Cannon, NH: 02/12/05

riverc0il

riverc0il

New member
what a difference a day makes! this may surprise a lot of people, but saturday i had a way better day of skiing than friday despite friday having the fresh snow friday. saturday was a top notch ski day of the finest proportions.

porter (salida) and i got to cannon tram at 8:30 and booted up. from the summit, we wasted no time in going taft/upper hard/middle hard/red ball for our first run which was fantastic!! so snow seemed to be slightly lighter than the day before, so soft loose & packed powder was the rule. next up was vista way/bypass/paulie's extension/avalanche. vista was no better than friday (total crap), bypass was scraped with rough bumps, paulie's extension skied well, and skier's right avalanche was phenomenal still holding lots of unpacked snow.

avalanche and upper/middle hard were by far the runs of the day on cannon proper. away from cannon proper, the saddle was as busy as i've ever seen it! :shock: actually, saturday was the busiest i've ever seen cannon since i've been skiing there. the tram was a two car wait at one point with the lifties pre-herding people into the loading area 70 at a time, and the peabody quad looked to have a solid 5+ minute wait at least when we took lunch. i couldn't believe it! where were all these people during the rest of the season? obviously, a bunch of people weren't jonesing for turns too bad and waited for the big dump to get out. hopefully now that everyone has it outta there system and an awesome base has been laid down, one good foot of fresh light powder will make things epic.

everything was open except the front face glades, kinsman, and tramline. like i said, the base now is fantastic to build on but definitely not enough for these trails. another foot of fresh may open up additional possibilities. it snowed throughout the afternoon, so an inch or more was picked up throughout the day. only down part of the day were the beginners snow plowing and slip sliding down taft slalom!!! cannon should have that trail marked experts only and thin cover for everyone's benefit. what started out as a great run got worn down to the point that there were no safe ways around the rock band by the end of the day. i advise cutting in from upper ravine just below the rocks (hopefully cannon roped the upper section any ways, seriously not worth the effort).
 

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Good work! It looks like Cannon feared better than wildcat. ( see my post) The next foot of snow will be the sick day. I think I'll try Burke for that day and do some scouting for some ski rentals for next year. Cheers, John[/list][/code]
 
Great picts, accurate report, you guys make a great team! I was on Tram1, 15 minutes ahead of you Saturday. I'd put my money on skier's right of Zoomer as the best run(s) of the day, which held up well through late afternoon; OK, a little scraped on the last pitch, but I enjoyed it. I wouldn't go overboard yet skiing Mittersill, that still has a way to go. Taft Race Course was good, but my favorite glade was totally scraped. As you mention, busloads of people were going up the saddle.

Too bad about MH Cut-through, eh? Without the uphill exit as a deterent, now there will be even more traffic on MH. "Improvements" for the masses don't necessarily improve the quality. Just wait, I bet they'll be grooming out the bumps more often, straightening out corners one of these summers, and adding snowmaking someday.

I'm glad you got the goods on Friday, I had to work.
 
Oh yeah, I'll pass along your thanks to Bill McCarthy for breakin' trail up the saddle Friday.

And by the way, hats off to the two guys who snowshoed all the way up Tuckerbrook Saturday to ride it the old fashioned way. Boy, were they depressed to see all the people on top of Mittersill who rode the lifts and walked 5 minutes to the top.
 
bill mccarthy is one lucky man! first choice of anything he wanted, it musta been a mad dash to the top and i am sure it was well worth the trail breaking. did he skin up while the upper lifts were on wind hold? i had my skins for back up in case the cannonball didn't open but they thankfully weren't needed.

too bad indeed about the MH cut thru but i am doubting we'll see any further "improvements" such as expanded grooming or snowmaking on MH. i think cannon responded to complaints about over grooming a few years back nicely. i can't imagine the outrage that would ensue if snowmaking, regular grooming, and tree cutting ever took place in MH.
 
Great report guys!

We hit it early too and were on the 3rd tram. Took a couple of screamers on the insanely soft corduroy to warm up and make the most of it before the masses went to work on it. Wish I'd read your Friday report...dropped into banshee glade and learned the hard way that the trees just don't have the base right now (I can't even believe we're talking about building base mid-feb). But p-Tex is cheap, and I've got time this week, so the battle scars will be fine by next dumping. This, combined with the hands-across-america line up the Mittersill, kept us on-piste the rest of the day.

We found right side of Avalanche, Rocket, Gary's, and Paulie's to be the highlights. I had nearly untracked turns at the end of the day on Avalanche....yeah, I had to pull a few sticks out of my goggles and hood to get it, but so it goes. Also had phenomenal turns on Skylight, Ravine and Upper Cannon. Hit these just right. First ride up the Cannonball was a little wait, but nothing major. Then it socked in up top and everyone bolted. We made a few laps with nobody in line, and just hugged (litterally) the right-side trees to maintain visibilty.

I guess we got lucky with the lifts because it didn't seem that crowded to me: Never missed a tram, never more then 5-6 chairs back in line at cannonball or zoomer. Although it was crowded for Cannon, it was nowhere near as bad as I've seen it. Superbowl ~5 years ago (Pat's weren't even on the radar) I left mid-day because I felt like I was at Loon. Saturday, we stayed away from everything on the Peabody side of the mountain, considering the snow reports and Mardi Gras, I figured we'd be trapped in major lines over there. Sad that we missed out on Hardscrabble but glad to hear you had your way with it.

The only thing I'd like to add to your report is that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". We had been warned away from Vistaway by friends on the mountain Friday. But we all know what a difference a day can make over there, so we hit it anyway. True, the right side was a mess, as bad as I've ever seen it this time of year....but the left!!!!! Left side was my only untracked crotch-high shots of the day. Again, I was in the "branch-tube" and pulling pine needles out of my buttcrack to make it happen, but deep is deep and I'll take it. The only trick was to not be greedy, pull up hard left, and get out when you could.

Now let's build some base and get the season started......
 
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