Burke Mt., VT 1/25/00

Mike · Apr 18, 2000

(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 1/26/00. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.) Since I decided to take the rest of the week off to celebrate our actual snow, I thought I'd make my ride to Maine a little bit longer by going from Tewksbury, MA to Bethel, ME by way of Burke Mountain. Got an early start at 5:30 AM to beat the storm (it worked) and drove the 175 miles to Burke in just about 2 and 1/2 hours. It's nice to take trip that's almost all highway miles. Got to Burke early enough to hang out and take our time getting outfitted. Got on the first chair at 9, and spent the morning skiing various different runs on both sides of the mountain. Burke is set up with an east and a west side. Today, the west side was almost McSkiing, with everything groomed and buffed. The east side, on the other hand, was completely ungroomed, and had all sorts of new snowmaking whales on some of the trails. The first run of the morning was down something that wasn't all that steep, but was bumps non stop from top to bottom (East Bowl run). That run sucked the life out me and my friend, so we retired to the west side to ski groomers and get our legs under us before re-trying the bumps. Broke for an early lunch at 11, and the snow started. As others have described, it basically dumped at over an inch an hour until about 2, at which time it slowed down to intermittent snow, sleet, snain, etc. During the early afternoon hours, you could actually ski the same run that you had just done, and your tracks would be completely covered. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing on the east side in the now snow covered bumps. The cover on some of the trails was rather thin, and the new snow didn't allow you to see what you were skiing on, so now my nice new Volkl's have a couple of core shots in them. One of the main reasons that we went to Burke was for tree skiing. I was under the impression that there were a lot of glades that are suitable for intermediate tree skiers, but we never found any that fit that description. The glades that we did find weren't covered enough to hide all the deadfall, so we pretty much stayed out of the woods (except for one trip which resulted in a huge bruise on my elbow). I would love to return to Burke and ski it with someone who knows the mountain. I have a great desire to ski thru the gnarly terrain, but unfortunately my ability doesn't quite match up. After the skiing, spent a lovely 2+ hours white knuckled driving across Route 2 to Maine, where I look forward to first tracks of freshies tomorrow morning at Sunday River. Rock skis will be the order of the day, and hopefully some of their tree runs will open up.

Burke Mt., VT 1/25/00

Mike

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