MLK off from work 1/2 day Smuggs TR

**Vinman** · 01-19-2004, 12:36 PM

So to make a long story short I got the OK to take the morning off from work since I had to work all weekend. Northern VT has been getting scattered snow showers over the last couple days with maybe 2-4 inches on Fri night another 2-4 on Saturday and probably close to 6-8 last night in the higer elevations. Smuggs was claiming 10 but not too sure about that. Today was been windy also.

So I arrive at the mountain just after the lifts loaded. We proceded to hit one warm up run down an untracked trail. It was pretty good but a bit windblown. Boot top fluff most of the way down, awesome. After that we immediately went in search of deeper goods. We went into multiple inbounds tress shots where it was deep and soft with no worries about hitting anything below because of great base this year.

After a couple runns of that we decided to go into the "backbowls" of Smuggs, actually the Mt. Mansfield State Park/Forest. After traversing past a couple drop in points that had already been hit we found what we were looking for, untrached pow that has been accumulating over the past 3 days. A consevative estimate would be about 12-15 inches of sweet untouched virginal snow that we utterly destroyed! The line we took was one I had skied before tight at the top and then opening up into nicely spaced trees that you could link turn smoothly in. That same line then increases pitch with a tricky entrance of supertight trees. The line itself is a corridor of trees about 9 feet wide the entrance is only about 4 feet. I entered first hop turning around the first of the trees at the entrance, with my second hop turn to get into the open my tail caught the last tree on my right. I hit hard enough to come out of my ski. As I fell It spun me downhill and I was then aware that I had begun sliding head first and on my back down a somewhat steep and tree lined chute, not good. I slid about 20 yards before I was able to self arrest and heard my buddies calling down to see if I was ok. Somehow I managed to escape with only a slightly bruised ego. The rest of the run was great and I got back in the saddle by hitting a small drop off a fallen tree.

The rest of the morning was more of the same, untracked tree shotsa few small 10 foot drops until my last run for the day. We entered FIS woods high and traversed left towards freefall. Finally we dropped in and skied a line that had spots of untracked snow. Then we cut back to the right as the trees opened up to find about 10 inches of creamy goodness. We worked our way down to a spot just above an ice flow of about 15-20 feet. My buddy reconed the LZ, which was almost perfect, soft and steep with no close by trees, and gave the thumbs up. I took two turns to adjust my line for a clear spot in the trees and dropped!!! I hit my landing and then scrubbed some speed and came to a stop in the trees. We hooted a bit and skied on.

What a great day, I'm still smiling.