Soon after waking up at 7am, I fired up my computer to check conditions. Things did not look too bad until I stuck my head out the door, and boy was it cold! I slacked off until about 9am when I decided that I might as well give it a shot. After my powder day at Saddleback on Thursday, I knew I was in for disappointment, but I figured it would at least be worth the drive. Not so much.

Jay Peak’s woods would not be very skiable after the rain compiled with a hard freeze. I still had a voucher for Loon and suspected a ski area with good grooming would be the best option. But not even Loon’s grooming could save the day!

Driving up to a relatively empty mountain was the first sure sign of trouble. Loon is never that uncrowded at 10am on a sunny Saturday morning. The Sherman Adams Lodge was sporting high school racers who either already finished their run or were waiting for their run, I could not tell. But I could tell that even these racers would rather be indoors than taking a free run, ouch.

Loon’s coverage was very impressive considering what I encountered last Sunday on Cannon’s last day of operation (4-5 trails). Loon still had the same number of trails open as one month ago with what I would guess is between 6-12″ of solid base, though a few thin spots were showing on some trails. An admirable job at snow making to say the least to still have that much terrain open this late in the game given the year we have had.

Snow conditions were crapola. I did not even board a lift until around 11am, but things were still cold with a stiff breeze and no warm up in sight despite the partially sunny skis. One guy I rode the chair with commented that things were “starting to soften up a bit” to which I replied that my first run was my worst run of the entire season. I guess when you are used to skiing scraped off man made snow, you get used to it! I have not been used to that type of snow condition for several years now.

I could not dig in an edge to save my life. What I would not have given for a pair of Volkl Six Stars freshly tuned! I felt like an amateur out there. Given that my skis have not been tuned in four weeks/eight ski days, my edges were fairly dull… but even with dull edges, I can normally dig into most conditions. There simply was no “snow” to turn on. Rather, surface conditions were an icy groomer tread all over the mountain. No thanks. I took three runs and called it a day> It was not even worth the one hour drive except that I would have been wondering if I was missing out had I not gone.