Bretton Woods – 12/22/17
After skiing hardpack in my last two outings, I headed north in search of soft snow. Found more than I imagined at Bretton.
There were bands of snow on the drive up, and light snow falling at the hill when I arrived. It was only about 6 degrees when I pulled in the lot. No problem; I had on my Hot Chillys La Montana base layer! It snowed pretty steadily all day and they got about 3" of light fluffy new snow, and temps warmed up to the mid to upper teens. Just about perfect.
First off I did a few runs on the groomed runs. Yup, they do lay down nice corduroy there. It was scrunchy and smooth in the cold temps. Then to my surprise, I saw that they have shown amazing restraint and left a lot of trails ungroomed. That's where the real action was today. The crowd was pretty light to begin with, and had little interest in the ungroomed runs, so those trails were boot deep with lightly tracked powder, apparently left over from previous storms. A couple times in the glades my ski poles sank about 12", so there is quite a bit of natural snow on the ground there.
I found great runs all over the mountain. Favorites today were Zealand, Coos Caper, Jacob's Ladder (and adjoining glades). Best trail of all for me was Aggassiz, which is marked as an ungroomed bump run. To most of the customers that basically marks it as closed, so it was like a private powder run. I think I went down it at least five times and was bummed the lifts closed and I couldn't lap it anymore. Really feel like I picked up some new skills today, and had a great time.
20171222_094020.jpg
20171222_121411.jpg
20171222_135331.jpg
20171222_140135.jpg
There were bands of snow on the drive up, and light snow falling at the hill when I arrived. It was only about 6 degrees when I pulled in the lot. No problem; I had on my Hot Chillys La Montana base layer! It snowed pretty steadily all day and they got about 3" of light fluffy new snow, and temps warmed up to the mid to upper teens. Just about perfect.
First off I did a few runs on the groomed runs. Yup, they do lay down nice corduroy there. It was scrunchy and smooth in the cold temps. Then to my surprise, I saw that they have shown amazing restraint and left a lot of trails ungroomed. That's where the real action was today. The crowd was pretty light to begin with, and had little interest in the ungroomed runs, so those trails were boot deep with lightly tracked powder, apparently left over from previous storms. A couple times in the glades my ski poles sank about 12", so there is quite a bit of natural snow on the ground there.
I found great runs all over the mountain. Favorites today were Zealand, Coos Caper, Jacob's Ladder (and adjoining glades). Best trail of all for me was Aggassiz, which is marked as an ungroomed bump run. To most of the customers that basically marks it as closed, so it was like a private powder run. I think I went down it at least five times and was bummed the lifts closed and I couldn't lap it anymore. Really feel like I picked up some new skills today, and had a great time.
20171222_094020.jpg
20171222_121411.jpg
20171222_135331.jpg
20171222_140135.jpg