riverc0il
New member
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could not have picked a better first day to ski mansfield! i guess i have no room to complain since tickets were $15 with two canned goods, but the morning got off to a TERRIBLE start with a 20+ minute wait at the ticket counter. from the looks of it, steaux may have a new POS system that wasn't working too well. they only had 3/4 ticket windows open and those were going terribly slow as the cashiers were hand entering all the credit card info. people... c'mon, please us some common sense. $15? bring cash. after the ticket line fiasco, i was ready for some turns!
forerunner was running with an average wait time of about 5 minutes which wasn't bad considering the gondola wasn't running and they were busing folks in from spruce as the mansfield lot was packed. snow was coming down in the morning and never stopped throughout the day but i would suspect accumulations were low today. maybe an extra inch or two. low visibility throughout the day.
okay, screw warm up runs! let's see what all the hype is about regarding the fabled front four. i took three runs on liftline and one on national to start my day and i wasn't impressed with the trails themselves. unfortunately, goat and starr were roped and those are the two bad larry's i was most interested in giving a rip. ah well. a legit foot and a half of powder fell on bare ground creating thin cover conditions if you didn't turn your skis in the right direction. snow was consolidated powder, chowdah if you would, with occaional pockets of untracked to be found in the AM. i was just ripping liftline on my 8000s. just opened em' up and let em' run, woo!!!!!!!! best to turn on top of the bumps
since they were nice and soft and most troughs became troughs through hard turns or sliding removing the snow from the ground. conditions were getting bad quick, so i made as many runs as possible before looking towards the gondi side of the area.
biggest mistake i made all day: not bringing my AT gear. :roll: the trail report said perry merril and gondelier were open so i assumed the gondi was running. such a bad assumption. i made the best of it any ways taking nose dive (which was horribly beat to crap and hard to avoid many rocks) to rimrock and hiking up cliff trail which featured knee deep untracked. my second biggest mistake of the day was not getting back to rimrock and taking my share of that knee deep untracked. i had my sites set on chin clip though, i figured inf rimrock was knee deep untracked then not as many people had made it over to chin clip. not so unfortunately as it had been mostly tracked up. the upper section was simply sensation and just let the skis ride, taking air and finding soft pillowy landings. did i mentioned that chin clip was sensational?
met a guy from the ski vt-l list and buddied up with him so we could venture into some interesting stuff. dropped into a tree line on the next run (trees on the first week of december, WOOO!!!!) short and sweet, two feet was just enough! next run up, i mention to my partner who was also making his first run at stowe if he's ever heard of the bruce :twisted:
man, talk about pushing your luck. POW POW POW up top but lots of rocks to make some digs in my bases. excellent trail, the CCC didn't make a single bad run that i know of. our skis got mangled pretty good, but we made some excellent turns. probably needs a hard freeze and another foot of snow to cover things up better, two feet of snow to completely fill it in.
had we known the toll house double wasn't running, we might have thought twice about dropping in :shock: but we managed to thumb a ride back to the base, making sure to make a contribution to the charitable fellow's beer fund. once more down national featuring delightful pow bumps on the right before going to complete crap at the bottom with one section of near mandatory base scratches.
too bad this place is out of my price range or i would hit it up a bit. didn't even really scratch the surface of what i eventually want to hit up over there, but a phenomenal day all around despite the thin cover, core shot, and ample base damage. what a beginning to the season is all i can say after that! nine days of skiing in barely more than a month since the last week of october, of those nine days i have scored 6 pow days. 66%! if only that percentage would stand for the rest of the season. sick sick sick.
/ could not have picked a better first day to ski mansfield! i guess i have no room to complain since tickets were $15 with two canned goods, but the morning got off to a TERRIBLE start with a 20+ minute wait at the ticket counter. from the looks of it, steaux may have a new POS system that wasn't working too well. they only had 3/4 ticket windows open and those were going terribly slow as the cashiers were hand entering all the credit card info. people... c'mon, please us some common sense. $15? bring cash. after the ticket line fiasco, i was ready for some turns!
forerunner was running with an average wait time of about 5 minutes which wasn't bad considering the gondola wasn't running and they were busing folks in from spruce as the mansfield lot was packed. snow was coming down in the morning and never stopped throughout the day but i would suspect accumulations were low today. maybe an extra inch or two. low visibility throughout the day.
okay, screw warm up runs! let's see what all the hype is about regarding the fabled front four. i took three runs on liftline and one on national to start my day and i wasn't impressed with the trails themselves. unfortunately, goat and starr were roped and those are the two bad larry's i was most interested in giving a rip. ah well. a legit foot and a half of powder fell on bare ground creating thin cover conditions if you didn't turn your skis in the right direction. snow was consolidated powder, chowdah if you would, with occaional pockets of untracked to be found in the AM. i was just ripping liftline on my 8000s. just opened em' up and let em' run, woo!!!!!!!! best to turn on top of the bumps
since they were nice and soft and most troughs became troughs through hard turns or sliding removing the snow from the ground. conditions were getting bad quick, so i made as many runs as possible before looking towards the gondi side of the area.biggest mistake i made all day: not bringing my AT gear. :roll: the trail report said perry merril and gondelier were open so i assumed the gondi was running. such a bad assumption. i made the best of it any ways taking nose dive (which was horribly beat to crap and hard to avoid many rocks) to rimrock and hiking up cliff trail which featured knee deep untracked. my second biggest mistake of the day was not getting back to rimrock and taking my share of that knee deep untracked. i had my sites set on chin clip though, i figured inf rimrock was knee deep untracked then not as many people had made it over to chin clip. not so unfortunately as it had been mostly tracked up. the upper section was simply sensation and just let the skis ride, taking air and finding soft pillowy landings. did i mentioned that chin clip was sensational?
met a guy from the ski vt-l list and buddied up with him so we could venture into some interesting stuff. dropped into a tree line on the next run (trees on the first week of december, WOOO!!!!)
short and sweet, two feet was just enough! next run up, i mention to my partner who was also making his first run at stowe if he's ever heard of the bruce :twisted: man, talk about pushing your luck. POW POW POW up top but lots of rocks to make some digs in my bases. excellent trail, the CCC didn't make a single bad run that i know of. our skis got mangled pretty good, but we made some excellent turns. probably needs a hard freeze and another foot of snow to cover things up better, two feet of snow to completely fill it in.
had we known the toll house double wasn't running, we might have thought twice about dropping in :shock: but we managed to thumb a ride back to the base, making sure to make a contribution to the charitable fellow's beer fund. once more down national featuring delightful pow bumps on the right before going to complete crap at the bottom with one section of near mandatory base scratches.
too bad this place is out of my price range or i would hit it up a bit. didn't even really scratch the surface of what i eventually want to hit up over there, but a phenomenal day all around despite the thin cover, core shot, and ample base damage. what a beginning to the season is all i can say after that! nine days of skiing in barely more than a month since the last week of october, of those nine days i have scored 6 pow days. 66%! if only that percentage would stand for the rest of the season. sick sick sick.
