riverc0il
New member
10: Powder Day, Cannon Style
given the prospects of skiing the jet offering three trails with unlikely skinable options during telefest weekend and massive crowds, i opted to not use my season pass at jay and pay $25 at cannon. that could have been the best spent $25 i have ever paid in my life. \
/
pay attention all ski area snow reporters because you are about to learn how the big boys do it. cannon has report 13-14" from this most recent storm. understatement. cannon got 13-14" where they were measuring which i have to believe is the base. upper mountain and mid mountain natural were boot to knee deep with occasional drifts going thigh to *gulp* balls deep. okay, i didn't hit that many drifts that were that deep, but pretty unreal standing in snow up to your crotch. that was the exception, the rule was boot deep minimum. hard to get a solid feel for exact depth due to blowing and drifting. 15-16" sounds about right but it could have been more, so hard to say.
any ways, i started with four runs on big link -> mid ravine -> lower ravine. big link was amazingly sensational snow quality, super rare. mid ravine was sensational packed powder and awesome for opening up some big arcs, killer. lower ravine had some natural shots on the side, mostly fun PP. i just opened em' up and let them fly this morning. carving high speed arcs doesn't feel as good in AT boots as my regular boots, but i didn't feel like schlepping two sets of gear.
after four runs, i took a quick break and got my pack from the car. skinned up an untracked tramway and breaking trail sucked! i looked for the high ground that had the snow picked off, some drifts were painfully deep heading up. went up to the tower, but vis was about 50 feet. i always enjoy making peak though, so it was fun. down tramway and i found the pow was so deep, that tramway just didn't have enough pitch to really get going. i skinned back up tramway following my first skin track and got my second untracked run of the day down taft. sweeeet. as always, be warned you really need to know where to go on this trail when there is no base, lots of rocks in sections which i managed to avoid. lower down on taft was over the boots with occasional knee deep, woot! upper hard was really nice, especially since someone already went up or down giving me a momentum build on the flat part. killer pow turns linked down into mid hard where tons of tracks appeared out of no where from folks hiking over from the cannonball. sick pow on mid hard and it was going quick but i still found lots of untracked. even the last pitch, normally a rocky mess, was passable if you knew where to avoided the nasty spots.
couple more groomer runs after lunch, then one final run off the summit. a couple of snow boarders hiked up profile :shock: (there are easier ways to the summit, boys!) and tracked up taft, so i opted for skylight not normally my favorite trail, but.... it was okay \/ alright, more like sensational. i managed to bury my tips into a crotch deep drift and double ejected, fun times. i cut back down to mid hard and had some wonderful turns on the upper half and craving untracked got stupid on the final pitch and went right down the center. even that wasn't that bad. nailed a rock on the run out of all places, which caused some minor base damage (well, minor for me 
).
temps were warming towards noon and the pow was consolidating quickly. i'll still call it a pow day, not sure if you would be able to call tomorrow a pow day or a consolidated snow day. either way, still great snow to be had for a modest amount of effort if you don't mind some base damage and use your head about what parts of the trail you are skiing. there were many parts of these trails that had four inches of dust over rocks. fwiw, someone apparently got injured on parkway after ducking a rope where it was particularly rocky, be smart people.
hey, snow making report: i don't think i have ever seen that many guns going at once at cannon. these guys mean business this year and the new hot toys they had blowing around the base area looked pretty sweet. gremlin, toss up, and lower cannon were all getting the gun treatment. though to be frank, most trails accessible by the high speed quad with exception of lower hard, bypass, parkway, and one or two others looked skiable without hazard. but i don't know that first hand as i didn't duck any ropes.
given the prospects of skiing the jet offering three trails with unlikely skinable options during telefest weekend and massive crowds, i opted to not use my season pass at jay and pay $25 at cannon. that could have been the best spent $25 i have ever paid in my life. \
/ pay attention all ski area snow reporters because you are about to learn how the big boys do it. cannon has report 13-14" from this most recent storm. understatement. cannon got 13-14" where they were measuring which i have to believe is the base. upper mountain and mid mountain natural were boot to knee deep with occasional drifts going thigh to *gulp* balls deep. okay, i didn't hit that many drifts that were that deep, but pretty unreal standing in snow up to your crotch. that was the exception, the rule was boot deep minimum. hard to get a solid feel for exact depth due to blowing and drifting. 15-16" sounds about right but it could have been more, so hard to say.
any ways, i started with four runs on big link -> mid ravine -> lower ravine. big link was amazingly sensational snow quality, super rare. mid ravine was sensational packed powder and awesome for opening up some big arcs, killer. lower ravine had some natural shots on the side, mostly fun PP. i just opened em' up and let them fly this morning. carving high speed arcs doesn't feel as good in AT boots as my regular boots, but i didn't feel like schlepping two sets of gear.
after four runs, i took a quick break and got my pack from the car. skinned up an untracked tramway and breaking trail sucked! i looked for the high ground that had the snow picked off, some drifts were painfully deep heading up. went up to the tower, but vis was about 50 feet. i always enjoy making peak though, so it was fun. down tramway and i found the pow was so deep, that tramway just didn't have enough pitch to really get going. i skinned back up tramway following my first skin track and got my second untracked run of the day down taft. sweeeet. as always, be warned you really need to know where to go on this trail when there is no base, lots of rocks in sections which i managed to avoid. lower down on taft was over the boots with occasional knee deep, woot! upper hard was really nice, especially since someone already went up or down giving me a momentum build on the flat part. killer pow turns linked down into mid hard where tons of tracks appeared out of no where from folks hiking over from the cannonball. sick pow on mid hard and it was going quick but i still found lots of untracked. even the last pitch, normally a rocky mess, was passable if you knew where to avoided the nasty spots.
couple more groomer runs after lunch, then one final run off the summit. a couple of snow boarders hiked up profile :shock: (there are easier ways to the summit, boys!) and tracked up taft, so i opted for skylight
not normally my favorite trail, but.... it was okay \/ alright, more like sensational. i managed to bury my tips into a crotch deep drift and double ejected, fun times. i cut back down to mid hard and had some wonderful turns on the upper half and craving untracked got stupid on the final pitch and went right down the center. even that wasn't that bad. nailed a rock on the run out of all places, which caused some minor base damage (well, minor for me ). temps were warming towards noon and the pow was consolidating quickly. i'll still call it a pow day, not sure if you would be able to call tomorrow a pow day or a consolidated snow day. either way, still great snow to be had for a modest amount of effort if you don't mind some base damage and use your head about what parts of the trail you are skiing. there were many parts of these trails that had four inches of dust over rocks. fwiw, someone apparently got injured on parkway after ducking a rope where it was particularly rocky, be smart people.
hey, snow making report: i don't think i have ever seen that many guns going at once at cannon. these guys mean business this year and the new hot toys they had blowing around the base area looked pretty sweet. gremlin, toss up, and lower cannon were all getting the gun treatment. though to be frank, most trails accessible by the high speed quad with exception of lower hard, bypass, parkway, and one or two others looked skiable without hazard. but i don't know that first hand as i didn't duck any ropes.
