Cannon once again offered up Two-Fers for the popular Super Bowl Sunday lift tickets. It was impossible for me to resist a day at Cannon for only $22. With the pre-game festivities not scheduled to begin on TV until 6 P.M., a full day of skiing was to be had; and not a second of the Super Bowl was to be missed.
The night before, I set my alarms a little earlier than usual because I needed to stop for gas and money. After getting to bed rather early (9 P.M.), I found myself tossing and turning for hours; unable to sleep a wink. Maybe it was the Pats in the Super Bowl, maybe it was anticipation of skiing Cannon, maybe I was trying to sleep after being awake less than nine hours… who knows! In any case, I abandoned sleeping around 3:30 A.M. and finished preparations.
Wheels were rolling by 5 A.M. After a quick stop for gas and money, I hit the I-93 for the to hour drive to The Notch. Skies were clear with the stars and moon shining brightly, although the forecast called for worse that afternoon. The drive was pleasant one. As I passed through Plymouth, the skies opened up in a fiery red sunrise. I snapped a few pictures out of the passenger window of my car, but they hardly do justice to the splendor of the sun rising above the peaks of the Whites.
Upon reaching Cannon, one of the employees commented on how amazing the sunrise was over Mount Lafayette. He said the whole sky was red. I missed the show by only twenty minutes! I was only the second car to park in the main lot behind the Lodge. As I unloaded my equipment, a van pulled up behind me with some sketchy looking dudes inside. They rolled down their window and asked me if I was a single. They were a group of three and needed an extra person for the Two-Fer deal. Whew! Got that problem solved quickly!
There are lots of reasons for getting to the mountain early. First, I love the empty lodge in the morning. Only die hard skiers, patrollers, and employees are there. I get to spread out, relax, and look out the window in anticipation. Second, of course is gaining as much ski time as possible and often times the best snow. Thirdly, I had to find a Two-Fer partner; which thankfully was easier than I had hoped. And finally, my skis needed a tune up bad, and Cannon is great at doing fast and thorough tuning.
After preparations were in order, I snapped into my bindings and hit the Peabody Quad for my first runs of the afternoon. Skies were still clear, and turning around on the lift gained wonderful views of Mount Lafayette and the Franconia Ridge. Very impressive views.
Considering all of New England was hit by a rain/sleet/ice storm the Friday before (that had closed Cannon Friday and Cannon’s Upper Mountain Saturday), snow conditions were not that bad. Groomed trails only were open for skiing, as the frozen crust from the storm was completely unskiable. The groomers did a fantastic job, and had more than 3/4 of the mountain open. The groomed snow was very fast and well packed.
I quickly made my way down to the Front Facing trails, and tried each trail once before heading towards the tram. No bumps on any trails due to the need for a complete groom. Avalanche was sketchy but skiable. Paulie’s had the best and most snow on the mountain! Soft and plentiful, this trail would later bump up pretty well. But for the morning runs, it was my Run of the Day. Zoomer had little extra snow but better coverage than avalanche. Rocket and Gary’s featured race training on half the trail and the other half open. Decent snow to be found there.
For the tram, they were really packing it full! I don’t think they wanted to leave any one behind. Perhaps mountain operations forgot to tell the tram operators that the Two-Fer was for pricing only and didn’t apply to loading the tram! It sure felt like they were loading two for every one, as I looked up at their 70+1 occupancy sign and almost laughed.
I tracked down Tram Way to the cut off, and stopped to pull out my camera and snap a Picture of Mount LaFayette. A perfect picture opportunity, I reached down into my jacket, pulled out my camera, and then looked up to find that in literally 10 seconds, Mount LaFayette was completely socked in by cloud cover. It would remain that way for the rest of the day. The snow then started to fall ever so briefly.
The upper mountain was generally sketchy and very windy. I was going to make it a Tram day, but didn’t want to be packed in so tight so often. After a ride up the Cannonball Quad and tracking down Taft Slalom to Upper Hard, I decided that the Upper Mountain wasn’t up to par after only one night of grooming. I remained on the Lower Mountain for the remainder of the afternoon. The Peabody Quad proved to be a wind tunnel. High traffic and winds made Middle Cannon scraped to the bone and not so fun, Middle Ravine had similar conditions. With the Middle and Upper mountain trails not fairing well with between the lifts, winds, or trail Conditions… I spent most of my time on the Zoomer Triple tackling the deteriorating Front Facing trails.
After a while, they began roping off trails. First it was Avalanche, then Paulie’s Cut Off, then Zoomer. Patrol said they didn’t want people getting hurt. I can see their point. For the first time ever on Cannon, I saw a football jacket and jeans clad teeny-bopper snowplowing down Paulie’s Folly. With a touristy at Cannon for the Superbowl Two-Fer, I thought this a wise move, although those trails were no worse off than a month ago. Actually, they were in better condition in most spots than when I skied them during extra thin cover conditions a month ago.
With Paulie’s starting to bump up, I spent probably 60% of my runs for the day on that trail working my mogul technique. I’m still pretty bad at the bumps, but I’m getting there. Bumps were soft, however, they were highly irregular… being created from people skid stopping and sliding the snow. This created rather spaced out bumps with scraped conditions between the bumps. It was still fun, considering the recent conditions.
I called it a day at 3:30 P.M., not quite making it to close due to tiring legs and my technique becoming sloppy. A solid day of skiing and a Pats Super Bowl! What could be better. Cannon now has a very solid base, the mountain just needs a few big storms to dump some fresh.
