Left the house Thursday morning at 4 am. Drove through pouring rain for 3.5 hours, then it went directly to snow at the Vermont state line. By the time I passed Ascutney, there were six inches of really wet slop on the highway, and no plows anywhere. I grew up in the lake effect bullseye south of Lake Ontario, so I know how to drive in snow and ice, but this, even in an all-wheel drive car, was really awful. And the unplowed, unsalted roads made it worse (thanks VT DOT).
Just north of Montpelier, on Route 89, while driving 60, I went into a nasty slide. At one point, my car was perpendicular to the highway (not good), but by turning into the slide, I finally got the car under control after about 10 side-to-side swerves. The feeling of losing control of your vehicle is not a pleasant sensation.
I pulled into the Stowe parking lot at 10:50, nearly seven hours after leaving, ran into the lodge and met some people from the Epic board -- one is an instructor there and generously gave me a leftover voucher. There were already several inches at the lodge and a lot more up top and in the woods, and it continued nuking the entire time there. It wasn?t exactly blower, but thank god for that as the base had frozen after the previous day?s warmup. That said, it was a lot lighter than what would fall overnight.
Best run of the day for me was definitely ?Goat,? with really soft bumps all the way down. We also had a sweet run down Perry Merrill as the gondola was closed and no one was over there (Stowe announced that they?ll reopen the gondola for the weekend). There were lots of soft treats in the woods too.
Only drag for me was that these two guys, ?Epic? and ?Whiteroom,? are Stowe gods, and can thread a needle through really tight, steep trees, and I had to bail on a few of their lines... stuff that they can do in their sleep.
Would have taken more and better pix, but it was pretty socked in on the upper mountain.
Excellent day, and very hard to believe that it?s the middle of April.
Just north of Montpelier, on Route 89, while driving 60, I went into a nasty slide. At one point, my car was perpendicular to the highway (not good), but by turning into the slide, I finally got the car under control after about 10 side-to-side swerves. The feeling of losing control of your vehicle is not a pleasant sensation.
I pulled into the Stowe parking lot at 10:50, nearly seven hours after leaving, ran into the lodge and met some people from the Epic board -- one is an instructor there and generously gave me a leftover voucher. There were already several inches at the lodge and a lot more up top and in the woods, and it continued nuking the entire time there. It wasn?t exactly blower, but thank god for that as the base had frozen after the previous day?s warmup. That said, it was a lot lighter than what would fall overnight.
Best run of the day for me was definitely ?Goat,? with really soft bumps all the way down. We also had a sweet run down Perry Merrill as the gondola was closed and no one was over there (Stowe announced that they?ll reopen the gondola for the weekend). There were lots of soft treats in the woods too.
Only drag for me was that these two guys, ?Epic? and ?Whiteroom,? are Stowe gods, and can thread a needle through really tight, steep trees, and I had to bail on a few of their lines... stuff that they can do in their sleep.
Would have taken more and better pix, but it was pretty socked in on the upper mountain.
Excellent day, and very hard to believe that it?s the middle of April.
