Burke – 01/25/15
I hadn’t been to Burke in 25 or so years and it was about time for me to give it a shot. I don’t really remember much from my first visit so I was pretty much a newbie. Here is my summary of the day:
The conditions yesterday varied a great deal from one trail section to the next nevermind different places on the mountain. With that said, there is a VERY strong base on the entire mountain including all of the glades. After taking the lift from Sherburne I caught the Mid Burke chair and pretty much rode that from start to finish. I started the day with Dixieland:
This was a really fantastic glade that reminded me a lot of Kinsman or Thompson Brook lite. It offered up some nice steep sections and cozy trees. Not only that but there was even some leftover pow at the bottom that hadn’t been skied in and hadn’t frozen over. This was definitely a repeat!
Fox’s Folly was scraped off pretty good but still very enjoyable because the base was awesome.
Lower Power Line was definitely the run of the day by far. Burke patrol was nice enough to rope off most of this trail for me and I was able to enjoy lots of soft pillow pow landings. This trail is now one of my new favorites! It offers up small hucks one after another all the way to the bottom. Nothing over 10 ft but they all have really great landings.
I also did runs on Jungle, Ledges, Marshland, Birches, Throbulator and all were a lot of fun. One of my biggest pet peeves is mountains that have trails that all ski the same. This is most definitely not the case at Burke. Even the intermediate cruisers were a blast for me.
All in all it was a great day and I will definitely go back. Here are my takeaways from my first visit:
Pros
-Isolated beginner area
-Tremendous variety of terrain
-So many options for intermediate skiers
-Fast lift + no lines = ridiculous amount of vert
-Great tree skiing – Should develop past Jungle/Birches
Cons
-Base lodge situation needs to be fixed…absolutely nowhere to sit today because of the vertical challenge and Burke Mountain Academy race going on.
-East Bowl runout is not great but putting a lift in there is not a solution
-God dammit people…..pick up your freaking skis and put them on the rack!!! Coming out of the East Bowl,
I literally had to go uphill to go around them
-Racers think they own the mountain. Kids screaming past me to cut around me in the lift line. Cutting me off exiting the lift and just pretty much thinking they own the place. I doubt this behavior is just isolated to yesterday.