Mohawk Mountain 1/16/15
Weather: Between 10-20 degrees the whole night, VERY windy, below zero with the wind chills
Conditions: hard pack, ice, man made snow
It was an unexpectedly freezing and windy night at Mohawk Mountain in Cornwall, CT. I have never in my six years of skiing at Mohawk, seen winds this strong at Mohawk. The winds were almost as strong as winds you would see at Killington. Every time we took the lift to the top of the mountain, we could see the snow being blown off of the trails by the wind. The wind was fighting you as you went down the trails, aggressively blowing directly at you. And to make it even worse, the temperatures were in the teens and got down to about 11 degrees before we left. The temperatures with the wind chill were below zero.
The conditions were not the best either. Every single trail on the mountain was icy. It was unpredictable when you would hit an ice patch, so you had to keep a look out for them. You couldn’t turn that well on the trails, as it was very hard pack and man made snow which gave you no grip. I started off on Route 100 and Chute, and judging by the scarce amount of snow, I knew that I would be fighting the mountain (in terms of weather and conditions). I did about 18 runs, which isn’t bad for having to take a break to warm up in the lodge. All of the trails were massively icy and slick at the top of them. Wildwood and Timber were sheets of ice the whole way down. Arrowhead was probably the "best" (if there is a best) run of the day because it had the least amount of wind and ice.
It doesn’t make any sense because I was at Mohawk just last Friday. The conditions were great that day, as we had received about 3 inches of fresh snow. However, this week, even though there were not any rain storms to get rid of the snow, the quality of the conditions was horrible. Since the wind and cold was harsh, and the conditions were marginal, I give this night skiing trip a C.
Hopefully we get some snow to go nicely on top of the ice we currently have now.