After a Powder Day warm up at Burke due to the lifts being closed at Cannon on Friday, I made my way back to the promised land with Dave on Saturday. Despite Cannon claiming up to eight inches of fresh, the wind picked the mountain clean as we found out on after getting first tracks off the first tram down Taft Slalom to Upper and Middle Hard. The trails featured two to three inches of wind packed fresh snow on top of a firm base. Taft Slalom skied excellent as did Upper Hard but firm moguls under the new snow on Middle Hard proved difficult to negociate for a first run.
Since no fresh snow was to be found on the main trails, we ducked into the woods and found more of the same with two to three inches of fresh snow on average. Things were starting to warm up as the sun came up and softened things up to the point of melting. We continued to hunt the woods until lunch time when we opted for burgers at The Lift and then headed to the summit to tackle Tramline. With barely more than one hundred inches of snow, it was hard to believe Tramline was open even with the dense base building snow from the recent blizzard. Sure enough, Tramline was a total disaster and should not have been open to the public. Tramline featured two pinches with near mandatory sidestep over rock and dirt. The crux manuver below Tower One was almost child's play compared to the less than heroic side stepping in key pinch locations.
Tree skiing continued later that afternoon with Dave heading home shortly after Tramline. Much excitement was head in the trees on my spiritual home mountain.