After an aborted Cannon Mountain attempt; which blew away in the 50 MPH winds, Sledhaulingmedic, NHPH, Dave, and I went with the next best closest option with the least likely chance of wind hold: Burke. Why I even thought Cannon would be open is beyond me. I was just so pumped up to be skiing Cannon at its prime with fresh snow... rather blind not to expect winds blowning south to north to knock Cannon off line.
We got going at Burke around 10 A.M. after working out the logistics. The Willoughby Quad was turning when we got there but we were warned it was being shut down soon. We got three excellent runs off the summit, including Willoughby, Doug's Drop into Little Chief, and East Bowl before the plug was pulled. East Bowl was fantastic but it was hard to get up much speed with the nice and dense powder. Of course, the traverse back was brutal, but I had to show off Burke's signature trail. The Poma lift was more than adequate for our needs and proved the surface lifts have their place.
Hard call on the snow totals. The open slopes generally had about six inches with more along the edges. Up to a foot in some spots, so I might put the end of day total at eight to ten inches for the 24 hour period of snow fall including this afternoon. Woods shots were generally a foot deep, sometimes deeper in drifts and amazing above the knee deep in the Slot, which will probably be filled back in by tomorrow morning.
After some more woods action we grabbed some lunch at the lodge. Nice snow on Fox's, Ledges, Bear Den, etc. Bravo. Excellent loose powder after it got chewed up, still lots of Pow on Fox's. Ledges are in the best shape I have ever seen them with awesome jumps and hucks from the snow making whales.
After lunch, a HUGE wind picked up blowing east to west. Big Dipper was picked clean and, as we learned the hard way, the East Bowl glades had the snow completely lifted out of the trees with exception of the bottom 100-200 vertical feet. We took Cave Man since we could not reach Dixie. It was rough going with no fresh snow and a firm base. Bad call on my part but the bottom of the glades looked excellent on the way out of East Bowl. Evidence of the high wind was visible on the traverse with lots of sticks, pine needles, and small downed branches that were not there earlier in the morning.
We kicked it over to some trees and Little Dipper for some late day untracked in the less obvious spots and finished up with several runs down Bear Den, Ledges, and Warren's on a variety of conditions including powder, loose powder, chopped up powder, powder, wind blown powder, crud, packed powder, and powder. A mixed bag, but a nice mixed bag. This snow made you work. Very similar to the dense V Day snow storm in terms of consistency, quality, and density.
ITwas a great warm up for the weekend. Very little sleet, off and on snow of variable consistency throughout the day with snow still falling when we left. Burke should be skiing very well this weekend.