Pot o' Gold, a TR 3/18/2007

I was about to hang up my fat skis this last week in anticipation of a warm and soggy spring, but it looks like the leprechauns had something in store for us. After pondering on where to go for most of Thursday and Friday - not getting much work done in the process - I finally settled on good old Mt Slow. I headed up to the Plakespear mansion in West Dover on Friday night hoping to get a head start. It took almost twice as long as normal, which wasn't two bad considering the sometimes "untracked" road conditions. Hey, it's kind of like getting first tracks twice, right? Luckily I had my new fat skis mounted just that morning thanks to Jonathan S. and his rad workshop. A little brake bending with Plakespear's help and I was good to know.

We set the alarm for 5:30, determined to get first chair. Again the suby came in handy, requiring minimal digging of the 15" or so of surprisingly heavy but cold snow that had fallen. We booted up at 7:00 giving us enough time to get in line for the first chair at 7:30ish. Who should we be sharing that chair with but another maggot of course, dfinn.

Once at the top we all eyed the north face, but several groomers were doing some sort of circular war dance, with patrollers waving and shouting oddities. We gunned it down the front side only to have our goggles ice up completely in approximately 30 seconds. It was so sudden we were practically running over each other! It was some sort of freezing mist. Very odd. We got quite frosted throughout the day. After some scraping Mr. Spear and I took the straightest line back to the left and headed to the north face.

Conveniently Ripcord had been reserved for us. How nice of them! I was the 3rd set up tracks or so. The snow was evenly consolidated, dense pow with a sort of a crinkly think sugar crust. Just enough to feel but not quite enough to actually make a difference. Rather confidence inspiring snow considering the rock hard ice that lay 12" below everything. Needless to say it was likely the easiest run down ripcord I'll ever have. Looking back up I patted myself on the back for unintentionally avoiding the enormous sheets of windblown gray colored ice covering most of the run.

After that we lapped the north face a few times, getting as many untracked turns as possible. The open glades were especially fun, even with the occasional rock or ice patch. We agreed that the dense, smooth, fast powder was the closest the woods would ever be to being groomed.

Throughout the rest of the day we hit Darkside (of the moon?) glade, and some others that I can't remember. While playing around on some little wind lips I managed to bury my tips and face plant, doing a complete flip. Noice! Nils also managed to connect his jaw with the ground twice. Not so cool. Even as things got skied out, the soft cruds was pretty nice. The snow lost any crustiness and was ripe for skiing beyond one's reasonable speed limit.

I was loving my new K2 Chiefs today. I had almost as much float as on my Pow+, but with MUCH more versatility. It's so much fun to go from pow to crud to a bgi soft bump to a groomed section all in four turns and have it feel totally naturally. They're likely the most lively skis I've been on in awhile, and also the softest, at least in the tip. This made it easy to pop mini airs everywhere, transferring from clump to clump. You could slide here and carve there. Tons of fun!! The only place where they aren't perfect would be going extremely fast in very rutted choppy snow (which I expected) and in overly tight trees (meh.) Overall I'm super psyched with my choice. I could take these puppies on a trip west with me as my only ski and be very happy 90% of the time.

Nils on the other hand took out my bendy pow+ for the day and was loving them. Well, at least for the first 2/3 of the day. (Heh.) It was very cool to see someone on those project skis. What a fun ride.

Anyways by about 2pm (yes, 2, I am no rock star) we were skiing on columns of jello and decided to quite while we were ahead. Overall a SUPER fun day even if the snow was not as epic as it could have been. I'm so happy that the storm came, because I have several days off this week to ski :D

Time for some sleep. ZZzzzzz


A little glade action:

http://tetongravity.com/forums/attac...1&d=1174193043


Dense snow + tip rocker on a 115mm waisted ski = no tip dive whatsoever:

http://tetongravity.com/forums/attac...2&d=1174193043


Where's Waldo?

http://tetongravity.com/forums/attac...3&d=1174193043


Bathroom steeze. Note the most important piece of equipment of the day, clearly visible.

http://tetongravity.com/forums/attac...4&d=1174193043

http://tetongravity.com/forums/attac...5&d=1174193043


I think Plakespear is having a good time

http://tetongravity.com/forums/attac...6&d=1174193127

Wow, it's like looking into the FUTURE! (today is the 17th, tomorrow is the 18th.)

:p

Nice pics.

Futureskool! :D

Powder turns followed by a coldie. They just go so well together. :yourock:

Spring skiing RUUUULZZZZZZ

Whoops! Figures that I got the date wrong. Teaches me to write TRs at 1AM. :p

Yeah, yesterday was a fun day. We lost DFinn on the first lap- no friends on a powder day clause was invoked. My legs are still toast. I quit skiing by noon today. Conditions were still decent, but my body wasn't. I took a look at Ripcord, certainly not as good as it was yesterday. And I am now in the market for a 180 PowderPlus, which will be pimped out with a custom rocker at Mad Science Ski Labs. bThat ski rooled! It's nice to have a ski partner with the same boot sole length so you can use his skis :D

I ended up taking off pretty early. I couldn't see a damn thing. The first couple of runs were pretty good but it felt like the tracked up snow was setting up pretty firm and I figured it would just get worse as the day went on. Sounds like maybe I was wrong.

I too am still toast, physically. If I had even been at the hill today it would have been ugly. Especially with the wraparound snow they got at Killignton I'm stoked for some midweek skiing. Yesss!

Plakespear: you're welcome to borrow them to mess around on in the later season if you want. I doubt that they'll get much more use this season. In almost all east coast areas there's just so much groomed, bumped and tight terrain that the pow+ will only win out over the more versatile Chiefs for me on the most ginormous of powder days.

As for the pow+ I reccomend getting the most trashed pair you can find :)