Ascutney

From last mondays snow, and fridays snowstorm we had planned on going far north into Maine to check out Saddleback and Sugarloaf. Both received a fair amount of snow, and were far enough north to hopefully miss some of the traditional MLK weekend crowds.

Last minute, we changed our plans to a day trip. We decided to go close, where some decent snow had fallen but not a slope that was very well known... We took our chances on Ascutney.

Unfortunately, after buying our tickets we realized that only the lower half of the mountain was 'open' / lift serviceable. We got in all the runs we could on the fast packed powder conditions, lines were minimal which was nice. Melissa was flying on her new K2s. My favorite trail of the day was Exhibition, a fast straight down shot with some good gnolls for catching some high-speed air. I found some stale 'freshies' on the side, but the course of the week made a layer of crust near the top... I decided even with this layer of icy melt-freeze to go off and do some crud-busting.. I hiked over to Moments Rest and Terminator, and blasted my way through the crusty pow, cover was good, but I could see how if they opened it to the public it could have shown some rocks after some runs...

We were expecting a lot more for our day, but we still made the best of it. My general rule of thumb is to come back here when one of the double-blacks and top is opened up, hopefully after the next big snow. Powder days at this hill really do make it, but isn't that the case everywhere?

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