12/31 Well, as usual I arrived too late, 8:30. I headed up Sterling first and took a fast run down upper and lower rum runner. I realized that I should have immediately headed for Madonna. I was a bit surprised that the snow fall wasn't exceptional, probably about the same as Burlington, about a foot. <BR> <BR>FIS was already skied up pretty well. I, on the other hand did not ski well. The bottom of upper FIS, past the Doc Dempseys cutover was beautiful though. No objects appeared poking through and I was much more relaxed. <BR> <BR>When I arrived at the bottom the line looked horrendous so I dodged back to Sterling. I skied Smuggler's Alley which wasn't bad at all despite having very little left in unbroken snow. At the bottom I took a peek at the M1 line again and it looked better so I joined in for another go. However, once in the line I realized although it was no longer proceeding up the hill, it had more than made up in width what it had lost in length. To make matters worse, I later learned that they were skipping every other chair for part of the time I was waiting. It was a very long wait and I never learned why the skippage. Maybe somebody has an idea. It wasn't particularly windy. Maybe people were just too heavy that day. <BR> <BR>I had to be back at Colchester by noon so I only made 5 runs that day with the long waits in line. It was nice to have a lot more snow but I can't say that it did much for covering dangerous foreign objects protruding from the matrix. <BR> <BR>1/1: Yesterday was a better day despite the fact that I was even later. The snow was very light and fluffy and I was amazed by two facts. First, it had snowed at least six inches since yesterday. Second, no grooming had been done! <BR> <BR>When I finally arrived at Madonna, I discovered that M1 wasn't running but M2 was--the reverse order of the previous day. The Sterling line looked fairly long and M2 was very short so I opted for M2. I believe that this was a very good choice because it hadn't been skied the previous day. This gave it the full benefit of two days of snow and it was beautiful. I skied two runs more or less under the lift. On the next ride up the lift it suddenly occurred to me that I could hike up the bottom of Doc Dempsy's and ski down the lower section of upper FIS. As I skied off the lift I saw two young men with the same idea just starting up. I joined them. We hiked a bit past the cut over to FIS. I skied down to the cut over and skied up to FIS. It was great having the entire lower half all to myself!