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Sunday commenced Day Two of the AlpineZone Summit at Sugarloaf with partly cloudy skies that would eventually give way to completely overcast with low elevation clouds around the upper elevation. Unlike Saturday, Sunday seemed to get colder instead of warmer as the day wore on with conditions on the groomers deteriorating quickly after the fresh cord had been skied multiple times. Most folks in our group skied hard for a few hours and were on the road before noon.

The day began with the novel experience of having one full hour of first tracks prior to the General Public being allowed to board the Sugarloaf Superquad. Knowing that Sunday would feature more firm and fast groomers and wintery temperatures, I was hardly excited to wake up early for first tracks. After checking out of our condo, we did make it to the lift by 8:00 A.M. To my surprised delight, the first tracks experience was novel and delightful.

While the General Public began to queue up for their first turns, we had already lapped the Superquad railing arcs into untouched cord. I am many years removed from my racing and grooming skiing days, so I had forgotten that skiing fresh cord for a groomer lover is the equivalent of fresh untracked for a powder hound. I realized that groomer conditions would quickly worsen throughout the morning as more and more people skied the groomers. I also realized that due to the mountain’s layout, we had lapped the main routes off the main lift prior to any other skiers and would be moving onto the rest of the mountain while most other skiers were starting to scrap down trails that no longer had fresh cord.

“It is just like a powder day!” I exuberantly exclaimed while riding the Superquad. Perhaps my quote of the weekend. But within the context of being far ahead of the masses and being able to experience the best conditions faster and in higher quantity than the General Public, this was a fair comparison.

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Sugarloaf has been a mountain that has inexplicably eluded me for well over half my lifetime. Having only been to Sugarloaf one time as a little kid on a ski vacation with the family, it is a mountain that has long been on my to do list. Along with Bretton Woods, Stratton, and Okemo, The Loaf was one of a very limited number of major ski areas in New England that I had yet to fully explore. A dubious list without distinction for such a fine quality mountain as Sugarloaf. With fond memories and low expectations due to poor weather and a mediocre March, I find myself driving from Saddleback to Sugarloaf on Friday evening with significant anticipation.

AlpineZone and Sugarloaf partnered up for the Summit and offered forum members an incredible deal at just over $150 per person for two nights lodging and two lift tickets along with some other perks including two parties with refreshments, the full resort treatment, and first tracks for an hour Sunday morning. We were essentially offered a complimentary two nights stay with the purchase of two slightly discounted lift tickets. This was the no brainer deal of the season and special thanks go out to the AlpineZone Team and to Sugarloaf for making this Summit possible.

Our six person condo in the Snowbrook Village afforded an awesome all encompassing view of the mountain due to its lowly proximately to the base of the Snubber Lift which serviced most of Sugarloaf’s condos off the access road. The condo was spacious and well stocked with a complete line up of appliances and creature comforts. For a skier that historically day trips 95% of the time and hostels one night stays the remaining 5%, the condo was a rare treat of an oasis allowing me to relax, grab some drinks, and have a good time without worrying about the drive home or early morning alarm for the next day’s alpine start.

You may have noticed that I have wrote quite extensively about many aspects of the trip but have yet to provide a conditions report and blow by blow summary of exciting runs as per normal. If you have already drawn the conclusion that conditions were below par for late March during what is historically their snowiest month of the year, your reasoning would be sound. Conditions were similar to Saddleback during the day prior: firm and fast. Sugarloaf did a commendable job grooming the snow into an eminently edgeable fast and hard packed surface following Thursday’s rain/freeze event. We were even able to escape the groomers on occasion with mixed results ranging from the absurd to what could only be described as situationally and relatively amazing.

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En route to Sugarloaf for the 2010 AlpineZone.com Summit, I met some other “Zoners” for an afternoon at The ‘Back. The mountain received Thursday’s rain with a twist: a 30 degree drop in temperatures through the evening. My expectations were about as low as possible which meant that it would not take much to impress.

Saddleback did an absolutely outstanding job getting their product back into shape. I was not optimistic about good skiing conditions whatsoever and was completely blown away by the product Saddleback offered. I had no designs on skiing anything but groomers but we were able to get into some bumps and even some trees due to some nice wind blow in places. But we did spend most of the day on the groomers which skied incredibly well. Saddleback did an amazing job grooming the trails into top shop. Saddleback did better than both Sunday River (second hand) and Sugarloaf (first hand).

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This season continues to be the ski season that was not. At less than twenty total days, my season came to an end on this less than stellar day at Sugarbush. AlpineZone.com forum members numbering about a dozen arrived at the bush to find a cold spring day featuring rather firm and unforgiving snow conditions.

I arrived early and stashed some food at Allyn’s Lodge. Immediately, I noticed the snow had set up hard and firm. Other skier’s said to avoid Heaven’s Gate. So I warmed up by taking the traverse down to Spring Fling twice before heading towards the Heaven’s Gate Chair to the meet up location. A meet up was the only reason for anyone to be heading towards Heaven’s Gate.

After a horrendous ski down a slick and icy Jester, we took the traverse to Stein’s Run which was just starting to get skied in. Bumps up top were widely spaced but better than a few weeks ago. I started finding a groove towards the bottom of the run. After finding a really nice line, I let the speed run a bit. But near the bottom, my legs stopped hammering and I got into the back seat causing a wheelie and a fall. My right palm hit harder causing a reinjury of my ligament damaged right thumb.

I knew right away that I was done for the day and likely for the season. A season that never really got started despite some good days early season. Jay Peak got less than a foot of snow from March 1st through the end of the season (normally, a very snowy period). I spent the best powder days on the disabled list or at work. With a total of just under twenty days on the season, I can rank this season as my worst in over a half dozen years. Even without the injuries, it would have still ranked rather low. This is one season that I am not sad to see end.

Sugarbush was the chosen location for a sparsely attended AlpineZone.com Meet Up for spring skiing in late March. This was the last weekend for Mount Ellen and Lincoln Peak was holding a pond skimming. I got a later start than normal and suffered through quite a line at the lift ticket window. The combination of end of season festivities and good weather brought out the crowds.

Lincoln Peak was still 100% open on all trails but snow conditions were rough to start. A recent rain/freeze event made the non-groomed trails rather variable and interesting despite a warm start to the morning. After a warm up down Lower Organgrinder and The Mall, I met up with a small crew and headed for Heaven’s Gate.

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Originally, I was planning on returning to Cannon Mountain for a Tuesday Two-fer, but changed plans to ski at Loon with Greg from AlpineZone.com. Having skied with Greg once before, I knew we would have a fantastic time skiing together despite the limited expert and natural snow terrain at Loon; which barely missed out on the foot and a half Cannon received over the weekend due to notch effect snow. The company more than made up for lack of challenging terrain as we ripped up the expert level groomers on Loon’s North Peak.

We started the morning by ascending the Seven Brothers Triple Chairlift and skiing down to the North Peak Express Quad where we would spend most of the morning skiing the groomed expert terrain the lift services. Skiing the trails Right to Left, we started by making a quick cruising run down Walking Boss before proceeding to ski under the liftline on Flume. Finally, we took Sunset to Angel Street and decided that Angel Street definitely was the most fun and had the best snow. We would return often to Angel Street throughout the morning.

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Last week before the rain storm Saturday morning, the entire mountain was fully covered. This week there was barely any snow on Paulie’s and no snow under the Zoomer Lift with lots of bare spots showing on Avalanche and Zoomer. Not totally unexpected but the damage is considerable when you take into account just how deep the snow cover was a few weeks earlier.

Brian and I met at the Peabody Lodge to share some turns today on this late season foray. The snow surface froze hard overnight and was teeth chattering frozen granular in the morning. I stuck to the groomers which skied okay but were begging for some sun. Things didn’t warm up as fast as i had expected, but around noon time, every trail on the mountain was gold. But by early afternoon, it was mostly mushy mashed potatoes.

Pick of the day was Vista Way for nice soft bumps and fine views with hardly any clouds. Yet another fantastic day at Cannon! I have had more good weather days than bad this year at Cannon, it has been an amazing year. Honorable mention goes to Middle to Lower Cannon for a great run to let the skis run. It is how I opened my season at Cannon and how I closed my season at Cannon.

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Another successful AlpineZone.com Meet Up was staged for Magic Mountain in Southern Vermont for late March. Bob, Brian, and I met in the lodge and we ran into MrMagic on the slopes. The morning began with beautiful weather and good conditions though it was cloudy most of the day with clouds burning off to allow for decent views towards the afternoon. Magic Mountain had 100% of its terrain open with about somewhere between a quarter to a third left ungroomed.

We begin with a warm up run down Medium to Vertigo with nice packed powder opening up to some big arcs near the bottom. Next we skied Trick to Wand to Showoff; getting in Trick before it scraped up too much. Over on Talisman, a thin groomed track was run down the center with natural and bumps on either side. I liked skier’s right up top and skier’s left down low while Bob and Brian tended to stay on the rough groomed patch. I wanted to show the guys Broomstick which is a great narrow trail off the top of the mountain. However, Bob’s knee was recovering and needed a stress free day of skiing. Despite Broomstick looking flat, I feared Heart of Magician and Lucifer were likely bumped. I volunteered to inspect by way of Master Magician (a guys gotta have his fun ). I took Master skier’s right and I think I overheard a fellow skier mention the words sick and nuts in the same sentence but I wasn’t sure. Skier’s left was fantastic! I only hit three rocks but I scored nearly untouched snow which was by far the best on the mountain. Later I hit Master again skier’s right through the trees which was dust on crust and dust on ice. Not so good. I found out Broomstick was unfortunately not doable without hitting very user unfriendly bumps on Heart or Lucifer.

Before heading in for lunch, I noticed that Red Line began with lots of untouched snow from last week’s storm was starting to get ugly. A lot of base melted since last week and more sticks and rock were showing than I had expected. Pre-lunch was definitely go time for Red Line. I executed a really ugly set of jumps off the rock cliff, one of which had me spun around backwards with my arm around a tree but no harm no foul. I followed that masterpiece up by barely sticking the next five foot drop. It wasn’t my day on Red Line, that was for sure. Below the cliffs the bumps were sweet but conditions were thin. I wasn’t tempted to repeat and was glad to get that out of my system before too much more traffic took all the snow off the trail.

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I have been long overdue on hitting up Burke this year. A combination of being drawn to Cannon and noticing the Northeast Kingdom did not receive a lot of snow this year kept me away. Meeting up with fellow skiers for an AlpineZone.com Meet Up was the perfect excuse to sample the charm and character of Burke Mountain.

Burke was amazing today and with excellent views and superb conditions. Visibility was great with Sugarbush, Mansfield, and Jay Peak all visible. Weather started cold but warmed up good by noon time. We began the morning skiing impeccable groomers including top to bottom on the Dippers and Willoughby. Burke’s perfect groomed conditions would rival even Sunday River’s legendary grooming. Seriously folks, Burke is THE BEST ski area in New England if you like cruisers with character at any speed. I am one to normally head for the trees and the bumps. But even I was lapping up the perfect groomed laying down railroad tracks in the morning.

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Berkshire East was selected as the first location of the AlpineZone.com Meet Up. Seven forum members meet Sunday morning at Berkshire East in Massachusetts to share some turns, tales, and fun. A good time was had by all! As always, it is always fun and interesting to put some names to forum member handles in addition to getting to know some folks better. Plus, it sure beats skiing alone and is a lot more fun too boot! Especially considering the lack of trails open at Berkshire East this weekend due to a recent rain storm. What normally would have been an awfully boring day on the slopes was turned into a really fun day with some great folks. A group photo can be found at AlpineZone.com. Greg Blasko, founder of AlpineZone.com, is the photographer of all pictures on this page.

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