Had left over ASC vouchers to eat up and was in the MA/NH area working on wedding planning for this October. Fiancee and I decided we'd save the drive time and just hit up Attitash on Monday instead of Sunday River (having a 4 PM appointment in Wolfeboro, NH kind of dictacted this).
Had relatively high hopes for the day with the 9 to 12 inches of snow they reported from the storm on Friday. Seeing that all the glades were marked as open, we both started out on our midfat twins. After one run, it was obvious we should switch over to our hard-pack skis as conditions were pretty hard everywhere (apparently they got up well into the 40s on Saturday which hardened up all the new snow once it refroze).
I don't think I've ever seen a report posted for this place on here so I'll just summarize our day overall. I decided to park at the Bear Peak base area to avoid having to walk across route 312 (I think that's the one). Attitash's base area literally sits on the state route, you ski down to being within maybe 20 feet of the state highway.
Each mountain kind of has its own unique thrust. Attitash seems to be the more family oriented side with some green trails, terrain parks, etc. Bear Peak is more advanced overall and all the glades that they have are located on this side. Switching between mountains is not as easy as you'd like it to be however due to some pretty flat traverses that cross you over near the bottom of everything.
Another bizarre thing about the mountain is lift setup. Attitash has a high speed quad, but it does not access the summit, rather taking you up only about two-thirds of the mountain. I imagine this is due to the narrow nature of the summit with minimal trails, but it is kind of a disappointment. Riding the summit quad up takes a long time and doesn't really access much more to be worth it. The lifts also cross over each other, which is something I think I've never seen before. Bear Peak does have a HSQ that access the top though and was generally the more pleasant place to ski.
We spent most of our time checking out the advanced and expert trails. A lot of things marked double-black really had no reason for the designation. Honestly, with the exception of Lift-line on Bear-Peak and the glade adjacent to it, nothing there really struck me as expert terrain. Overall, it's a pretty low intensity place.
Glades were pretty solid, really fast, and with minimal cover, so we stayed out for the most part. There were some decent bump trails including the trail under the double lift at Attitash, but there was nothing fluffy about them. Machine made base with hard bumps was the nature of the beast. The best time was had still finding unbroken cordorouy after lunch and being able to just rail some turns through it.
Overall verdict: Thank god we didn't pay $59 a person for this. Next time I'm up that way and looking to ski, I'll definitely check out Wildcat or Cannon instead I believe.
Had relatively high hopes for the day with the 9 to 12 inches of snow they reported from the storm on Friday. Seeing that all the glades were marked as open, we both started out on our midfat twins. After one run, it was obvious we should switch over to our hard-pack skis as conditions were pretty hard everywhere (apparently they got up well into the 40s on Saturday which hardened up all the new snow once it refroze).
I don't think I've ever seen a report posted for this place on here so I'll just summarize our day overall. I decided to park at the Bear Peak base area to avoid having to walk across route 312 (I think that's the one). Attitash's base area literally sits on the state route, you ski down to being within maybe 20 feet of the state highway.
Each mountain kind of has its own unique thrust. Attitash seems to be the more family oriented side with some green trails, terrain parks, etc. Bear Peak is more advanced overall and all the glades that they have are located on this side. Switching between mountains is not as easy as you'd like it to be however due to some pretty flat traverses that cross you over near the bottom of everything.
Another bizarre thing about the mountain is lift setup. Attitash has a high speed quad, but it does not access the summit, rather taking you up only about two-thirds of the mountain. I imagine this is due to the narrow nature of the summit with minimal trails, but it is kind of a disappointment. Riding the summit quad up takes a long time and doesn't really access much more to be worth it. The lifts also cross over each other, which is something I think I've never seen before. Bear Peak does have a HSQ that access the top though and was generally the more pleasant place to ski.
We spent most of our time checking out the advanced and expert trails. A lot of things marked double-black really had no reason for the designation. Honestly, with the exception of Lift-line on Bear-Peak and the glade adjacent to it, nothing there really struck me as expert terrain. Overall, it's a pretty low intensity place.
Glades were pretty solid, really fast, and with minimal cover, so we stayed out for the most part. There were some decent bump trails including the trail under the double lift at Attitash, but there was nothing fluffy about them. Machine made base with hard bumps was the nature of the beast. The best time was had still finding unbroken cordorouy after lunch and being able to just rail some turns through it.
Overall verdict: Thank god we didn't pay $59 a person for this. Next time I'm up that way and looking to ski, I'll definitely check out Wildcat or Cannon instead I believe.
