Greek Peak, NY 12-30-12

EMSC

Well-known member
More pow.

Saturday had brought another storm system into the East dropping about 6-7" at Greek Peak, but followed by good NW winds which was adding another fluffy inch or two to the total via lake effect. Squalls continued on and off throughout Sunday. The settled snow depth in the woods at Greek is now in the 2-2.5 foot range at this point and things are really starting to ski well. The winds did blow most of the snow off the crest of a couple trails like Hercules and Zeus, but there are ways to ski what you want when you've got as many hundreds of days there as I do.

My brother and I met up with an eastern uphill skiing machine/ex GP racer we grew up with at the Peak who is fairly well known in eastern backcountry circles. An 8:30am start on Chair 1 brought 1st tracks on Odyssey which was surprisingly bumped up from the day prior (they finally opened it on natural snow only). After a second run there, we shifted to The Olympian which was still inexplicably marked closed. Clearly it had been well skied on Saturday at some point, but with several inches of un-tracked light fluff on top it skied very well (lots of 1st tracks today \:D/ ).

We then moved across back to Chair 4 with multiple laps on Hercules which once below the very top ridge was un-tracked goodness. Eventually we tried out other variations on the hill for old times sake such as upper atlas to Ronnies Run (literally, not the new glade). It was deep with snow though not fully cleared out of underbrush. Finally we couldn't resist hitting the un-tracked right side of the Fields with it's open skiing and decent pitch. It appeared that maybe one person had skied it before we got there at ~12:30.

Everyone had other things to attend to in the afternoon so we had to call it a day despite much good skiing left available. The only bad skiing on Sunday was where the GP snowmaking slop had been put down. Which is a scary statement really. Everything skis great - except where something actively had been done by the resort personnel - Yikes!

A side note is that the triple chair remained closed while they make snow on it (Hmmmm 2.5 feet of settled - though not compacted - natural snow isn't enough to open some of the flattest terrain in the east?).

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How cool is that? - CO resident back to see the family for the holidays (reading between the lines) scores some great powder at the same time! Good for you - looks like you had fun and interesting to see some shots of Greek Peak.
 
I think that EMSC skied more powder on this trip than he has the past three years on the Front Range. :stir:

As my uncle from Dryden would say, "now that you've gotten that (Colorado) out of your system, it's time for you to move back near your family!"
 
Did you hit any rock on Herc? Zeus was much better. I was surprised to see it open today with it being bare at the headwall.
 
jamesdeluxe":302yqc7y said:
the past three years on the Front Range.
That would be last season and this season. 2010-11 was record high at some Front Range Areas, so even EMSC probably got some.
 
jamesdeluxe":1ehs49bg said:
I think that EMSC skied more powder on this trip than he has the past three years on the Front Range.

Sorry James, Tony has it right. I had literally zero powder last year (and previously this season), but at least 6 powder days in the huge 10-11 season. Of course those numbers are despite (or because of) the little guy keeping my time on the hill very limited.

Powderqueen":1ehs49bg said:
Did you hit any rock on Herc? Zeus was much better. I was surprised to see it open today with it being bare at the headwall.

Not really. We came in a touch below the top of the headwall and then stayed far skiers left until almost 2/3 of the way down the pitch to keep in the decent snow. Zeus looked fabulous on the 30th, but we couldn't quite get there through the woods and were too hesitant to be so obvious and duck the rope on top of Hercules. They were blowing snow on the chair 5 return trail and tons of snowmobiles going up from base of Zeus to the triple, etc... A bit riskier than places no one was around like Olympian and Herc.
 
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