Okemo, VT 1/26-30/00

Parkin · Apr 18, 2000

(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 2/1/00. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.) A little late, but I've finally recovered. The kids finished their last finals for the semester on Tuesday, so the car was loaded up, put into AWD mode, and we headed out of NYC at 6:30 pm in the heart of the storm. The good news was there was hardly anyone else on the road. The bad news was I had to keep it in the 40-50 range. So the 4 hour ride became 7.5 hours. Under the circumstances, Connecticut did a decent job with the Interstate, Massachusetts was excellent, but Vermont???? I saw three plows headed south and passed two going north, all of them had their plows in the air! What's with that??? Woke up Wed to 10-12" on the mountain and more coming out of the sky. The thermometer on the porch read 4 degrees, and the wind was howling. But the draw of the snow was irresistable. Searle's Way and Stumpjumper, bless Okemo's heart, were left ungroomed and were wonderful. The groomed trails were true packed powder and squeaked and crunched appropriately under the skis. Not a bad run to be had. The rides up the chairs were something else - misery, misery, misery - wind, wind, wind - stinging snow. A lot of people called in sick and showed up on the slopes, so every once in a while I actually had to wait behind someone else to catch a chair. An hour and a half in the morning, and the same in the afternoon, and I had to call it quits. Thursday morning - colder than Wed, but a couple of fresh inches. And still windy. I don't want to think about what the wind chill numbers were. First time in a long time that I skiied with two thermal layers under my one-piece ski suit. The South Face Quad was especially brutal. Stumpjumper, Dreamweaver, then time to find someplace else to ski. No one on the mountain, no lines anywhere. Felt crowded if we saw someone else on OUR trail. Snow conditions were edgeable wind pack with soft drift zones, except for the top of the Northstar Express where the snow had been blown off down to the ice. Soft stashes to the sides of the trails. As an intermediate, I didn't try the glade trails except for the Narrows and Whistler, which had boot top snow off to the sides but got skiied out pretty quickly. For the last run of the day, my son (15) and I headed over to Nor'Easter, me to take Searle's Way. He asks me for my watch - I take a long hard think before handing it over, I knew he wanted to time himself, but I figure he's demonstrated nothing but total control all afternoon. I meet up with him at the bottom of Nor'Easter and he's got a grin on his face from ear to ear and shows me the watch - 2:04 minutes. On a trail that's almost exactly a mile long, i.e., he averaged 30 mph. He knows my best time is 3 minutes. It must be great to be young and fearless. Friday - just when you didn't think it could get any colder, woke up to a thermometer reading of -8. And the wind was still howling. F**k it. Time to cocoon in the condo. Found out that we had a frozen pipe. Freed it up by holding a match to a pipe for a few minutes. Man, it was cold. After lunch, the thermometer had moved up to 2 degrees and . . . yes . . . the wind had died down! Afternoon skiing! Of course, after buying my ticket and taking a couple of sweet runs down Searle's and Nor'Easter, the wind picks up again. Kept me to the bottom part of the mountain - Lower World Cup, Lower Chief, the runs off of the Solitude Quad. But after a couple of hours of this, time to head in for some hot soup. Snow conditions were great, but the cold was bitter. We were going to pick up my wife's cousin from the train, the Ethan Allen Express, in Rutland that night, so we headed to the Sirloin Saloon for dinner, and caught "Snow Falling on Cedars" at the Movieplex before heading to the train station. Got there at 11:30 to find out that the train, scheduled to arrive at 11:10, was now delayed for two hours! Waited, and the train finally pulls in somewhere around 2:30!!!! Boy, that s**ked. Didn't get to hit the sack until 4! Saturday - Managed to drag myself out of bed at 9 and, surprise, 22 degrees and sunny!!!!! Yeah!!! Hit the slopes and Volant was there with free demos! Checked out a pair of 180 Machetes, a new mid-season issued ski. A bit more sidecut than the PowerKarves, narrower in the waist but about the same width at the shovel and tail. What a nice ski. Great grip, no chatter, smooth, damp ride. Great cruiser. Didn't take it into the bumps (not someplace where I would normally go anyway) but they seemed capable of quick turns. Plowed right through crud and chowdah. Right now, for my kind of skiing, I'd rate them above either the X-Scream 9's or Series that I tried out last time. Had a scare when I left the skis unattended while I made a quick pit stop and came out to find them gone!! Turns out the Volant tech had seen them and moved them back to his tent! Phew, their MSRP is $600! But Saturday was a beautiful day of Vermont skiing. Sunday - Man, if you thought Saturday was good, Sunday was even better. Temps went into the 30's and bluebird skies! It didn't make any difference where you went on the mountain. Just being able to ski without feeling cold was wonderful. The breeze that was blowing felt positively balmy. Okemo's Sunday Solution ticket was the way to go, good until 1:30 for something like $45 for adults and $37 for young adults. Lines, even at the Northstar Express, were no more than 5 minutes. Had an interesting run down Exhibition when my son indicated an interest in trying the jump they put in there (it's a terrain park now). The jump is at the bottom of the steepest section so you can build up a nice head of speed before you hit it. He cleared it cleanly and loved it. I don't do air (not on purpose, anyway), so I went to skier's left to go around the jump and didn't notice that there was a little lip, even there. After experiencing that blissful quiet that comes from skis not touching the ground for a couple of seconds, I learned what happens when you reestablish contact with your weight too far back. My son, laughing all the way, says that he could barely see me in the sliding cloud of snow that resulted. Nothing hurt but my pride - that run just happens to be right under the liftline . . . Saturday and Sunday made up for the cold and misery of the previous three days. Loaded up the car and bid farewell to Vermont until next time. Made it home in time to catch the Super Bowl - good game, lousy commercials, quite the reverse of previous years.

Okemo, VT 1/26-30/00

Parkin

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