Middlebury College Snow Bowl, VT 1/29/00

[Benjie]

<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 1/30/00. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>On Saturday, I headed up to the Middlebury College Snow Bowl, enticed by reports of 100% operation. I took a few runs on the front side of the mountain and found lots of groomed packed powder - a little more firm than I like it. But then I poked my head around the back side of the mountain and found a little piece of heaven. Even at 9:30, there was only a single set of tracks down the lift line of the Bailey Falls triple. The snow was still untouched from last week's storm (maybe the lift was closed?), and it was heavy but very powdery. I skied more laps than I could count over there, making fresh tracks the whole way down over and over. I guess people are afraid of that trail (the steep section is labeled "Wayne's Worry"). I also found powder on the LaForce and Youngman trails, but they had gotten more traffic. <BR> <BR>As the powder began to disappear and the triple started to get boring, I amused myself (and tired myself out) by hiking up to the top of the old poma lift and skiing the _old_ LaForce trail. It's nothing too thrilling, but there was untouched powder to be had, so why not! I also checked out the two official glades, new since I last skied at the Snow Bowl. The glade next to the Sheehan lift line is nothing to write home about - pretty flat, and the trees are spaced a little too close together. But the Ross Glades go down into a neat gully between the Ross and the Allen, and there's some real pitch there with a couple of drop-offs. Definitely a worthwhile addition to the trail layout, which has never been terribly exciting. Around 2:00 the area started getting crowded - it was graduation day for the mid-year graduating seniors, and they were all up skiing in their gowns - so I hit the road.