qcanoe
New member
I have a soft spot for Wildcat. I had my first real, thrilling, top-to-bottom run there in February of 1969, when I'd just turned 7. I still have a Kodachrome slide that my sister or mother took that day, my outfit complete down to the bamboo poles and cable bindings. I can remember like it was yesterday how angry my dad was at the bottom of 2000 feet of vertical because I had not stopped to wait for him at any intersections. Since I'd never been off the south slope at Cranmore before, which was a glorified pasture, it had never occurred to him that I might ski all three miles of the Polecat run without a pause. For the same reason, it had never occurred to me that I might not.
Then when I was a teenager I went there regularly - not frequently, but at least once a year - and I always thought it had the best terrain of any of the mountains I skied. By that time I had a couple of buddies who raced for the high school team, and trying to keep up with them was improving my skills quickly. So for me Wildcat was the scene not only of teeth-cutting but of some wild-oats sowing as well.
Anyway, my 8-year-old and I made the trek up there on Saturday (March 24), and I have to tell you it was a big disappointment, considering the perfect calm sunny weather and comfortable spring temperatures. First of all, there was a big race going on, and they'd closed off a big chunk of the mountain for that - the lower right quadrant as you look up from the base. This section has some of the best terrain, including the excellent Bobcat slope. Second, and much more significantly, the natural cover was basically gone. It was snowmaking trails only: Polecat, Lynx, Catapult, and Upper Wildcat were about it. All the other trails - roped off, obviously - were showing lots of grass and rocks with only patchy snow left. Note the lack of snow on Mt. Washington in the photo! Now this is not management's fault: You get the snow that you get, and obviously they had not gotten what Saddleback and Sugarloaf have gotten over the couple of months.
What really made the skiing disappointing was the apparent lack of appropriate application of grooming skill. For one thing, there wasn't a single pitch on the whole hill that had been left bumpy. Who every heard of spring skiing with no bumps? Secondly, the "groomed" runs - i.e., everything - were essentially sparsely scattered mounds of mashed potatoes on skied-off boilerplate. I'll take consistent hardpan any day over the psychologically cruel bait-and-switch of conditions like this. (That's what my race skis are for!) Even though the temperature was already in the upper thirties when we got on the hill, scratchy was the name of the game until at least 1:30, by which time temps were well into the '40s and the ice finally began to soften up a bit. All in all, conditions were closer to what you'd expect at 3pm on a bitter January holiday Saturday than on a warm spring noontime with no liftlines. I wasn't there early, so I can't say for certain that they didn't groom on Friday night, but I can say that if they did they did a lousy job of it.
The last straw was simply the emotional difficulty of seeing the way things have run down a bit there. For example, the gondola summit station once had a nice little snack bar with picture windows looking out across the valley at the Presidential range. This was great spot to warm up on a typically frigid Wildcat day, and had the great benefit of allowing you to take a run and warm up your muscles immediately, before having to get back on the cold lift again. Now it looks like it should be condemned. I'd only been to Wildcat a couple of times in the last five years, and in hindsight I can see that there has been a pattern of weakness in the quality of the experience that they offer. In the course of extolling the virtues of big mountains with good, consistent pitch, like Stowe and Sugarbush and Mad River and Wildcat (and unlike Sunday River or Bretton Woods or Loon, for example), I've often commented that "you can't buy terrain." I still believe that. But you can neglect it.
Then when I was a teenager I went there regularly - not frequently, but at least once a year - and I always thought it had the best terrain of any of the mountains I skied. By that time I had a couple of buddies who raced for the high school team, and trying to keep up with them was improving my skills quickly. So for me Wildcat was the scene not only of teeth-cutting but of some wild-oats sowing as well.
Anyway, my 8-year-old and I made the trek up there on Saturday (March 24), and I have to tell you it was a big disappointment, considering the perfect calm sunny weather and comfortable spring temperatures. First of all, there was a big race going on, and they'd closed off a big chunk of the mountain for that - the lower right quadrant as you look up from the base. This section has some of the best terrain, including the excellent Bobcat slope. Second, and much more significantly, the natural cover was basically gone. It was snowmaking trails only: Polecat, Lynx, Catapult, and Upper Wildcat were about it. All the other trails - roped off, obviously - were showing lots of grass and rocks with only patchy snow left. Note the lack of snow on Mt. Washington in the photo! Now this is not management's fault: You get the snow that you get, and obviously they had not gotten what Saddleback and Sugarloaf have gotten over the couple of months.
What really made the skiing disappointing was the apparent lack of appropriate application of grooming skill. For one thing, there wasn't a single pitch on the whole hill that had been left bumpy. Who every heard of spring skiing with no bumps? Secondly, the "groomed" runs - i.e., everything - were essentially sparsely scattered mounds of mashed potatoes on skied-off boilerplate. I'll take consistent hardpan any day over the psychologically cruel bait-and-switch of conditions like this. (That's what my race skis are for!) Even though the temperature was already in the upper thirties when we got on the hill, scratchy was the name of the game until at least 1:30, by which time temps were well into the '40s and the ice finally began to soften up a bit. All in all, conditions were closer to what you'd expect at 3pm on a bitter January holiday Saturday than on a warm spring noontime with no liftlines. I wasn't there early, so I can't say for certain that they didn't groom on Friday night, but I can say that if they did they did a lousy job of it.
The last straw was simply the emotional difficulty of seeing the way things have run down a bit there. For example, the gondola summit station once had a nice little snack bar with picture windows looking out across the valley at the Presidential range. This was great spot to warm up on a typically frigid Wildcat day, and had the great benefit of allowing you to take a run and warm up your muscles immediately, before having to get back on the cold lift again. Now it looks like it should be condemned. I'd only been to Wildcat a couple of times in the last five years, and in hindsight I can see that there has been a pattern of weakness in the quality of the experience that they offer. In the course of extolling the virtues of big mountains with good, consistent pitch, like Stowe and Sugarbush and Mad River and Wildcat (and unlike Sunday River or Bretton Woods or Loon, for example), I've often commented that "you can't buy terrain." I still believe that. But you can neglect it.
