The Tram was in operation for the first time this ski season on Saturday. Additionally, Saturday saw the opening of several trails due to the snow maker efforts including Bypass, Avalanche, Zoomer, and the Tram Cutback. Despite a harsh early season at Cannon, skiing on Saturday was fantastic all around with the mountain making an unofficial opening of the real ski season with all lifts running and most of the Front Face open.
After punching in a quick warm up on Middle Cannon which was delightfully edgable fast packed snow in the early morning hours, I wasted no time in tearing down skiers right on Paulie’s Extension heading for Avalanche. Avalanche had man made powder covering the right half of the trail with the groomed option to the left. I naturally wasted no time in trashing the edgable yet soft 3-4″ of man made powder on skiers right. I began the morning proper by cycling the Zoomer Chair optioning Avalanche and Zoomer which hosted huge ungroomed whales down the center with delicious man made powder over thin cover on skiers right with excellent man made powder between the woods and the whales on skiers left that skied like buttah.
Switching things up a bit, I boarded the Tram and headed for the Summit and went top to bottom via Tramway, Bypass, Paulie’s Extension, and Avalanche. Tramway was scraped pretty badly by the time I got up there. I saw one skier go down hard and not get back up and later heard in the lodge another skier was taken off in a sled. I stayed skiers left where I found decent loose snow slowly forming a tight bump line. Not really worth repeating. However, I found awesome snow on Bypass which was in the best shape I have ever seen the trail which is high praise for its first open day of the season. As the day progressed, skiers right at the steep part got really sweet as the ungroomed man made powder got loosened up.
Back to the summit I went and opted for Upper Cannon which was also scraped to death. Usually this trail features pushed loose snow on its sides from skiers skidding down the center, but even this paltry offering was not enough to merit Upper Cannon being worth the Tram to the Summit. I cycled on the Cannonball Quad back to the Summit for a run down Profile, but the carnage was so bad that I opted to slide back over to Tramway and leave the Summit for another day.
Back down on the Front Face, things were going smashingly well with skiers left on Zoomer deteriorating slightly while skiers right was bumping up quite well despite the ever thinner cover shining through. Rocket had awesome bumps lined down skiers right that slowly got worse as the day progressed. Gary’s also had bumps skiers right left over from a few weeks ago, but the bumps had been through one to many freeze-thaw cycles and were hard as rocks, not for the faint of heart or those that enjoy their turns.
A smashing day at Cannon in which natural snow was in the form of man made but still just as sweet. Cannon gets incredible props for having ungroomed conditions on parts of all the front face trails. The wind scoured the summit trails and while nothing can be done about that, the scraped sections of the Middle and Lower mountain trails were starting to show through and need a touch up pretty bad. Snow making was up top on Skylight and Upper Ravine which should open by next weekend. I would assume snow making will then work on touching up the main trails before moving over to the Banshee area. With one big dump, Cannon is in position to open up all trails except the glades and Tramline which will likely require a miracle to open this season.
