Weekend ski report January 6, 2003.
.... So last Friday they were predicting lots of snow to the North and West of Boston. As you may know, I have a share in a ski house at Killington ski area this year. I headed up after work at 7 PM. I took the jeep with 4wd instead of the 2wd pick-up! It took me two hours and twenty minutes to go 68 miles! It was very heavy rain on RT 93 North in Massachusetts, which turned into very heavy snow upon entering New Hampshire. The traffic was bumper to bumper at a speed of around 10-15 miles per hour. The highway looked like back roads in terms of snow. We were driving in about 6'' ruts with very poor visibility. I decided that as long as I arrived at the mountain in time for the lifts to open it would be ok. The snow increased in intensity every minute of the trip and it looked like this trip would make up for the Christmas storm that I missed! I made it to RT 89 in about another hour or so. The road conditions were greatly improved. The snow was falling and visibility was still poor however the right lane was cleared to pavement. I was cruising along at 50 mph all the way to RT 4. RT 4 is the local road that runs East/West from the highway to the Killington Access Road (my ski house is on this road). I arrived at 12 PM in exactly 5 hours, way ahead of schedule (and two hours later than the normal 3 hour commute).
Saturday – It continued to snow all night and as it turned out, all day today. I was up at 6:30 and on the gondola at 8 AM. I didn't want to wait for anyone else in the house. My "roommate" actually got out before me. Conditions were great everywhere. It was around 25 degrees with no wind and lots of fluffy flakes falling gently from the sky. I explored the Killington peak area at the beginning of the day and ended up following a group of about ten 8-10 year olds up a hiking trail at the top of the gondola. I thought that this was a little strange but it turns out that there was an "extreme team" coach with them. Anyway, we hiked up for a few minutes and ended up skiing through some tight Castlerockesk (area at Sugarbush) trails and down to the Canyon area. We went into some woods/glades next to double dipper trail. This was so fun. I followed the group in powder and soft bumps in the woods. The group leader directed these kids to the "ledge". It was a 3+-foot drop into a fairly open patch of snow with a pretty steep landing. I never laughed so hard. Kids took turns jumping off the ledge until all of them ended up in a huge pile below. If there was ever a time for the camera this was it. After the last crash, I decided to move on. I skied the rest of the double dipper woods and did a few more runs in the Canyon area. I moved on to my favorite trail on the mountain. I always called it Needles Eye because it's under the Needles Eye chairlift. As it turns out, this trail is called Wild Thing. There are signs at every trail crossing with a disclaimer that this trail has no maintenance or snowmaking. I think the signs are new however the natural snow, lack of skiers, and bumps and natural contours are exactly as I remember. I finished the day doing laps on this trail. This is a great way to get a leg burn. When my legs finally started screaming at me I went back to the car and pulled out the snowboard for a couple of final runs.
Sunday – I went out with a guy from my ski house. We went over to the beginner/intermediate area called Rams Head. We arrived at a leisurely pace and had our coffee and bagels in the parking lot. We were snowboarding and on the trail by 9:30. Going up the chairlift I noticed perfect corduroy trails – great for a snowboard warm-up (I hadn't spent any significant time on a snowboard in years). We reached the top took about three turns and jumped into the woods to the skiers left of the trail (so much for the warm-up). This was the lightest powder I've ever skied in. I didn't understand how light until the end of the day (stay tuned). This was our own private powder stash and we stayed here for several hours. We were in the woods for the top 2/3rds of the mountain and worked on turns on the groomers on the bottom third where the woods lacked the required pitch to keep moving. I felt extremely comfortable on my board and really started getting aggressive throughout the day. My theory is that the better skiers stay on different parts of the mountain and the beginners don't go in the woods. This was the perfect combination of snow, tree density and people (just John and me). The sky was blue in the morning. There wasn't any wind on Saturday or Sunday. When you looked through the snow-covered branches to the blue sky in the middle of an untracked patch of woods.... well you get the idea. John has kind of messed up priorities and decided to go home to watch football around noon. I took a couple of additional runs on the board and then went back for the skis...
My plan was to work my way back to Wild Thing for a couple of runs and then over to Outer Limits, which is supposed to be the best bump run on the mountain. I stumbled on to what I thought was a connecting trail to the Killington Base Lodge from Rams Head called Squeeze Play. This is a gladed area that is actually a mountain biking trail in the summer. It was pretty tracked out so I skied through the snow patches near the trees. The trail was much longer than I expected and I started to doubt that it would come out where I wanted. I started to doubt that I was on a ski trail (all evidence of ski tracks was gone) and I saw mountain bike signs all over the place. I was looking for a ski trail and I guess I wasn't paying attention and I introduced my right thumb and shoulder to a tree! My immediate reaction was to get up fast and pretend it didn't happen. I quickly realized that I was having trouble gripping my ski pole and shortly after that ended up at the Rams Head lift again. I got back on the lift and took the time to evaluate the damage. I decided to take a final run down a groomer (still really fun and corduroy on the sides) and call it a day at about 1:45.
Newsflash – At Killington if you can swallow your pride and go to ski patrol after an injury (even if its your own fault) they will give you a plastic bag for snow and voucher for a free ticket! They won't however, give you an aspirin.
Fluffy Snow – My friend Jay often gives a percentage of H2O when describing the lightness of the snow. He's a scientist and understands that kind of stuff. If my understanding is correct and the lower the H2O the lighter the snow this snow would be 1%. I'm probably way off so I'll tell you about my unplanned experiment. Remember the plastic bag provided by ski patrol? I filled it up with snow and tied the top. After icing my thumb for 20 minutes of so, the snow had reduced in volume to only fill the bag about 1/5th of the way. I don't know where the snow went. There was ZERO condensation in the bag. When I untied the bag (ok someone else untied the bag) the inside of the bag was completely dry to the touch, there was no water at the bottom of the bag and the snow was still pretty light, just less than when I started! So I refilled the bag to the top with snow for the ride back to Boston. Instead of tying the bag, I just stuck my hand into the snow a couple of times on the way home. The bag remained open for 3.5 hours with similar results as the first time. The bag never got wet and the snow never melted, even with the heat on in the car. The bag was full at the beginning of the trip and about 1/10th full at the end of the trip. When I emptied out the bag, the snowball fell to the ground with a splash so I know that water was in there somewhere.
One last observation – On the drive home, the snow pile on the center strip on parts of RT 89 were several feet higher than the Jeep I was driving. I don't think I've ever seen the snow banks on the highway that high!
That's it for my weekend ski report.
-----Original Message-----
From: David Shulman [mailto:david@techctr.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 2:57 PM
To: 'brendan'; 'Bruce'; 'Christine'; 'Dave'; 'Derek'; 'Eric'; 'Jen'; 'Jeni'; 'Joel'; 'John'; 'Ken'; 'Mike'; 'Orion'; 'Peter'; 'Ron'; 'Vin'; 'Young'
Subject: Update to ski story
Hi All,
Thank you for your concern regarding my thumb (see attached ski report if you didn't receive it the first time and are interested). I finally decided to ease my mind and get an X-ray. After 10 days I couldn't use my thumb to turn keys, zip zippers, button buttons, forget about thumb tacks, etc. I also have a lot of pain when playing squash (I hit yesterday and the day before).
I just received the X-Ray results. I have a TOTAL TRANSVERSE FRACTURE above my top knuckle. Kate should find this extremely funny after my demonstration on Monday behind the doubles court.
Take care
-D