Loon mtn,12/6 and 12/7 and wildcat mtn,12/8

[joem]

<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 12/9/99. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>sorry for the late posts...no internet access at our place in lincoln...hit loon on monday the 6th...they claimed 8 but it was really 4...unlike last week it was top to bottom...2 lifts, the gondy and the double...gondy serviced essentially 2 blues off the right side (riding up, think it's uppper fox and upper picked)...was getting flashbacks to this past april and the epic days at wildcat...corn all over the blues and by 10 nice little bumps started to get you shufflin...1 basic trail off the double, lower angel st. which was all bumped up w/ the cornies... it really was a lot of fun and there was plenty of coverage on the trail itself...the cross over from the little steep section off the double started getting sparse late in the day...otherwise great fun in the softies... temps were about 45 to 50 and parly suny...went back for more on tuesday and to our dismay they claimed they lost to much to open the double so it was down to the gondy and fox and picked...am was much of the same just not as big bumps... bout 2 am temps started to drop and the wind picked up and the snow firmed up...made it a little tougher but still basically butter corn... riding up the gondy you could see how much they lost... angel st had plenty on the trail...getting to it would have be the problem though!!! they started to blow furiously at about 3 when the temps really dropped... they are in a lot of trouble cause, like i guess a lot of places from reading these reports, they have absolutely no snow on the lower half of the mountain except for the one trail they must have pounded w/ the fake... and that appeared to be going fast...even walking boss and flume had nothing more than brown grass showing...hit the two fer at wildcat on wednesday... i wouldn't call it a mistake because after the warm up and cool down i'm sure the conditions were like this just about every where and bad skiing beats working anyday and like plake says " there are no bad conditions...just bad skiers "...but... the facts are these: they claimed 6 but it was really 3 alleycat, copycat, and cheetah...all serviced off the triple...i don't know what happened over there but a lone telemarker summed it up best on the way up..." this is like skiing on golfballs... never in my brief skiing career have i seen such massive concentrations of death cookies for a primary surface... and some of em looked more like footballs than golf balls ...don't know if it was to early of a groom or no groom at all but it was, in a word, challenging. no bumps at all... it was literally like skiing on thousands of golfballs... they were blowing hard on the top half off the quad, but no access to that... again even over at the base of big wash... absolutely no snow at all...just about the most challenging conditions i have ever skied on...most would say it was awful...but i keep trying to keep that plake quote in mind and use it to improve...i would have to assume that loon turned to frozen gran as well w/ the temp drop... that's all i got for now... oh yeah... side bar: spoke to 2 local loon kids ages 17 and 18 who grew up in lincoln and a snowmaker at the cat... the kids both said that this is the least amount of snow that they can recall for this time of the year... the snowmaker put conditions that day at the cat in the top 3 all time worst for coverage (47 years in the valley for him) what the hell is going on here!!!!