Mad River Glen - 12/22/22

flyover

Active member
My daughter and I enjoyed skiing at Mad River today. Last weekend’s storm brought MRG 24 inches of snow that started as heavy and wet and dried out as the storm progressed and took the mountain from mostly closed to mostly open. By today, however, conditions were . . . variable.

On one hand, there was hardly any ice, which is unusual for this time of year. Lower-angled terrain, even in some of the more accessible trees, skied very nicely.

On the other hand, cover on the steeper stuff was thin to the point that most other NE areas likely would have had it closed. However, MRG’S core skiers are a bit of a different breed. My daughter and I agreed that the majority of skiers on the hill today were dodging the rocks and bare spots on MRG’s narrow, old-school New England trails at speed with aplomb and grace.

Lifts were ski on all day, and the vibe all around the hill was excellent. The coop is clearly taking good care of the place with noticeable improvements in ticket sales, grooming, and food service, and significant sprucing up of the Basebox.

I’m in the middle of a gnarly chest cold (my money is on RSV), so we got a late start today. Nonetheless, even on MRG’s slow fixed grips, we managed 18.5 vertical feet before closing at 3:30. Today was my first day of the season, and the legs held up surprisingly well. The rest of me is feeling pretty wiped out tonight.

It was also a real pleasure to get my daughter all to myself for the day. She’s almost 17 now, so we have less of these kinds of days together than we used to. As always, for both of us, it was nice to be back on General Stark Mountain.

It‘s gorgeous at the house right now with 28 degrees and gentle snow. For skiing, it is a real bummer it will be warming up and raining tomorrow. However, the bigger concern may turn out to be widespread Christmas power outages with the high winds and cold temps that are predicted to arrive at the end of the storm.

02F40112-6AF0-4398-BC4E-9A10258793E8.jpeg


68224AE1-6E3F-409C-B561-00DA1A696663.jpeg


0D79A2DE-0435-41A2-A0F4-8BB9DB06E2EC.jpeg


FE2C20F9-7183-48E2-B3A0-219DB8A39D4B.jpeg


B743B07C-2571-4335-BFFB-FF963C1C9554.jpeg


8A8D24C0-CE07-4C26-986E-71BC7A9FFF91.jpeg


2D5425D3-EFC8-4470-82F1-E64F55776B97.jpeg


C05E786E-B5E1-4D95-973A-5E8C5381293A.jpeg
 
Excellent pix and report. How much damage to your skis?

I always forget -- you moved to MN long ago and are visiting family in Vermont?
 
Excellent pix and report. How much damage to your skis?

I always forget -- you moved to MN long ago and are visiting family in Vermont?
Thanks.

The skis are alright. My own rock-dodging reflexes appear to be intact.

Yes, we are here gathering with family for the holidays.

I grew up in NJ. My 80-something parents still have a place there, but spend much of the year in a house they built 25 years ago at the end of a dirt road high on a hill in the woods above the Mad River Valley. When I was a kid, we borrowed or rented a series of dilapidated old houses and skied first in Southern Vermont, then at Killington/Pico, and finally MRG/Sugarbush/Mt. Ellen, with occasional day trips to Stowe. We first skied MRG when I was in 6th grade. My dad still has a season pass and cherry picks the best days.

I moved to MN to go to college in 86 and just sort of never left after I fell in love with my wife, fell in love with the music scene in Minneapolis (4 years of college radio provided me with connections that meant I had free tickets to almost all the music venues for most of my 20s), fell in love with wilderness canoeing, and fell in love with the way I could not just afford an apartment of my own on low-paying post-college slacker jobs, but actually save enough for intermittent, hairball, shoestring-budget travel in the developing world, in stark contrast to my friends that stayed in the tri-state area and ended up making many more compromises in order to live independently immediately after college. Before I knew it, I had built a life in Minneapolis. Obviously, from a skiing perspective, living in the City of Lakes is suboptimal.
 
Last edited:
I recall when I was an actuary I read somewhere that Minneapolis was the most difficult place to get someone to leave.
 
I moved to MN to go to college in 86 and just sort of never left after I (...) fell in love with the music scene in Minneapolis (4 years of college radio provided me with connections that meant I had free tickets to almost all the music venues for most of my 20s)
So you were there during the breakout years of Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, Prince, etc. I'm a huge fan of the latter two. When I studied in Nice, France during the spring of 1986, I cut class several days to watch Prince shoot his stinker movie Under The Cherry Moon in the old part of town.
:icon-lol:
Luckily, he recovered artistically a couple years later when I saw him do an almost three-hour show at Madison Square Garden.
 
I recall when I was an actuary I read somewhere that Minneapolis was the most difficult place to get someone to leave.

Huh. The Minneapolis Star Tribune just published a fluff piece about this. (I don't think it's behind a paywall.) https://www.startribune.com/corporate-recruitment-jobs-twin-cities-minneapolis-st-paul/600234401/

""To get folks to even consider coming here is extremely difficult," said Adam Hoffarber, managing partner at SkyWater Search Partners, an executive recruiting firm in Minnetonka. "When we talk to candidates, probably less than 1 in 10 would be willing to relocate to Minneapolis. But luring away someone who already lives here is also hard, Hoffarber said. "They do not want to leave.""

""The rate at which people leave the Twin Cities is lower than any major metro in the country," [U of MN Carslon School of Management professor Myles] Shaver said. "I can see that in 40 years of data." "People who were born in Minnesota are reluctant to leave. People here who weren't born in Minnesota also are reluctant to leave," Shaver said."

So you were there during the breakout years of Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, Prince, etc. I'm a huge fan of the latter two. When I studied in Nice, France during the spring of 1986, I cut class several days to watch Prince shoot his stinker movie Under The Cherry Moon in the old part of town.
:icon-lol:
Luckily, he recovered artistically a couple years later when I saw him do an almost three-hour show at Madison Square Garden.
Funny enough, I never saw Prince. Of course, he was huge long before I got here.

The Matts and the Huskers had just gone major label when I arrived and remained hometown favs, but had less presence around town than they had a couple of years earlier.

The "Minneapolis sound" written about in the national press was always a local joke because the whole scene was so diverse and eclectic that there was no unifying sound. Unlike the Seattle scene that the major labels steamrolled the country with a few years later, there just weren't a lot of bands (or any, really) all trying to sound like the MPLS bands that had already been signed. To get anywhere, everybody pretty much had to do their own thing. Duluth produced some very diverse music also (cf Low with Charlie Parr with Trampled by Turtles, for example).

That eclecticism was and is also shared by bookers for many local venues and audiences, so free tickets for me meant being able to see national and international acts as diverse as Bad Brains ("I against I" tour), Tom Waits ("Raindogs" tour), The Pogues, P-Funk, Slayer ("South of Heaven" tour), Fela Kuti (twice!), Public Enemy ("Fear of a Black Planet" tour), Tabu Ley, Motor Head, and Sun Ra, to name just a few.
 
@flyover: it sounds like we were seeing some of the same acts back then. I saw the Bad Brains' "I Against I" tour in Denver. I saw Tom Waits' 'Frank's Wild Years" tour and Fela Kuti's "Teacher Don't Teach Me No Nonsense" tour in Berlin.
 
Back
Top