To conclude October with my personal best record of four days of skiing, I left work early to Dusk Patrol Jay Peak. My birthday present was sweet indeed as on the eve of the anniversary of my birth, nature offered up excellent turns on a beautiful late afternoon. I could not have asked for a better present than to be on my fourth day of turn earning before October ends. The myriad shades of color spreading across the valley from behind Jay Peak as the sun set was the proverbial icing on the cake.
With the 30th in the books, I have passed my October total for last year and without hesitation can confirm this early season has been and continues to be way better than last year's early season. While I have not had as much powder depth this year, the lack of consistently deep powder has been more than made up for by the consistently good base, consistently good conditions, and consistently cool weather. I will take consistently great over once in a while superior.
Unfortunately, I could not dawn patrol as I needed to be at the store by 7:45am. So I settled for a dusk patrol instead. I planned on leaving work at 3pm, but managed to slip out earlier than expected at 2:30pm and proceeded to hit school traffic all over the place. Despite being almost 15 minutes closer to Jay leaving work instead of home, it still took me an hour to get there.
I was not expecting much on the open trails due to wind and boy was I right. Wind buffed and bullet proof with pockets of powder on the side of the trail was the rule. Having just over two hours of day light and being solo, I was unfortunately resigned to leave the trees well enough alone despite knowing Valhalla and others had the goods based on Sunday's tour. So the plan was to skin up Green Beret hoping that a ton of snow blew over the ridge and the wind didn't move it too far. Fat chance. Skinning up the wind buff on Green Beret sucked. I opted to stop skinning at the large rock with the normally decent sized jump, but today was a huge huck with a terrible landing and take off. I wisely passed on that but did score an eight foot drop off another rock further below and landed in a nice cushion of pow. Sweet,this is better than many January's I have had!!!
With the sun going down behind Jay and day light fading quick, I needed to make haste for part two of my plan. I clicked out and hoofed up Northway a short ways to Power Line. Power Line in October? Why Not!!! Skier's right had the goods and was protected by the trees. Dealing with the double fall line was interesting. 4-6" of pow covered the entire trail with awesome coverage and tons of sweet rock drops. Killer. The run out back to the Jet was actually pretty sweet with good cover and delightful soft pow over a decent base. Seriously, I have had many January's that have totally sucked compared to this October! I got back to my car just as darkness was claiming the valley. Damn turning the clocks back! Unfortunately, due to the one hour drive and need to leave work early, I will not be able to get many more of these post work Jay days in as the sun begins to set even earlier every day. Hopefully Burke will do much better this year will natural snow fall and colder temps so I can make some Dawn and Dusk Patrols at Burke as the season progresses.
