It wasn't bad, actually, as long as you can be satisfied by screaming down fast groomed cruisers. "Firm and fast" was the rule of the day, yet everything was eminently edgeable. There wasn't enough traffic to make things truly slick, at least until the time that we quit at 1 pm. Surfaces were consistent on every trail we skied, from one end of the resort to the other. It was a cold day, with temps never getting out of the mid- to upper-teens, and a moderate breeze. It was sunny for the morning, but high clouds were streaming in this afternoon.
My son and I got up at 6 am, were out the door by 6:40, and made it to Ludlow in record time of 1h30m. We were thus on the very first chair up South Ridge at 9 am.
A decent amount of terrain was open, especially in view of this season's fickle weather thus far, on all major lifts. If it weren't for snowmaking, there would've been no skiing at all at Okemo today. I hit only one rock all day, ironically on Upper World Cup, one of the first trails to open. Guns were blazing all over the hill, and a couple of key trails had even been freshened by the snowmakers overnight (Okemo has an iron-clad policy of not making snow on an open trail).
With high-speed quads on the way up, and high-speed GS turns on the way down, we had racked up 20,417 verts by the time we quit at 1:00 -- and we had even taken :30 to :45 for lunch. It's not like we had bumps, woods, or anything else to slow us down. Visions of turkey dinner filled our heads as we hurried back to Albany.
We arrived home, only to discover that my *&^%$# chocolate lab helped himself to the turkey sitting on the stove between the time that we left this morning and the time that my wife got out of bed. She couldn't find a single supermarket open today to replace the turkey. We'll be filling up on mashed potatoes tonight instead.
Then again, the Chinese restaurant is open...
Merry Christmas, everybody!
