*Le Sigh*
After a week of wild predictions ranging from boot deep to the jackpot, I woke up Tuesday morning to the tune of only two inches of snow in Saint Johnsbury. Fret not, surely Jay Peak received much more than two inches! Arriving at the Stateside lot shortly after the bull wheels began turning, it was unfortunately confirmed that Jay Peak faired no better than Saint Johnsbury. Two stinking inches of very wet snow. Adding insult to injury, non-crystalline precipitation was following from the sky and a mist of wet nastiness hung over Jay. Is it 2007 yet?
After booting up in the Stateside lodge, I grabbed a Red Chair on the Bonnie Quad and ripped some high speed arcs down Northway to Angel's Wiggle. The wind was blowing mighty fiercely at the top of the quad and that did not warrant a second trip. So I proceeded to The Jet for some rides up the Blue Chair.
Shortly thereafter a stinging hail/sleet/freezing rain mix began pummeling skiers and riders. Conditions on The Jet were not so hot due to the rain prior to the snow during the previous evening. Frozen scraped groomer tracks were already visible early in the morning with not much natural snow available to soften the blow. Under the liftline, things looked deceptively inviting except for the icy bumps and troughs courtesy of the rain and freeze the night before. I would return to give the liftline a try later in the afternoon.
Haynes was next up as the third and final open route. Similar to The Jet, Haynes had scraped down groomer tracks and variable snow. I was able to find some nice pushed around loose wet snow on skiers' right hugging the trees. On Lower Haynes, two to three inches of fun low angle natural snow was available on both edges of the trail.
Around noon time, the snow finally began! And lasted two hours with one inch of accumulation. That one inch was enough to tempt natural snow skiers into performing some minor miracles to have some amusement. Liftline began to take a beating as skiers could no longer see any ice under that deceptive one inch coating of wet snow. Out of sight, out of mind! Some parts of the liftline section of The Jet actually skied fairly nice. Other parts were scraped down to grass fairly quickly. It was natural snow without frozen scraped groomer tracks, so I was a happy man.
Derrick was on Reserve this afternoon, so I decided to sample the natural. Amazingly good despite being rather thin with some mandatory base scrapes. The wet snow got chewed up by the end of the afternoon so few fresh lines were remaining. Without fresh lines, it was too thin to keep hitting, so I called it a day around 3 P.M.
The start of the 2006-2007 ski season has been very mean with exception of the late October and early November storms that us turn earners capitalized on. Even those early storms reinforce just how bad things are since I have tasted how good things can get in a few short days. Snow making temperatures will return these next few nights leading into the new year. However, this December will likely enter the Vermont history books as one of the warmest Decembers on record.