Cannon, NH: 12.07.02

riverc0il

New member
this past week, cannon had stuck with the same five trails they opened with while blowing snow everywhere on the lower mountain. today, they opened up on 21 trails with all of the front face open (at least for the first hour). an amazing amount of terrain, especially considering their status last year at this time. <BR> <BR>front face... one word: powder. avalanche, zoomer, zoomer lift, and rocket were all open with about 4-6 inches of powder. they quickly closed avalanche (snow was blowing on avalanche), the banshee slopes, and paulie's lift line. paulie's itself was torn to shreds by noon time with lots of sticks and stones showing. still skiable though. gary's was half groomed, half not. groomed side was kinda choppy in places. <BR> <BR>off the HSQ, lots of fun to be had on some really fast snow. big/easy link never got too scraped as per usual, mid/lower ravine and mid/lower gremlin held excellent carving snow. carve carve carve speed speed speed! everything off the quad was fun. franconia ski team was cranking up their training off the quad. parkway was natural snow with occasional small bumps, fun fun! <BR> <BR>mid/lower cannon to toss-up held up okay. half way through the day snowmaking was moved from rocket to mid cannon. <BR> <BR>word was that the small trail that links the top of rocket to the top of gary's is the so called 'new trail' Mickey's Margin. this trail was natural snow with small soft bumps. <BR> <BR>excellent afternoon of skiing. skies mostly blue and views were fantastic. folks, this year is pay back for the last one. cannon wasn't this good till february last year. <BR> <BR>other notes: mid/lower hard were closed but had lots of tracks and no bare spots as seen from the lift. upper cannon (closed) had tracks and looked like excellent cover as seen from the quad and big link. look for the summit to open soon i'd guess, probably before xmas the way things are going. paulie's extension looked poachable, but i passed. pics link to follow shortly.
 
Yeah, Zoomer was great early, but got tracked up quick - you got that right. Upper mountain is )unofficially) open to hiking, so after the best lift-served had been had, I skinned up to the summit. Last weekend I'd skied Vistaway & Upper Cannon, which are probably still good. This morning I decided to ski Taft. It was 6"-12" powder, windpacked in places, but soft if you picked a good line - just beautiful. Upper Hardscrabble was also in great shape. Middle Hardscrabble had been heavily tracked up this week, so it was less than ideal, but still decent cover. <BR><IMG SRC="http://www.firsttracksonline.com/discus2/messages/8/1758.jpg" ALT="Taft">
 
nice pic! <BR> <BR>in my original post i said "paulie's itself was torn to shreds." as Lftgly seemed to pick up, i meant zoomer, not paulies... which was closed. <BR> <BR>i debated hiking for upper mountain turns but decided against it. looking at that pic of taft, maybe i should have!
 
pictures as promised: <BR><A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/riverc0il/cannon120702/cannon2002c.htm" TARGET="_top">http://www.geocities.com/riverc0il/cannon120702/cannon2002c.htm</A>
 
Nice photo layout, riverCoil! <BR> <BR>It was a great weekend at Cannon for early December, though yesterday was the better weather & snow conditions of the two days. <BR> <BR>Today (Sunday) it started snowing mid-morning, and had accumulated a couple inches by 2PM. Conditions actually started to improve Sunday afternoon, though visibility was very poor at times. <BR> <BR>Unfortunately the hike-to skiing on the summit had suffered from a change of wind direction overnight that stripped off almost all new snow except for the wind-slab. I went for an encore on Taft to Upper & Middle Hardscrabble this morning, but it wasn't as good as Saturday. <BR> <BR>RiverCoil's comment about Garys poor grooming Saturday was echoed by many. The groomers did a better job with the tillers refining the death cookies on Garys overnight, making it more skiable Sunday; but there are still a lot of groomers "mistakes" on various trails, indicating at least one inexperienced groomer operator. I debated making a photo journalistic record to send to DRED of the many gouges where some bonehead had dug either the blade or tiller into the dirt, but the flat light and wind-driven snow would have obscured the evidence. There were two gouges marked with bamboo on Rocket's headwall and at the bottom; overnight they repaired two of yesterdays "mistakes" where the Tram Cutback crosses Garys (skiers right) and the bottom of Zoomer. More examples abounded, if I'd followed through to document them. Billy Roy or Gary Roy better train this operator fast, or demote him to snowmaking (no offense, snow-makers).
 
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