<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 1/19/00. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>Decided to celebrate Dr. King's birthday by patrolling Monday. What a mistake that was... <BR> <BR>Started off the morning by not being able to start my car. I'm not sure how cold it was, it was below zero at the house in Chester that I've been staying at, but this car start failure had nothing to do with cold, it was the damn key that wouldn't turn in the ignition. After struggling for 1/2 hour (long enough to make me miss the morning meeting), I decide I best call in and tell em I won't make it and call AAA to haul my ass to a garage. Try one more time and presto, key turns, car starts right up. Damn, now I'm late. <BR> <BR>Get to the mountain and learn there are lift holds on Northstar, Green, Black, Solitude & Morningstar. That leaves Quads A&B, Sachem, Glades, South Face, and the surface lifts. I ride the poma to Sachem/Glades and down Buckhorn to the hut. I'm frozen! For the first time ever, my legs are cold and actually tingling. Temp at the hut was minus 23. Sustained winds in the low 30s, with frequent gusts to 50. Wind chill was like minus a bazillion degrees. Someone tell me again why I do this? <BR> <BR>Fortunately, reasonable heads prevailed. Knowing that it would take upwards to 1 hour per trail to open them on skis like we usually do, plus a cost in lost patrollers due to hypothermia, and also the fact that the wind was knocking over all the bi-pods, it was decided to open the trails by sno-mo. So what do Brad and colleagues do? Sit. <BR> <BR>About 9:00 AM the radio heats up with lift closures: Quads A&B are shut down. That means to get to the upper lifts, skiers must ride the F-10 Poma. Then down goes Sachem. Now there is no way to get to the upper lifts at all. Talking to the lift ops it is determined that there are 4 people skiing on the upper mountain. We basically wait for them to make the mistake of skiing below the bottom of Glades peak chair, cause then they can't get back up. Eventually, they all head in. <BR> <BR>I did take a run down Upper World Cup at about mid-day. It sucked. Wind blown, frozen corduroy, with death cookies thrown about. I tried to ski what looked like powder on skiers left, only to learn that sometimes it was champagne, and sometimes it was Styrofoam, with no way to tell when it changed. Rode the Glades back up, but the winds have picked up and I'm told the Glades is running at like 60%. I'm frozen again. Enough for me, back to the hut and wait for the end of the day. Mercifully, my patrol director lets us volunteers with long drives ahead of them leave at about 3:00PM. I ski Fast Lane to Lower Chief. It still sucks. More wind blown hardpack crap. <BR> <BR>Rumor in town was that the mountain closed. Not true, it was open all day, and sometime afternoon, they did re-open Sachem. <BR> <BR>Since my last visit, they've added Fall Line and Triple Sec, Searls Way and Easy Rider to the list of open trails. There seemed to be enough coverage, but, its hard to tell without traffic. When I was leaving, the compressors were running, so I'm sure they were going to blow more snow last night. I don't think there are any snow making served trails that are not open, so they must be going back and laying down more snow on already open trails. <BR> <BR>Common thread amongst discussions with people who'd been at Okemo for years was that Monday was the coldest/windiest combination they had ever seen. It certainly was for me, as I said, its the first time I've ever had more than <BR>cold fingers/toes. <BR> <BR>And what a change from Sunday when they had their 5th busiest day ever, or so I'm told.
Okemo, VT 1/17/00
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