Mad River Glen, VT 1/18/00

<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 1/20/00. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>The plan was to meet at the single at 10, take one run and if it was too cold and/or the snow was substandard, drive home. When I met Matt, it was around -5 at the base and the report said something to the effect of "wicked cold". Rather than buy a one ride to test the conditions I just went for the half day and planned to burn rubber in order to get 5 runs in (the minimum if you want your $/run to be less than a $5 one-ride ticket). <BR> <BR>We were both bundled heavily and on the first ride up noticed that it didnt really seem that cold out.. hmm.. At the summit, we glanced at the thermometer and it said, to our astonishment, 17 degrees! About twenty degrees WARMER than at the bottom. We swore it must be wrong, the report at the bottom said it would be 17 BELOW. We sped off in the direction of Paradise and soon found ourselves sweating profusely -- a couple of suckers tricked by an inversion. <BR> <BR>There is a ton of new blowdown at the top of Paradise, and it made finding the traverse to our intended route (PL) tricky. After some thrashing we found it, untracked and waiting for us. I dont think I've ever skied that chute so fast and direct. The snow was pretty light except for a few notable slabby spots where the wind had worked it. All the landings were soft as down though. That big s turn about midway down, with the cliffs in it, was a blast and we both took it in big sweeping arcs. <BR> <BR>After a slabby run down the standard Paradise we hit the double and headed out to Slalom Glades via the LT. We debated for a second over the closed sign but then remembered that there's pretty much always a sign there. As usual, this turned out to be a wise decision. It was totally untracked. The first drop was barely even noticable, even though we both took direct lines. There was at least a foot and a half of light powder down the headwall and it didnt get slabby till we hit Birdland. Such a good run bore repeating, and we passed a couple of other lawbreakers the second time around. There was still plenty left for a third but we had other fish to fry... <BR> <BR>Last run was to be a long one, so we set out for the 20th. Like the top of Paradise, there has been a lot of blowdown across the traverse. The far out sections arent bad, but I think the first few people who did it this year started too low and you end up having to play Tarzan over some huge downed trees. Matt and I tried to cross above it and this only got us into more trouble. We ended up too high and had to descend through really dense trees and blowdown in the UFO landing zone. After that adventure the bobsled section was a blast -- thanks to Nick for clearing some of the more annoying roadblocks. <BR> <BR>Matt wanted to show me some lines that he recently found so after a break we started another bushwhack. We overshot our goal by a bit but still ended up skiing some sweet lines. There must be a higher way into there cause we pretty much started where the main traverse ended and there was still beaver-cut stuff extending above us. Once again we had first tracks, but it turned out to be slabbier than we had expected. Still tons of fun and loads better than the McCrap I've been biding so much of my time on this winter. It took us an hour to get up and back down -- a great end to one hell of a whirlwind weekend.