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Is anyone in the building a doctor? Because we have an important question: Is it physically possible to run out of Adrenaline?
To put it bluntly: We've all been waiting for an east coast day like this for a long time -- some might say even as long as 2 years. But Holy Mary was it worth the wait.
Let's start last night (Friday): All day my friend Greg and I were both glued to the radar at our respective places of work (Hanover and Boston, respectively). As the day wore on, we continued to watch Mansfield get crushed by snows... Was it a radar error? Could such a huge swath of hexagonal precip -- special delivery from the Great Lakes, and Lake Champlain -- really be hovering over Mansfield for hours on end? The answer was: yes... yes i could. Needless to say, it was on!
Jonesing for cold smoke, we started VERY early: Camped out in Greg's graduate student housing, and then departed Hanover around 4 AM. The drive north on I 89 was more like a drive on North Pole - 89... For miles on end we had to push through massive wind buffs, and pass drivers of all skill levels. We even gave some car with NJ plates the shock of its life as it crawled along the snow covered roads as we blew through a massive drift in the left lane, fists pumped forward as if to "mush" an invisble team of dogs ahead of our car, Wolfmother blaring over our stereo.
Once off the interestate and heading up towards the mountain, we encountered,deep snows on the two lane road, and plows EVERYWHERE. One particularily harrowing aspect of this part of the drive was the fact that the high winds were whipping the pine trees up, and making them shake off their accumulated snow yielding ZERO visibility... and HOT DAMN it's finally winter!
Finally arrive at the Gondi base around 545 with not another soul in site. In the lot we quickly repack gear and get the real cold weather duds out -- extra layers were mandatory for the kind of wind that was howling at the BASE. I had to snowshoe up as my fritschis were in the shop getting some cracked parts repaired.
Departed the lot at about 6 am to 12 plus inches of snow, cold temps, darkness, and lots of wind. The plows were starting to get the lots prepped for the day... but i was clear no key lifts would be turning today. We ascended Perry Merril and eventually Gondalier. Took about an hour 15 by the time we reached the Gondi house. Up top the weather was brutal, I had mondo gear on and I was still getting cold. Mostly the hands were punished, but the boots left my feet cold as well. The main problem was that sans fritchis, they were forced to hang outside my pack on the way up and FROZE. To sum it up in a sentance: it took an act of god to get them on my foot up top.
Prior to our first descent, weather estimates from us and another pair of powder hounds who had spent the night in their secret "cave," were that the temps were around -5F with winds sustained at 45 gusting to 65 --- at least -- in all honesty I'm being conservative with these estimates.
Skied the waterfall trail under the gondi, then prior to the BIG drop, since we weren't quite warmed up (and were DAMN cold) we decided it was in the interest of safety to bypass the big drop, and ski a few chutes just to the skier's right of it. IT WAS AWESOME. Thigh deep with lots of face shots. Did one more lap sans packs down a glade between the cliff house and below. The snow that couldn't bond to the open trails was in the woods and making life wonderful.
After freezing our petunias off, and just about breaking our cold goggles between hitting tree limbs, and taking face shots, we eventually returned to the Cliff House to get our packs. We had been eyeing a big chute with several rock drops each lap, and decided to try and find it this time. Man, was this awesome. A solid 50-100 vertical foot chute through the trees BURRIED in pow. See vid below (and tilt your head). After this we continued our run down towards Stowe base area by first trying to get on chin clip, but being stymied by more of an uphill climb than we were interested in. As Plan B, we decided to take gondolier, stick way to the skiers left, and take whatever we saw that went into the woods towards chin clip. WHAT LUCK! Somewhere along the way we found some flat path that looked like it might go somewhere, and decided to take it even though we were getting awesome face shots on the skier's left of gondolier. Best decision of the year. After traversing through at least 3 foot deep fresh snow, with higher drifts (this is what was blowing off the open trails--and into the woods), we came upon an immaculate river drainage simply buried in pow. My skis were a little too narrow to stay above some shark's teeth lurking below the surface, and so I managed to hit a few rocks, but Greg reports that he did not a single rock in this riverbed (on K2 PE's with AT bindings--although it probably had less to do with the skis, and more to do with the fact that he was straightlining it rather than than turning as much as my skis were forcing me to). Regardless, the snow was amazingly light and fluffy, and DEEP. Again, see vids below. After that we ran into a bit more mank than we liked in the river bed, and also saw that gondolier had reappered on our right, so we did some sidestepping, and headed out there again... plowed through some 10-12 inch pow, with DEEP drifts for a few hundred feet, and then, still trying to get over to chin clip, took some cutover to the skiers left, and found a nice open glade that descended over some nice rollovers, straight down to chin clip.
WHEW! I'm trying not to exagerate: From the Cliff House to the Midway lodge this may be one of the best runs of my life. Good old fashioned untouched New England trails which go with the fall line (hell, some of them were RIVERBEDS--they HAVE to go with the fall line) buried below thigh (and sometimes waste) deep cold smoke smacking us in the face. It was insane. Here's some multimedia:
So it was snowing kind of hard
Greg Hammering
Greg Post Faceshot
Start of something good
Me Going for broke
SNOW
Manual faceshot from the window scraper
Vids:
Greg mach-schnelling it
Greg (in a sideways video) going for the Gusto
Me (getting turned around) in a Lower Mountain Glade
Me getting a few river induced Face Shots
------------------------------
OK, so that was STOWE... but only Stowe. As if that wasn't enough we were sitting around having some coffee in the Stowe Midway lodge, just about totally beat, but with a hunger for just a little more cold smoke. It was 10 AM and Stowe's lifts were not going to turn due to wind. Decided why not make a run down to K-ton and see what's going on down there? The word fromg Greg's family was that Pico had 10+ inches a few hundred vertical feet of the base area, north of sherburne pass at their house.
Well we're (young and) restless! To make a long story short (and by that I mean another harrowing drive which included getting pulled out of a ditch by a SNOWCAT[!!]), we showed up at Pico at about noon to find a good 10 inches of snow on lower A-slope -- especially where the angles were low. Got up on the summit cone, and what do you know... to our delight, more cold smoke! But this time we got to ride a lift to get to it! Had superb skiing down Upper Pike (accessed from Upper KA), Upper KA, Sunset 71, and Summit Glade. First tracks at 2pm down Giant Killer (perhaps first of the season). The summit cone had more like 14 inches of snow, and wind buff to 3+ feet. We were in heaven...
A truly epic day. The run of a life time down Stowe followed by an afternoon of untracked at Pico. Winter is back in a big way! The NWS missed this one, and its a good thing, b/c it left us with fresh delicious pow runs all day.
Porter
To put it bluntly: We've all been waiting for an east coast day like this for a long time -- some might say even as long as 2 years. But Holy Mary was it worth the wait.
Let's start last night (Friday): All day my friend Greg and I were both glued to the radar at our respective places of work (Hanover and Boston, respectively). As the day wore on, we continued to watch Mansfield get crushed by snows... Was it a radar error? Could such a huge swath of hexagonal precip -- special delivery from the Great Lakes, and Lake Champlain -- really be hovering over Mansfield for hours on end? The answer was: yes... yes i could. Needless to say, it was on!
Jonesing for cold smoke, we started VERY early: Camped out in Greg's graduate student housing, and then departed Hanover around 4 AM. The drive north on I 89 was more like a drive on North Pole - 89... For miles on end we had to push through massive wind buffs, and pass drivers of all skill levels. We even gave some car with NJ plates the shock of its life as it crawled along the snow covered roads as we blew through a massive drift in the left lane, fists pumped forward as if to "mush" an invisble team of dogs ahead of our car, Wolfmother blaring over our stereo.
Once off the interestate and heading up towards the mountain, we encountered,deep snows on the two lane road, and plows EVERYWHERE. One particularily harrowing aspect of this part of the drive was the fact that the high winds were whipping the pine trees up, and making them shake off their accumulated snow yielding ZERO visibility... and HOT DAMN it's finally winter!
Finally arrive at the Gondi base around 545 with not another soul in site. In the lot we quickly repack gear and get the real cold weather duds out -- extra layers were mandatory for the kind of wind that was howling at the BASE. I had to snowshoe up as my fritschis were in the shop getting some cracked parts repaired.
Departed the lot at about 6 am to 12 plus inches of snow, cold temps, darkness, and lots of wind. The plows were starting to get the lots prepped for the day... but i was clear no key lifts would be turning today. We ascended Perry Merril and eventually Gondalier. Took about an hour 15 by the time we reached the Gondi house. Up top the weather was brutal, I had mondo gear on and I was still getting cold. Mostly the hands were punished, but the boots left my feet cold as well. The main problem was that sans fritchis, they were forced to hang outside my pack on the way up and FROZE. To sum it up in a sentance: it took an act of god to get them on my foot up top.
Prior to our first descent, weather estimates from us and another pair of powder hounds who had spent the night in their secret "cave," were that the temps were around -5F with winds sustained at 45 gusting to 65 --- at least -- in all honesty I'm being conservative with these estimates.
Skied the waterfall trail under the gondi, then prior to the BIG drop, since we weren't quite warmed up (and were DAMN cold) we decided it was in the interest of safety to bypass the big drop, and ski a few chutes just to the skier's right of it. IT WAS AWESOME. Thigh deep with lots of face shots. Did one more lap sans packs down a glade between the cliff house and below. The snow that couldn't bond to the open trails was in the woods and making life wonderful.
After freezing our petunias off, and just about breaking our cold goggles between hitting tree limbs, and taking face shots, we eventually returned to the Cliff House to get our packs. We had been eyeing a big chute with several rock drops each lap, and decided to try and find it this time. Man, was this awesome. A solid 50-100 vertical foot chute through the trees BURRIED in pow. See vid below (and tilt your head). After this we continued our run down towards Stowe base area by first trying to get on chin clip, but being stymied by more of an uphill climb than we were interested in. As Plan B, we decided to take gondolier, stick way to the skiers left, and take whatever we saw that went into the woods towards chin clip. WHAT LUCK! Somewhere along the way we found some flat path that looked like it might go somewhere, and decided to take it even though we were getting awesome face shots on the skier's left of gondolier. Best decision of the year. After traversing through at least 3 foot deep fresh snow, with higher drifts (this is what was blowing off the open trails--and into the woods), we came upon an immaculate river drainage simply buried in pow. My skis were a little too narrow to stay above some shark's teeth lurking below the surface, and so I managed to hit a few rocks, but Greg reports that he did not a single rock in this riverbed (on K2 PE's with AT bindings--although it probably had less to do with the skis, and more to do with the fact that he was straightlining it rather than than turning as much as my skis were forcing me to). Regardless, the snow was amazingly light and fluffy, and DEEP. Again, see vids below. After that we ran into a bit more mank than we liked in the river bed, and also saw that gondolier had reappered on our right, so we did some sidestepping, and headed out there again... plowed through some 10-12 inch pow, with DEEP drifts for a few hundred feet, and then, still trying to get over to chin clip, took some cutover to the skiers left, and found a nice open glade that descended over some nice rollovers, straight down to chin clip.
WHEW! I'm trying not to exagerate: From the Cliff House to the Midway lodge this may be one of the best runs of my life. Good old fashioned untouched New England trails which go with the fall line (hell, some of them were RIVERBEDS--they HAVE to go with the fall line) buried below thigh (and sometimes waste) deep cold smoke smacking us in the face. It was insane. Here's some multimedia:
So it was snowing kind of hard
Greg Hammering
Greg Post Faceshot
Start of something good
Me Going for broke
SNOW
Manual faceshot from the window scraper
Vids:
Greg mach-schnelling it
Greg (in a sideways video) going for the Gusto
Me (getting turned around) in a Lower Mountain Glade
Me getting a few river induced Face Shots
------------------------------
OK, so that was STOWE... but only Stowe. As if that wasn't enough we were sitting around having some coffee in the Stowe Midway lodge, just about totally beat, but with a hunger for just a little more cold smoke. It was 10 AM and Stowe's lifts were not going to turn due to wind. Decided why not make a run down to K-ton and see what's going on down there? The word fromg Greg's family was that Pico had 10+ inches a few hundred vertical feet of the base area, north of sherburne pass at their house.
Well we're (young and) restless! To make a long story short (and by that I mean another harrowing drive which included getting pulled out of a ditch by a SNOWCAT[!!]), we showed up at Pico at about noon to find a good 10 inches of snow on lower A-slope -- especially where the angles were low. Got up on the summit cone, and what do you know... to our delight, more cold smoke! But this time we got to ride a lift to get to it! Had superb skiing down Upper Pike (accessed from Upper KA), Upper KA, Sunset 71, and Summit Glade. First tracks at 2pm down Giant Killer (perhaps first of the season). The summit cone had more like 14 inches of snow, and wind buff to 3+ feet. We were in heaven...
A truly epic day. The run of a life time down Stowe followed by an afternoon of untracked at Pico. Winter is back in a big way! The NWS missed this one, and its a good thing, b/c it left us with fresh delicious pow runs all day.
Porter
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