Stratton, VT 12/24/99

<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 12/28/99. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>My family and I drove up to the Sun Bowl Lodge at 8:45 a.m. and found only a dozen cars in the parking lot. Friday was the opening day for the Sun Bowl and hardly anybody was there. All day long the number of skiers was surprisingly moderate for the first day of a three-day weekend. Lift tickets were priced at the midweek rate, so I skied for $27.50 with my Express Card. <BR> <BR>During the week I had been watching the weather reports and praying for a dump. Instead there had been good snowmaking temperatures and snow flurries. At Stratton the snow flurries on Thursday night/Friday morning had left 2-3 inches of soft fluff on top of the man-made. Our first run was down Sunriser, the WIDE cruiser facing the Sun Bowl Lodge. The resort had groomed the middle 100 feet and had left wide sections of natural snow on either side. Normally I do not ski Sunriser -- I prefer narrow and twisty trails -- but on Friday Sunriser was lots of fun. My older son and I cruised way off to the side, enjoying the thin layer of powder. <BR> <BR>Later we crossed over to the main part of the mountain. We rode the new Ursa Express lift through blasting snow guns to the top. The summit was clear, but a persistent cloud hung over the middle of the upper mountain trails. The snow on North American was much better than it had been the previous Saturday, but you had to cope with poor visibility as you skied through that cloud. After a snack at the Mid-Mountain Lodge, we headed over to the Snow Bowl trails. Compared to the previous weekend they were in much better shape and had far fewer skiers on them. After a few runs through the cloud, we hastened back to the Sun Bowl where the sky was clear and where we still found some fluffy snow during the afternoon. <BR> <BR>All in all it was a terrific ski day. Stratton has done a great job opening a sizable fraction of the mountain despite the paucity of natural <BR>snow.