TR - East Coast gnar 10/29
I was bored in class this morning and surfing TGR/the wider internet. It got really cold last night, so I was kinda interested in checking the weather and records for places around New England. Mt. Washington got like .5". boring...
Then I found the Killington website and noticed they had pictures of fresh snow coming from the snowguns today! Seeing as october is almost up and I hadn't skied yet this month, I immediately started making plans for an afternoon expedition after my midterm.
Unfortunately no one else at dartmouth felt like or could come. Lame. I decided to go anyway, though, and left campus at a little after 2.
The first snow was visible from the access road. It wasn't much, just two short trails up in the Glades area, but it sure looked nice and white compared to the rest of the hill (basically the leaves have fallen so the hills are looking really, really brown right now...)
As I was gearing up in the parking lot, some Green Mountain College kids pulled up and started up hiking next to me. We decided to head up highline because it was less steep than the other trail we could have gone up, (or at least the green mountain guys said so, I don't know killington).
The hike wasn't bad, and it finally is nice and cool out. We reached the snowline after something under an hour of hiking:
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1193702688
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1193702688
As you can see, the coverage is almost wall-to-wall, really not too shabby. I opted to hike up looker's right instead of skinning. This proved a good choice, since the actual snow has that man-made crust to it (read- ice in some places, breakable crust in some places, good skiing in some places)
The views from the top were spectacular, and the skiing itself was very enjoyable by virtue of the fact that it's the first skiing of the season for me... Conditions were mixed, and changed abruptly. Overall though, the top half (above the workroad that crosses under the triple) was better than the bottom half. The last little bit was treacherous because some of the grassy plants had been changed into little icy death cookies.
I took 2 runs, then decided to call it so I could get back down before dark. It was a solid first day, and surprisingly enough, one in which rock skis were NOT required!
Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of me skiing, but here are a couple nice shots:
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1193702688
The view looking up from the workroad
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1193702688
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1193702688
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1193702688
http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/a...1&d=1193702689
IT'S BEGUN!!!! (yes i know these aren't technically the first turns of the east coast season, but I would call them the first decent coverage turns, allen, sam, and soul's bolton valley trips looked a little... grassy)
