Survival Skiing on Man Made at Jay

One route at Sunday River for $39, three routes at Killington for $49, or two routes earned for free at Jay. Gee wiz, I think I will see what is behind door number three, please!

Unfortunately, not much. This is a tough weekend for the desperate unless you want to buy over priced lift tickets for extremely limited products at Sunday River or Killington.

The price at Sunday River increased by over 50% without any increase in product. Needless to say, the law of supply and demand is in full effect. And who can blame them for doing so? When lift lines are backing up into double digit wait times and beyond, they obviously have enough demand to justify increasing the prices to increase profitability and put out a better product.

As for Killington, suffice to say I would not pay $50 for half of their trails open let alone two runs off the North Ridge Triple and Bunny Buster. Bretton Woods also opened one bunny trail for a $10 donation to charity. The options were not looking very promising for lift serviced.

So I turned my attention towards Jay.

Jay Peak turned the guns on over Upper Jet and Haynes this past weekend. I was hoping to get there once temperatures started warming to allow for softening snow conditions. Unfortunately, conditions were anything but soft.

After a short hike to the bottom of Haynes, I tossed the skis onto the snow and applied skins for the first time this season. The man made on Haynes made skinning in any direction except straight up the fall line extremely difficult. So I cut over to Derick Hot Shot which had received ample blow in from the guns on Haynes. Skiing was substantially easier on the thinly covered Derick Hot Shot.

Soon I gained the top of the the Jet Triple chair and noticed the new ski patrol shack. After a quick snack, I switched over to downhill mode and tentatively made my way over to Haynes hoping for anything but what I expected to find given the temperature.

Turns were horrendous to say the least. The man made snow was very “grabby” and made releasing the tails difficult. My edges were not bitting into the firm and consolidated hard pack making for sliding turns and desperate survival skiing. Add in the frozen sticks poking through the snow and I had a royal shit show on my hands. I through out all pretense of even trying to look like I was making controlled turns and slid my way over to Derick Hot Shot preferring 1-2 inches of warmed up thin cover to the ice rink on Haynes.

Suffice to say, I have had better days and this is yet one more example that those who say “a bad day of skiing is better than a good day of work” either do not enjoy their jobs or have never skied in exceptionally poor conditions. Despite the poor quality of the turns, the outing was enjoyable overall and I was glad to be hiking for turns again.

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4 thoughts on “Survival Skiing on Man Made at Jay

  1. Great report Steve. Maybe you should have hiked up to the Vermonter – looked nicely covered in the background of your photo. I have had many similar runs on the Haynes in regular ski season after paying for a lift ticket, so don’t feel too bad. What is it with that run?

    Keep up your good reports. I don’t get to Jay Peak as often as I’d like and reading The Snowway helps keep the stoke fueled.

  2. There really was not much coverage on any trails that did not receive man made blow in. When approaching Troy from the road, it looked like all the trails had great coverage but the natural was actually less than an inch. The only way Derick was skiable is because of the man made blow in… and even with that plus the natural it was no more than two inches at best.

  3. Steve,

    Glad you got out anyhow. It looks like I’ll be holding out until the 27th. We’ll be in Newport for Thanksgiving and we need to pick up my son’s season pass he won on the last weekend the lifts spun. Lucky kid.

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