Day 44: Untracked all day.
Powder Mountain never fails to deliver, and Saturday was no exception. Given the crowding in LCC on Friday we opted to avoid that junk show on Saturday and head up to Pow Mow.
The size of our group, however, can't be understated for in addition to Tony Crocker and yours truly we also had mrgskier and his family, rdwore, Bobby Danger, AmyZ, Rogerk, my buddy Eddie who lives up there and two of his friends, and Flyover and a friend of his from Seattle. Bobby Danger bumped into baldyskier but I never met up with him. Keeping a group like that together is like trying to herd feral cats, and we broke up almost immediately when Bobby noticed on the first lift ride that he lost his lift ticket. Others splintered off throughout the morning, leaving a core group of 8 of us.
We figured that a good way to reach the Lightning Ridge snowcat would be to drop down from Hidden Lake through Powder Country. That turned out to be a truly bad decision for the junk show didn't avoid Powder Mountain on Saturday, either. We encountered a line of ~140 people waiting for the one bus bringing folks back from Powder Country.
It probably took us a good 45 minutes to get back to the ski area, so I figured that Lightning Ridge would have a long line for the cat, too. It actually didn't, perhaps due to the fact that each run is now up to $18. No matter, skiing this much untracked is worth the price.
Crowding in other areas of the resort, however, continued. We showed up at Hidden Lake at 1:30pm, an hour late for our lunch rendezvous, and the line to place a food order still stretched out the door of the building. Seeking more capacity we skied down to the lodge at Timberline, and even there at 2pm there was hardly a seat to be found.
I just bought food items that wouldn't require waiting in line: chili, Cheetos and a cookie. We still barely made it back to Lightning Ridge in time for the last cat of the day.
The snow quality made putting up with the crowds tolerable, and while I didn't hear that Alta was all that bad on Saturday I'm having a difficult time believing that. We noted that we got a Pow Mow lift ticket and two snowcat rides for less than the cost of a single day ticket at some Vermont resorts.
I haven't made a video in a while, and after the technological issues I've suffered through over the past 48 hours to get this one edited and compiled I now remember why I don't do one that often anymore. 720p HD is available by changing the setting on the lower right hand corner of the player. Enjoy.
Powder Mountain never fails to deliver, and Saturday was no exception. Given the crowding in LCC on Friday we opted to avoid that junk show on Saturday and head up to Pow Mow.
The size of our group, however, can't be understated for in addition to Tony Crocker and yours truly we also had mrgskier and his family, rdwore, Bobby Danger, AmyZ, Rogerk, my buddy Eddie who lives up there and two of his friends, and Flyover and a friend of his from Seattle. Bobby Danger bumped into baldyskier but I never met up with him. Keeping a group like that together is like trying to herd feral cats, and we broke up almost immediately when Bobby noticed on the first lift ride that he lost his lift ticket. Others splintered off throughout the morning, leaving a core group of 8 of us.
We figured that a good way to reach the Lightning Ridge snowcat would be to drop down from Hidden Lake through Powder Country. That turned out to be a truly bad decision for the junk show didn't avoid Powder Mountain on Saturday, either. We encountered a line of ~140 people waiting for the one bus bringing folks back from Powder Country.
It probably took us a good 45 minutes to get back to the ski area, so I figured that Lightning Ridge would have a long line for the cat, too. It actually didn't, perhaps due to the fact that each run is now up to $18. No matter, skiing this much untracked is worth the price.
Crowding in other areas of the resort, however, continued. We showed up at Hidden Lake at 1:30pm, an hour late for our lunch rendezvous, and the line to place a food order still stretched out the door of the building. Seeking more capacity we skied down to the lodge at Timberline, and even there at 2pm there was hardly a seat to be found.
I just bought food items that wouldn't require waiting in line: chili, Cheetos and a cookie. We still barely made it back to Lightning Ridge in time for the last cat of the day.
The snow quality made putting up with the crowds tolerable, and while I didn't hear that Alta was all that bad on Saturday I'm having a difficult time believing that. We noted that we got a Pow Mow lift ticket and two snowcat rides for less than the cost of a single day ticket at some Vermont resorts.
I haven't made a video in a while, and after the technological issues I've suffered through over the past 48 hours to get this one edited and compiled I now remember why I don't do one that often anymore. 720p HD is available by changing the setting on the lower right hand corner of the player. Enjoy.
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