Cannon, nh: 02.08.04

riverc0il

riverc0il

New member
although only one days difference, i think i saw a much different side of cannon than the no bull from yesterday displayed. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. cold and windy. i didn't get to the summit until around 10:30 or so and it was -10F with a 20-30mph wind blowing steady. coldest ride up the cannonball quad i can remember, it was a tram day for sure! rule for the day was the cover was much better than last week, but snow quality much worse. i'll blame this on high moisture content in the snow followed by a deep freeze. <BR> <BR>morning was front face per usual. bumps on right side of rocket and zoomer lift were hardpack and unforgiving (would get much better in the PM). paulie's was better skiers right this week, skiers left looked very green by the PM. avalanche had both skiers right and left bumped with groom down the middle a la zoomer. i liked skiers left better personally, but neither was doing it for me. <BR> <BR>returned to the front face in the PM to find rocking bumps skiers right on zoomer and zoomer lift bumps softened up and well formed with more skier traffic. zoomer was great all over the place, except where the side slippers were coming down. <BR> <BR>okay, i have to take a moment here to say THANK YOU cannon! everyone reading this no bull'r knows i railed against cannon HARDCORE last year for plowing bumps everywhere. to date, paulie's and the hards have yet to receive a grooming and the snow is awesome on all! AND rocket and gary's have blue square pitched bumps skiers right AND zoomer and avalanche have bumps both skiers right and left. bumps on taft too, yey! please join in with me and give a standing O to cannon for their commitment to the expert bump/natural snow loving skier. <BR> <BR>upper mountain was DAMN cold, but i went up four times. AM was taft & hards after warming up in the lodge. SO COLD. taft was wind blown but edgable, upper was ugly until just before mid, mid was sah-weet... but i was too cold to enjoy or make good turns. i finished out on a chopped up red bull (what a waste of trees, this run never does anything for me) and went right back into the lodge! returned for my last run on this combination and middle was damn near epic once i was warmer and the sun was out. ducked the rope onto turnpike though this time around! <BR> <BR>three times in a row i did the eaglecliff, zoomer, tramway combo for mittersill/hards. eaglecliff was preferable to the quad, i really like the snow creatures they made! fun fun! mittersill was much like the rest of cannon, much better cover... not as good snow quality as the last weeks. lots of wind blown edgable hard pack, but sweet goodness in the trees if ya know where to look. at the least, there's a solid base now and the rocks are mostly covered. <BR> <BR><FONT COLOR="ff0000">•••••</FONT> of the day: being a friend IS NOT taking your bud who can only snowplow down zoomers bumps! you're not doing him a favor, really! don't get huffy and puffy with a guy who can't parallel, can't square his shoulders, and is leaning back over the tails of his skis! fix those fundamentals on the groomers, then teach em' the bumps! <BR> <BR>on my three tram rides i was checking out the new kinsman glade. couple of REALLY SICK BIRDS planned that line and cut it. WOW, much steeper than i thought it would be. any body duck the rope for it yet? it must need an insane amount of cover for those steep parts to hold up to skier traffic. <BR> <BR>overall, cold and windy with better cover but not as good snow as recent weeks. an enjoyable day out, especially exploring some terrain i hadn't seen before and taking two epics down some nice stuff i discovered over the summer. still waiting for that big one..... <BR> <BR>that is all.
 
OK here is the down low on kinsman, yes i skied it yesterday. I didnt want to say it, dont know why just didnt want to. I know someone up there with a condo and he said he knew where to go so I followed. It is AWESOME. It is nice and steep, and just overall fantastic. Was especially hard to ski with the icy new snow. However it was just a treat. If it is closed be careful sneaking back over to the tram. The tram operaters like nothing better than to report the trail poachers to the authorities. At least that is my experience.
 
Great report. Ditto on all of it. I'd also add that Vistaway had the typical fresh stashes along the left with windblown, moderate cover on the rest. Ravine was not soft, but was edgeable and made for great GS runs. <BR> <BR>Anyone head down Tuckerbrook? It looked pretty sweet from the top, but we opted not to take the time.
 
Ya I had been on Nordic skis for about 3 weeks so my strenght was good. It is just making sure i dont tweak the knee, im good at finessing it by now
 
Tuckerbrook: It's OK, but not great yet. The upper Thirteen Turns still have 2'-3' brush. Lower on the Thirteen Turns is a little better down, where we did some brushing this fall. Took the skis off & walked the Troll Bridge traverse a week ago, but foolishly followed a couple friends across the granite blocks on skis Sunday; even with rock skis, you should still walk it. The lower rolling sections from Coppermine down to Locals & Lemings are in pretty nice shape. Below Locals & Lemings, the Carriage Road is very thin cover. <BR> <BR>Side note re: the Park. I'm not a 'Park Rat', but Cannon has built the biggest park I've ever seen here. I assume CanCat deserves the credit - good work, man! It looks awesome, easily rivalling or exceeding any others in this neighborhood. Not sure what the halfpipe story is - there's none in sight, unless it's hidden down behind TimeZone this year. It's former home stage center in front of the old Peabody Lodge is just a flat groomer to date. Again, the Pipe is not my act, but for a mountain that has a rep as "not board friendly", hopefully those riders will be happy with the park.
 
lftgly, good comments about the pipe and the park, i forgot to mention these i my report. several ripping twin tippers were doing 360 mute grabs all afternoon in the park with boarders doing more revolutions than i could count. the park is attracting the freestylers and the eaglecliff chair is perfect access! cannon really needs that pipe. although last years pipe always looked too flat with poor scraped up snow, not quite what i think a quality freestyler would want for their ideal pipe. but with a pipe, a park, and new beginner terrain (and the return of the bumps!)... cannon is really staking out a claim for itself as a ski area for everyone, not just an expert play ground. <BR> <BR>i'll echo lftgly with a props to cancat for the work in the park! though given the snow making guns have been off for a while now, i doubt a pipe is gonna make an appearence this late in the game. speaking of the guns being off line, what's up with by pass? why are they content not to fire up the guns that have been sitting on the trail for weeks?
 
Ok here's the lowdown: Mid Dec - 1 main snowmaking unit went down for the count - (compressor or pump I'm not sure) This led to a pipe freezing problem - running too close too max (which was much lower due to the unit loss) durring the ultra-cold. As of two weeks ago, 80% of the system was frozen or not able to run due to frozen feed lines. By-pass was still open, but they couldn't water too it. A mystery until they found a huge break at the bottom of the front 5. They managed to thaw enough and patch enough to finish Lower Hard this week, but that's about it. All these problems are worsened by their policy of ending their 24 hour snowmaking on Jan 18th each year. After that they must start up, charge, run, then shut down the whole system between 7pm and 7am every night. That means an 8 hour actual snowmaking time instead of 24. A huge waste IMHO. Anyway, unless a major miracle happens, no Bypass. As for the pipe, It takes almost 2 weeks of 24 hour blowing at decent temps to get enough snow to build the halfpipe the way Cannon does it. If they haven't started on the pipe before Jan 18, they won't go for the pipe unless they have most of the rest of the mountain open because they don't want to pull the recources off another trail to offset the reduced time. I am hoping that enough demand will be seen for having a pipe that the mountain will follow my suggestion to build earth foudations for the pipe which could reduce the needed snow to 1/3 of current needs, Even a superpipe would take less snow than now - though we need to upgrade the grinder too. <BR> <BR>Thank you for your comments on the park! I am very proud of it! I do wish I had more space and snow to build some elements for less specialized users - banked turns, spines, speed rollers for DH race type air etc. If there is enough demand they will let me do it! They heard the cry for bumps (a little), they were going to let me build a small field if we hadn't gotten that wet snow. They didn't flatten everything after either. We'll see how long they can keep the mountain from getting Weatherbee'd! ;-)
 
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