Matt Duffy
New member
Madonna 1 was on windhold, leaving Sterling as the best option. The mountain's in fine shape overall. Everything on it is currently open. There are 2 short sections of wind scoured & solid ice at the very top of Rumrunner, but this was easily negotiable by standing straight up and holding out your arms to catch the gusting wind. In this section, we were skiing directly into it and we would slow to a crawl. <BR> <BR> Everything below that is pretty excellent. Treasure is candy coated with a thick layer of loose powder to kick around. Blacksnake is fairly good with loose stuff on the sides, but artificial ice patches are here & there up the middle. I checked out one of the new additions to the trail map - Harvey's Hideaway. Kind of a goofy name, but it's a very nice gladed run. The blue rating is a tad conservative as it has black diamond pitch without a ton of room between the birches that form fun little mazes top to bottom. Snow was good in here and the even surface of it was perfect for me. There weren't any deep troughs like there were on another of the new glade trails - Pirates Plank. Another goofy name for another neat tree shot that runs from Black Bear to Lower Rumrunner. This one's black and with deep bump lines. <BR> <BR> Bootlegger has great loose cover, as does Black Bear for most of it's duration.