Took one of my sons and a couple of his friends up to Ragged on Monday (snow day & powder day = winning!!!). I looked at the forecast on Sunday and figured there was no way there wouldn’t be a snow day on Monday so we had planned on going the day before. I already had Monday off from work – so clearly all of the stars were aligning. Throw in the residual euphoria of another Patriot super bowl win and we’re hitting on a lot of good karma for a single day. If any of you haven’t spent a day skiing with a bunch of 12 yr olds, believe it or not I highly recommend it. Their youthful exuberance and willingness to ski anything is fun to be around. It’s great to see kids that age hit a day like yesterday – They haven’t had many days like that yet and too see their eyes widen as they realize how they can let loose on a day like that and ski everything is great. Plus I can do the terrain park with them – I’d look pretty stupid doing it with a bunch of 50 yr olds like me.

Ride up and back was a bit of an adventure, but 4WD and 400 lbs of sandbags in the back meant there was no stopping us. Not sure how other Boston area types like me get there but I like the route 89 to exit 10, Kearsage Valley Rd, route 11 then route 4 path as a good way to go. Took about 1:45 from north of Boston. Not bad on a day when I passed about 3 different spin outs/stuck in the snow off of the highway types of accidents.

Temps were 10-15 pretty much all day. Dumping snow the whole day. A little bit of wind at the top but nothing bad. We noticed how cold it was but as soon as you started kicking around all of the snow the blood got pumping pretty good and you really didn’t notice it. Crowds were minimal. Lifts were ski-on all day. Conditions were powder, wind-blown powder, & broken up snow. Boot to shin deep for most of the day.

I know it’s been said before, but the installation of the HSQ lift is really a game changer for Ragged. Just opens up so much skiing vertical there. I haven’t skied Ragged when everything is open and getting that and trying the new lift for the first time really made for a great trip. Looping a fast 6 pack and a fast HSQ for a mountain that size really makes up for the mountains relative lack of size/elevation.

What can you say about a day like yesterday? Untracked powder in the woods and along the trails. Everything was in play. We even ducked some ropes at the end of the day and skied some of the “closed” stuff. The ravine was awesome. We dropped into it from both the Ragged Mtn side and from the Spear Mtn side. It’s a great glade area to ski with kids. A little challenging/steep when you drop in and then levels off in the middle/lower section. Great low angle glades where you can just slip thru the trees. In the afternoon they started to get bumped up too. Some rocks & stuff under but nothing that made you think twice about pointing your skis towards of an unbroken patch of snow between some trees. We skied all of the middle glades; Rags to Riches, Peel’s, Not too Shabby, etc. We skied them all and they all were great. Outside of the ravine, Exhibition Glade surprised me. I always thought of it as kind of a “kiddy glade” but on this day it skied great. Low angle too but lots of fun lines to pick. I was more ambitious than usual about picking lines through the trees due to the forgiving snow and that made for some fun.

The trails were great. Lots of powder to be found. Raggae Glades is one of my favorite runs in NH. It always seems to have some decent bumps on it, gets good snow, and has just enough trees to make it interesting. The kids love the terrain park and I think they do a good job with that. Basically everything skied great and we skied almost everything.

Sorry, no pics. They would probably be too dark anyway but I also forgot to pack my GoPro and my cell pics aren’t very good.