. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>I hadn't planned on skiing over the weekend, but things got slow on Sunday, and I couldn't pass up the chance to ride my Volants that had just returned from the factory after warranty repairs. I had heard on the radio that Sugarbush was at 80% open (90 trails), so I figured that all this cold air must have had them blasting the mountain with snow guns. I just wanted to take a few mellow runs for an hour or so, to ride my skis that had been in the repair process for over a month, and hadn't been used (sadly) in about 8 months. My drive from snowless Burlington revealed that many other locations were fortunate enough to have had a white Christmas. Waterbury appeared to have about 4-6 inches of the white stuff, with similar amounts in the Waitsfield / Warren area, and even more (as usual) in Duxbury. Skies were overcast, with just a few flurries around, but all of Lincoln Peak was visible as I drove into the parking lot at around 2:00 P.M. This was the first time I had skied during the holidays in many years, and I was a bit worried about the crowds, but I found the main lot was only just about full, with the distance lot basically empty. <BR> <BR>I was immediately happy to see that both the Valley House Double, and the Spring Triple were running. They are often not running due to the fact that the Super Bravo quad can cover all their terrain, and since it has such high capacity, there is rarely a lift line to warrant opening additional chairs. For my mellow day on the slopes however, I was thinking of riding the Snowball trail, which is a mellow blue directly serviced by the Valley House chair. The Valley House chair says that it services about 1250' of vertical, and my 1999-2000 Sugarbush trail map gives the vertical of the Super Bravo at around 1,575'. The extra 325' of vertical gained from the Super Bravo however, is composed of two short dips, and a rather long traverse that really doesn't have much zing. The Sugarbush trail map even gives the ride times for the Super Bravo Express and the Valley House Chair, which, at 5:46, and 6:50 (min:sec) respectively, are fairly comparable. OK, now that probably wasn't really too interesting for those of you that don't ski the 'bush much, but there ya go, pound for pound the old slow Valley House double stacks up pretty well against the Super Bravo for skiing the terrain off the resort's southernmost ridge. For those unfamiliar with the area I'm talking about, a map (although some of the names are hard to read on trails / lifts) can be found at the following location - <BR>http://www.sugarbush.com/images/maps/lp.jpg <BR> <BR>I hiked up between the Tube Riding Park and the Magic Carpet, happy to see that both were being used by many happy holiday guests, and headed for the Valley House chair. The chair was basically at saturation when I first arrived, but there was no real waiting line. The trail below the Valley House Chair is called The Mall, a nice, fun, natural snow single black run that usually gets bumped up. It wasn't open, but it looked like it had just about enough snow to be skiable in spots (although the bigger rocks were poking through). At the exit of the lift, there was one snow gun running. I think I can see the reasoning behind this as this spot is the intersection of the Valley House unloading area, the end of the Valley House Traverse, as well as the top of 3-4 trails. It tends to get icy there, and I think they had the gun going to keep the area a bit softer. Guns were also going the full length of Stein's run, and it appeared to have skier's on it as well. I headed over to Snowball and found conditions to be moderately soft. I stuck to the skier's right, which often sees a bit less traffic due to the fact that it sort of drops away from the rest of the trail, and forms almost a little sub-trail of it's own which is separated by a (skiable) embankment. I checked out the natural snow off the side of the trail and found that there was a bit of crust, with variable amounts of new snow on top (I found it ranged from about a dusting to maybe a couple of inches, but had collected to 4 or 5 inches with some wind in spots). I then passed the top of the Spring Fling Chair, and found the next section to have even softer snow due to the fact that much of the traffic headed down Spring Fling. They had left a few small whales on the trail, and they made nice diversions for unweighting. The snow on the lower part of Snowball, was really nice, especially since it had rained last Monday, but actually nice under any conditions with soft edgeable packed powder. The best part about this was that I'm skiing at 2:00 on a holiday afternoon and not having to deal with ice (for the most part). I find that the same thing happens on the trail Tyro at Stowe. Take a mellow blue, a bit out of the way, and moderately low traffic keeps it fresh for quite a while. I think the lack of steep slope basically leads to less hard edge sets, which, in turn, leads to less snow getting scraped off. Couple this with lower traffic and you are in for a smooth ride unless mother nature has dealt you a bad hand of precipitation. I finished off on Racer's Edge which had two snow guns going, and a bit stickier man made in those two spots. Overall, a gun at the beginning of the trail, and a couple at the end made for a pleasant ride so I had to repeat the run twice more. For my next run, I rode the Spring Fling Chair, and cut to the lower portion of Spring Fling after Snowball. I found good snow there, as well as a nice ridge of snow on the skier's left. I could tell from my ride on the Spring Fling Chair, that Spring Fling had much firmer snow than Snowball, but I made one run down to check out the ridge on the left all the way. It had a section of football-sized death cookies around the middle, but was nice overall, pretty challenging actually to hold the line at times with the cookies. After that, I headed home, but I had a great outing. It was nice to ride the Volants after 8 months, and I was reminded of just how damn smooth they are (smoothest ski I've ever ridden which is what clinched my choice). I'm told it's the stainless steel construction that does that. This report probably took almost as long to write as I spent time skiing, but both were a lot of fun. Think snow, conditions were nice (albeit a bit thin on natural trails I'm sure) at the 'bush, but there's always room for a powder day.