Bretton Woods, 1/23, Cannon/ B.W/ Loon 1/24 ( all in 1 d

joegm

joegm

New member
well, we finally cracked, we thought we could fight it off but in the end it all comes full circle... back to the dreaded loon mtn corp. <BR>thursday at bretton; very cold but not as bad as it was the previous week...about 5f in the morning and a little wind... the place was dead, as usual except for a salomon dealer demo day...very nice packed powder with about 1 inch of fresh snow to refresh the surface was found... the woods are still pretty nice but are starting to get packed down in this little dry spell.. believe it or not the one inch really helped out in the steeper parts like the entrance to the john graves glades... the cherry glades are becoming very packed as they are the main attraction for the novices.. the skiers right trees are the best bet for snow but the access to them really is a pain ... so at about 2pm and about 42000 mogul turns later, my buddy gil and i pretty much knew that after 8 weeks of bretton and one day of big k, it was time to hit cannon. and that was the beginning of the end!!!! <BR>cannon on friday, certainly pleasant in terms of crowds... yes it was empty.. it was cold, about the same as bretton on thursday, but it seemed a little more windy.... we loaded at about 8:45 and found really nice edgable groomed snow pretty much everywhere.. the front face was not really true pp , but it was certainly edgable and nothing to complain about as far as the hardpacked factor....unfortunately, cannon is a racer's mountain.. i like cannon , i really do, from a theoretical standpoint.. it's old school, unassuming and simple.. it's the anti les otten mountian...unfortunately, they have absolutely no respect at all for true freestyle, as in moguls... they let one of the steepest pitches they have in paulies bump up to these monster moguls that are exposed and are essentially unskiable to anyone but j. mosely and d. weinbrect <BR>hardscrabble is not maintained , bites for access and is just not worth it except after fresh snow. ( for me anyways ) we took three runs and after having the front of my skis run over buy that wanna be bode miller loser ( u know the guy... the 38 yr old white male with the x screams and the 15 mm risers who makes a turn from his heel every 50 yards or so and thinks he is just da bomb even though he could not turn a door knob , never mind skis... we basically said the hell with this... but not before having a nice sit down with the mountian gm, nat ( not a bad guy !!!), who it turns out, claims to be a bumper... presented him with all the beefs, can u leave a 15 foot wide side of a blue trail untouched? any chance of a blue trail being taken and blown on and maintain for bumps? any chance at all of anything but a friggin 31 degree pitch being allowed to bump up? nat said he agreed with us but would have to take it to a higher power... nat also express surprise that the line under the front face triple was groomed flat , but said that may be because they blew snow on that line for the first time... when it was suggested that reseeding and resetting the bumps like killington does, may be a reasonable alternative, no response was given... so we decided to go see the gm at bretton and beg for mercy, becasue despite brettons all out blitz of new marketing and hogwash about bumps , bowls , chutes , parks and pipes, less than half of these have actually materialized... and all of their little bumps segments had been smashed on thursday... we pleaded our case to the bretton gm... waste of time as he basically laughed us out of the office and claimed to not be aware of the ability of reseed bumps with a groomer.. no that they would anyway, apparently. buddy gil and i said the hell with loon this year because last year, during the bad year, the killer intermediate bump run that loon has under the quad was open about 5 days during the season.. they made no effort at all to blow on it or maintain it...driving by loon in the morning, both of us would look over there and see what appeared to be bumps... all the other logical reasons not to ski loon ( crowds, crap snow, bad skiers ) would take over however, and we would head north to bretton for the sweet pp and no crowds... well bretton is obviously reneging on the promise of bumps ( among other things ) so we had a dilemma.. sitting in the bretton parking lot all pissed off ( u r not supposed to be pissed skiing ) we said all right lets go check it out... we shot back to lincoln, sneaked onto the quad and stole a run down under the quad...and there it was... the perfect intermediate bump run... it had decent snow, it was maintained and had the bumps reset recently , and it had actual lines.. oh sure the occasional 10 foot flat spread between bumps existed from the typical loon-ite trying to side slip down, but it was rare. ( unlike at cannon where every bump was about 12 feet apart on paulies.. separated by legit ice in the troughs ) so the bottom line to this ridiculously long no bull that probably nobody cares about because , apparently, nobody is out there trying to learn to ski moguls properly and looking for something other than a 30 degree ptich to do it on, is that we broke down and brought the mid week season pass to loon.... maybe we are fruitcakes.. buying a season pass for what is essentially a 300 yard strip of moguls.. but it is accessed by a hs quad and has snow blown on it and , apparently, is going to be reset every now and then, according to the mountian operations guy at loon.. i learned to ski at loon, grew to hate it, and now i'm back. why, becasue as much as i still can't stand it, it's the only place i can find, other than k mart, that seems to put some effort into maintaining a mogul run that an intermediate bumper can get something done on... why oh why resorts take novice skiers and put them on green trails to teach them to ski but give beginner and intermediate bumpers nothing but paulies folly is beyond me... yeah stowe and jay have some decent pitches in sections of trails, but none have dedicated a whole trail that has a reasonable pitch with good access to it, to moguls.. it really sucks and it is really frustrating... and this point was underscored thurday at bretton when, gil and i, just to stir up the pot, wandered into that salomom dealer demo area and asked the salomon guy where the 1080 mogul ski was.. his response, " we are not even mass producing that next year.. u have to special order it if u want that... which i can't see why you would " r u kidding me? this guy had not one ski with a shovel under 108... by the end of the day gil and i figured it all out.. we can't buy mogul skis becasue ski companies don't make them becasue they don't sell becasue no one wants them becasue no one skis moguls becase they are to tough becase they are to steep because ski areas, despite pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into parks and pipes and shutting down entire trails for races, somehow feel they cannot afford to give up one blue trail for bumps, which may actually encourage people to try them and maybe , god forbid, actually find out that they can be fun... sorry for the ridiculous rant.. it's been building up.. se ya next week from, guess where,( can't believe i'm saying this) loon, baby.. <BR>p.s to the jack ass who almost killed me at cannon... anyone can ski fast... the best skiers can ski fast and slow... anywhere, any time, on any trail!learn how to turn em, you fool!!!
 
talisman, if u read this...did tenny have a dedicated blue run for bumps that u can remember?.. thanks
 
interesting rant. lol. however; i must offer a discent and write some contrasting opinions on your experience, as i think it was more just the day you were there rather than regular mountain operations. <BR> <BR>this year, i've seen rocket (blue square off zoomer chair) half bumped more often than not. also soft bumps can usually be found on blue sqaure micky's margin (connector trail between top of zoomer chair and gary's). additionally, the often overlooked banshee slopes are squares i believe, and i can always find some bumps over there. <BR> <BR>i do agree with you, it would be an excellent idea for ski areas as a whole (including cannon) to let a few intermediate slopes form bump runs. when i first started getting into bumps, guess where i leanred? on cannon's avalanche, paulie's, and zoomer. not what i would recommend for other people to do, but it's worked amazingly well for me and they are still some of my favorite trails. <BR> <BR>in reference to paulie's, last time i was there the bumps were starting to get big. yea, that's tough, but some people like them, i don't. different strokes for different folks. from what i've seen, cannon does occasionally groom their bump runs flat when they get too sketchy or the bumps too nasty. zoomer did recently have lots of snow blown on it which would explain it being flat as a pancake. there's always mittersill... <BR> <BR>but cannon's reputation is well earned. i've seen blue squares turn into double blacks on occasion. you can have an epic day on a trail one week, and the worst run of your life the next. it's the nature of the mountain that the trails have variable conditions. <BR> <BR>regarding tenney, i posted a december report on here i believe, so you may want to check that out for a report on the mountain. when i was there, i did find a half groomed half bumped blue top to bottom under the lift and some other trails in similiar condition, i don't know if that's regular practice. some of their black bump runs had very little pitch and would qualify for blues at any other resort if groomed. probably worth checking out for what you're looking for i think.
 
interesting rant. lol. however; i must offer a discent and write some contrasting opinions on your experience, as i think it was more just the day you were there rather than regular mountain operations. <BR> <BR>this year, i've seen rocket (blue square off zoomer chair) half bumped more often than not. also soft bumps can usually be found on blue sqaure micky's margin (connector trail between top of zoomer chair and gary's). additionally, the often overlooked banshee slopes are squares i believe, and i can always find some bumps over there. <BR> <BR>i do agree with you, it would be an excellent idea for ski areas as a whole (including cannon) to let a few intermediate slopes form bump runs. when i first started getting into bumps, guess where i leanred? on cannon's avalanche, paulie's, and zoomer. not what i would recommend for other people to do, but it's worked amazingly well for me and they are still some of my favorite trails. <BR> <BR>in reference to paulie's, last time i was there the bumps were starting to get big. yea, that's tough, but some people like them, i don't. different strokes for different folks. from what i've seen, cannon does occasionally groom their bump runs flat when they get too sketchy or the bumps too nasty. zoomer did recently have lots of snow blown on it which would explain it being flat as a pancake. there's always mittersill... <BR> <BR>but cannon's reputation is well earned. i've seen blue squares turn into double blacks on occasion. you can have an epic day on a trail one week, and the worst run of your life the next. it's the nature of the mountain that the trails have variable conditions. <BR> <BR>maybe check out ragged? i posted a december report on here i believe, so you may want to check that out for a report on the mountain. when i was there, i did find a half groomed half bumped blue top to bottom under the lift and some other trails in similiar condition, i don't know if that's regular practice. some of their black bump runs had very little pitch and would qualify for blues at any other resort if groomed. probably worth checking out for what you're looking for i think.
 
sorry for the double post! i tried to correct an error in my last paragraph after clicking post, my bad. that should read correctly in the second post, i was referring to ragged, not tenney.
 
As a Cannon local, believe me, joegm, I know whereof you speak, and agree wholeheartedly. I think there is some hope for a change from Cannon's practice of grooming "wall-to-wall" in the recent past few seasons. <BR> <BR>I've talked with the ski patrol director, who I think is sympathetic to our complaint of "why do the groomers eradicate every mogul every night?". He's expressed an interest in leaving at least one side of Zoomer (and perhaps other trails) ungroomed, groom the middle occasionally, and one side nightly, to accomodate all abilities. <BR> <BR>Unfortunately, I've also heard a groomer operator explain that the "ski patrol gives us a list of what to groom every night - then we basically just do whatever we want - ha ha ha". <BR> <BR>rivercoil is right, there have been some encouraging signs this season, but the groomers went on the war path two weeks ago after the snowmakers last hurrah, and almost everything except Paulies was flattened last weekend. I hope it's temporary. <BR> <BR>I'm afraid it's all part of "the Big Easy" marketing effort to dumb-down the mountain, and try to erase it's rep as an experts area. <BR> <BR>Sorry you crossed paths with a bonehead at Cannon. Just returned from Loon, and I've gotta say, there's more boneheads-per-acre there than Cannon, at least weekends. You should enjoy the threedom pass, if you can ski weekdays.
 
"I'm afraid it's all part of "the Big Easy" marketing effort to dumb-down the mountain, and try to erase it's rep as an experts area." <BR> <BR>is this for real? i thought that new slogan was meant to be tongue in cheek... like HaHa, Big Easy... yea right... LOL. i know they put an effort into making the new beginners area (btw, skiing mittersill two weeks ago i cut through the new beginner's area at mittersill's base they cut this summer.... VERY NICE!). but are they really trying to dumb down the mountain that much? i mean, is it a fact that the grooming on zoomer and avalanche are to remove the bumps, not just to pack down snow making efforts? <BR> <BR>if they are plowing bumps in an effort to make cannon easier, they are shooting themselves in the foot. they are only encouraging yahoos to get in over their head and go flying down the front five in a flying V or parallel further cripling the snow conditions. not allowing steep trails to bump up is actually more dangerous i would think. <BR> <BR>thanks for any answers you can provide lftgly, as it seems you have the inside info. hopefully the grooming was just to perserve snow making and base as i had though. if not, things could be getting ugly!
 
river and lftgly, u guys both make good points... i will just add 2 points to ponder... 1)the dumbing down idea seems to hold water...except for the fact that most areas seem to be dedicating substantial resources into building these massive booters and parks to huck off of... just who is hucking off of these things seems to me to be pretty limited ( unemployed teenagers ? ) as the reasonable person would probably deduce that, if they don't know what the hell they are doing, they probably might not want to attempt it...one thing that drove us nuts on friday at cannon is the huge booter and table set up at the bottom of the triple on skiers right just before you make the left hand turn to the triple... how much snow they had to blow to create this jump that maybe one half of one percent of all the skiers may have any use for is beyond me...they can do this but they can't spend a few hours building some moguls lines under the triple.. all they can do is groom it flat.. this we found particularly annoying. 2) like we tried to tell nat the gm at cannon, all of this new school stuff is awesome.. i love watching these kids and what they can pull... but lets cut the crap.. it's a fantasy for those of us who have to earn a living and pay a mortgage... going big off these booters just isn't going to happen for most of us... moguls represent the attainable for the average guy who is above average in ski skills but still needs to make a living.. and these resorts seemingly do nothing , and i do mean nothing, to encourage it....it's almost like, "well if you ski moguls, you must be an expert already, so ah, here's paulies for ya ( or flume at loon ) , mr expert" like there is some sort of pill u take and all of a sudden you are a bump skier "...they fail to address the fact that the average recreational skier, is gonna at least try and get down the bump run at least once... and more than likely proceed to trash it to where it becomes even more difficult to ski properly for anyone but a true mogul expert...the funny thing is all of these new school parks and tricks were started by real true mogul skiers... but places like cannon seem to be forgeting that (cannon of all places!!!! back in the day, before groomers, everything was a bump run until it snowed about a foot and smooth it all out again !!!! )... and i don't mean to beating up on cannon becasue they are all guilty of it except , frankly, killington. i care about learning to ski right, proper and correctly. anyone out there who is legit knows what i am talking about.. and i told nat the gm right to his face, i can't do that on paulies.. i can't maintain a perfectly stacked position with hips aligned and feet actively being pulled back under my hips and being on the balls of my feet 100% of the time, on paulies folly... maybe i can feel like i am getting something done on paulies if there is 18 inches of fresh snow on it, but at cannon how often does that happen... right now, i'm just not good enough... some day i hope to be.. but i do know that just slammin the sides of my skis against the sides of the bumps of paulies is not gonna get me to where i want to be... that may be fine for some folks who think that thats what mogul skiing is... but we know that that is not really what good mogul skiing is... it is absolutely unfair that seemingly everyone else , racers, beginners, snowboarders, intermediate cruisers, new school hucksters, x scream man with the 15mm riser who likes to turn no more than 4 times on his way down avalanche, gets catered to and are given the opportunity to learn on a progressive plane, easy to medium to hard.. everyone that is except bumpers...maybe i'm a whiner, and cry baby, but thats just how i see it... thanks for the supportive posts
 
joegm, good points! definitly not being a cry baby as it's all valid points. <BR> <BR>regarding those kickers, for clearity to those who haven't seen them... they are on the zoomer trail right below the tramway cutback. today when i saw them, my mouth droped. at first i said "why?" then i looked at the placement, and it's actually excellent placement. i mean, no one ever does anything but make a huge arcing carve back to the triple once they get below the cut back on zoomer. <BR> <BR>that being said, i didn't see one person hit it. also, they are semi-useless with signs posted saying no inverts. c'mon. i know it's for safety, but why make a kicker that huge then? that's what those kickers are for? any ways, that said, i still found them kinda disgusting and outta place on zoomer. isn't parkway suppose to be the terrain park? <BR> <BR>you are right joegm in that this is catoring to the lowest common denomenator since no one was even hitting them. they are actually catoring to people who don't even regularly ski cannon. maybe it was all done like this for the superbowl two-fer? try to draw in more people that might be skiing for the first time at that mountain. <BR> <BR>good point about those skiers that 'trash.' that aweful scraped between the bumps stuff is nasty. i too am working on my bump form and technique, but i don't feel the need to be 100% perfect to enjoy the bumps. when it becomes a situation that i'm technically oriented to that point, it wouldn't be fun... and why ski if not to have fun? but i too still long for square bump runs to work the techniqe. we'll have to see what develops.
 
Hunt for the mogul was something I tried while at Cannon a couple of weeks ago and other than Mittersill and Paulies there weren't any. Magic has started grooming the bumps off of most of their trails now, so maybe brutal grooming is a trend because mountains like Stratton and Okemo are successful. <BR> <BR>Joe, Tenney has only a couple of trails with bumps. The glades had the best snow, but Hornet a black with a varying pitch had bumps for most of 1400 verticle feet. There were a couple of other short bump runs too. Tenney's blacks weren't particularly steep so it may fit the bill for you.
 
Interesting thread concerning decent intermediate bump runs. Once a year I go to Snowbird (Utah), and, needless to say, the majority of their bump runs are skiable by about 1% of the clientele. But they do allow several low-intermediate trails to bump up (most notably Madam Annie), and its great for average-level bump skier's like me. <BR> <BR>I ski primarily Stratton and Okemo in East. Stratton offers choice of brutally groomed (they pride themselves on number of groomed trails each day), or some pretty steep bump runs with rock-hard VW-size bumps (e.g. bottom section of World Cup, and Upper Downeaster). Okemo is somewhat similar, except that bump runs are not as steep as Stratton, and several (Plunge, Punch Line) have one-groomer-wide bailout zone on the side. Just recently, they allowed a very mild Blue (Lower Tomohawk) to bump up, but it was short lived. I've made the same request as joegm at Okemo to no avail. <BR> <BR>I do agree that once a place starts winning "grooming awards" from the ski magazines, they are immediately subjected to management pressure to offer two surfaces: daily groomered to stay in the running for next year's awards, and never-groomed bump runs complete with icy troughs that they know will be ignored by both groomed-only skiers and ski magazines alike.
 
This is an interesting discussion. My two cents: I ski primarily at Mad River Glen and it's fantastic for those looking for intermediate bump runs. The mountain has an expert reputation, but because they barely groom anything at all, there are lots of less steep runs that bump up nicely. You can try Quacky, Rockefeller's, Waterfall, Catamount Bowl, and Lower Antelope to start with. This is where I learned to ski the bumps. The better-than-average skiers and no-snowboarding policy also keeps the moguls tighter and more even than at most other places.
 
I agree with BD, there is lots of interesting intermediate bump runs at MRG. Lower Antelope is probably the best intermediate bump run I took in my life. I really wonder if there is a longer bump run in eastern North America, especially as the "42" of Le Massif doesn't exist anymore... <BR> <BR>Any idea ?
 
FRANK AND BD, U R ABSOLUTELY RIGHT ABOUT MRG...i love mrg but unfortuately it's a 2.45 min drive from where i ski out of...another problem is they r limited in their snowmaking. and believe me , i know that this is good and bad... and it can be very bad when the fake breaks down into crap snow i know.. but i just can't help but be frustrated at the fact that most other places dedicate resources into nearly every other type of skiing/boarding/tubing, except moguls... theoretically, if mrg did allow boarders, is there any possibility at all that they would set up their half pipe in a location like antelope.. of course not, because it would be considered to much of a pain in u know what to access... mrg doesn't set up their race courses in out of the way locations with no snowmaking on them either.. my point is everyone gets accomadated except bumpers... resorts can rebuit bumps with machines and they do when world cup contests come to town... but other than that , it's the hell with bump skiers... they pour money into and maintain race cources for recreational race leagues, but because there are no recreational bump leagues, it's the hell with bumpers, again... and it is frustrating...even though i really can't stand loon, this run they have apparently dedicated to bumps is a 4 minute quad ride up and is about 320 yards long... it's a great run to learn on or to perfect bump skills on.. it's probably to tame for someone who thinks they are a real legit bumper, but in my skiing experiences ( about 60 days a year ) the only place i have seen more than a few bump skiers who could not use work on their technique is k mart and occasionaly mad river...everyone else i have seen could, if they were serious about improving, greatly benefit from a run like the one loon has... like glen plake says , there is no where to hide when you are skiing bumps, you can't fake being a good bump skier, becasue it's obvious if you are in the back seat and just buckin broncoin down....most people are buckin bronoco... that bode miller wanna be can fake it blasting down some groomed black with his x screams and stiff world cup race boots becasue he might look cool to the untrained eye... u don't look cool flailing about and slamming your skis off of bumps as big as cars with ice in between them... u look like a dope!!!! who is probably gonna hurt yourself.... and part of this is because at most places, all they have to ski bumps on is a run like paulies folly at cannon or hardscrabble at cannon , which , by the time, it is accessed and skied, a racer could have pounded out 4 runs on a race run. i'm convinced it's a losing battle... between the general apathy for skiing bumps, the general apathy for improving, the overwhelming push by the industry to make it easier to ski, and ski area's refusal to let runs bump up and maintain them, i figure it's a lost cause.. but u never know i guess...
 
Yes, Jo, you're right saying sometimes it feels like a lost cause. I think it's the same thing all over eastern north America, as the skiers come older and still want to ski everywhere on the mountains... even if they're not able to ski the trails they used to take. Then, the ski areas scrap many nice trails to make them : Wide, perfect base, super grooming, etc. I'm really sad to see that, as I lost many of my favorite trails, in the last years. Some twisty, long, narrow classic trails that are now some large boulevards. It's generally the same thing for bump fields in almost every ski areas here. I don't really know the situation in New England, as I just skied 5 times there (2 Jay, 1 Smuggs, 1 MRG and 1 Burke), but in Quebec, in 15 years, I've seen an average of at least 3-4 destroyed bump run for a new one. The poorest thing is that generally, the ski areas that don't groom almost every trails finish by having big financial problems ... or real bad conditions when the natural snow is missing. It's one of the reason why I really often go to ski areas like Alta (Qc) now. <A HREF="http://www.firsttracksonline.com/discus2/messages/16/1855.html?1043027351" TARGET="_top">http://www.firsttracksonline.com/discus2/messages/16/1855.html?1043027351</A> It's not quite big, but with 27 bump runs on 30 trails (lol), there is always a nice choice of soft moguls ! To finish, the ultimate bump trail I've ever seen in every ski areas I went is Contour, at Orford (you can see the relation with the nickname). It's a little bit in the same kind than MRG's Fall Line, but it's 10 times greater at least ;) It's not especially an intermediate one, but on a powder day, talking of heaven is really not enough to describe it !!!
 
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