Went to Crotched on Wednesday for their 3-9PM ticket. A couple of hours of daylight skiing followed by a couple of hours of night skiing. Neither me nor my boys had been out yet and we needed to get out and get on our gear to be sure everything was working OK.

I don’t have any pics (too cold and not anything that interesting to take pic of). It was about as expected. Some OK conditions, some scraped off and icy.

I am mostly posting this to say to Crotched: "WTF???". I was shocked that neither Pluto’s Plunge (the main trail under the quad) nor UFO/Equinox were open. There was a lot of the mtn that still wasn’t open. I get that it’s still early but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them not push to get Pluto’s open. It had enough wales on it to be groomed and open. In addition to that it was very cold (obviously) but there wasn’t a single snow gun running. Why wouldn’t there be at least some guns going on the closed trails to get them ready? To make matters worse I had a couple of teens with me and all of them were a bit disappointed in what they had going for terrain park features.

Maybe there is something I am missing (lack of skiers, not enough water, etc) but it really seemed "off" to me that a small mountain like Crotched wasn’t trying harder to get more open. It’s not like they need billions of gallons of water to coat that mountain with snow. Plus, they have to know their clientele – many kids/teens go there for the terrain parks. To have a disappointing set up like they had is an operating mistake in my opinion.

I love Crotched and have been taking my boys there for years. I just have to registered my feeling that either they screwed up their opening/early plan this year or that something has "changed" and Peaks isn’t letting them spend $ on snow making and grooming.