I could not have picked a better first day to ski Mount Mansfield! I have no room to complain since tickets were $15 with two canned goods, but the morning got off to a TERRIBLE start with a 20+ minute wait at the ticket counter. Stowe may have a new POS system that was not working too well. Only three out of four ticket windows were open and operating terribly slow. Cashiers were hand entering all the credit card info. Customers putting fifteen dollars on a credit card and not consolidating group purchases also substantially contributed to the backup. After the ticket line fiasco, I was more than ready for some turns in fresh snow!
The Forerunner Quad was running with an average wait time of about 5 minutes. Not too bad considering the gondola wasn't running and they were busing folks in from Spruce Peak as the Mansfield lot was packed. Snow was falling in the morning and never stopped throughout the day but I would suspect total accumulations were low today. Maybe an extra inch or two. Low visibility and poor light throughout the day.
Screw warm up runs! Let's see what all the hype is about regarding the fabled Front Four. I took three runs down Liftline and one down National to start my day and I Was not impressed with the trails themselves. Neither were excessively steep and both are rather wide. Unfortunately, Goat and Starr were roped and were the two trails I was most interested in giving a rip.
A legit foot and a half of powder fell on bare ground creating thin cover conditions. Timeliness of turning was important to not scrape bare ground or worse in the heavy traffic areas. Snow was consolidated powder; chowdah if you would, with occasional pockets of untracked to be found in the AM. I was ripping Liftline on my Legend 8000s, opening them up and letting them run, wooo! Best to turn on top of the bumps since they were nice and soft and most troughs had little snow to turn on. Conditions were getting bad quick, so I made as many runs as possible before looking towards the Gondola side of the area.
My biggest mistake of the day was not bringing my AT gear. The trail report had Perry Merrill and Gondolier open, so I had assumed the Gondi was running. Such a bad assumption. I made the best of it any ways taking Nose Dive (which was horribly beat to crap and hard to avoid many rocks) to Rimrock and hiking up Cliff Trail which featured knee deep untracked. My second biggest mistake of the day was not getting back to Rimrock and taking my share of that knee deep untracked. I had my sites set on Chin Clip though. I figured if Rimrock was knee deep untracked, then not as many people had made it over to Chin Clip. Unfortunately, it had been mostly tracked up. The upper section was simply sensation and I just let the skis ride, taking air and finding soft pillowy landings. Chin Clip was sensational despite the lack of untracked snow.
I met a guy from the Ski Vt-l list and buddied up with him to venture into some interesting stuff. We dropped into a tree line on the next run (trees on the first week of december, WOOO!!!!) which was short and sweet, two feet of fluff was just enough! Next run up, I mention to my partner who was also making his first run at Stowe if he has ever heard of The Bruce?
Talk about pushing your luck! POW POW POW up top but lots of rocks and base damage down low. An excellent trail, the CCC didn't make a single bad run that I know of. Our skis got mangled pretty good, but we made some excellent turns. Probably needs a hard freeze and another foot of snow to cover things up better; two feet of snow to completely fill it in.
Had we known the Toll House Double wasn't running, we might have thought twice about dropping in but we managed to thumb a ride back to the base area, making sure to make a contribution to the charitable fellow's beer fund. Once more down National featuring delightful pow bumps on the right before going to complete crap at the bottom with one section of near mandatory base scratches.
Too bad this place is out of my price range or I would hit it up a bit more often. I didn't even really scratch the surface of what I eventually want to discover over there, but a phenomenal day all around despite the thin cover, core shot, and ample base damage. What a beginning to the season is all i can say after that! Nine days of skiing in barely more than a month, and of those nine days I have scored 6 pow days. 66%! If only that percentage would stand for the rest of the season. Sick.