Smuggs 1/11/07

[hamdog]

all open trails are in good shape. plenty of coverage. no fear of hitting bare spots. powder day on 1/10. missed it, but heard it was "the best day of the season". 4-5" of fresh. i guess it's a powder day.... :roll: even better than the October snow.... coming from someone on the lift.

anyways, pics......

 

[riverc0il]

hamdog, is the double fall under the madonna lift that pronounced or is the picture just taken at a weird angle? that looks like one helluva lift line! i have been saying it for over three years now, i gotta get over to smuggs sometime (preferably when they have that open!). lolz to the day of the year comment. My best days are still prior to the lifts opening.

 

[hamdog]

riv: i'm not sure i understand you question, but that pic is of the second fall line under the madonna lift. the steeps are at the top of the pic and kind of far away. a couple nice drops in there. one mandatory. i'll get more pics when it fills in...... soon hopefully. heard of snow falling from midnight tonight.....through tuesday morning. burton demo tomorrow a nd i just saw the redbull vehicle driving up to the hill as i was leaving. should be a good day. see ya there! blue coat, silver helmet, beard.

 

[riverc0il]

a double fall line is when a trail slopes away from the direction of the trail which generally occurs when a trail is cut without regard to making a trail go straight down a contour. um, probably a bad description. if you were to take a ball and roll it down a regular trail, the ball would go straight down the trail. on a double fall line trail, the ball wouldn't roll straight down the trail because the contours of the trail are banking in another direction. the pic i mentioned is sloping substantially to one side of the trail. i like that

 

[ono]

i think i get the question. the pic may exaggerate the double-fall line of madonna liftline, but not by much- it's a seriously burly trail. very exposed, very rocky, and steep. the double fall line spills off to the skier's right- into the wooded "triple black" black hole glade/chute.

smuggs is definitely burly. a current manager at MRG, who worked at smuggs for years, told me a couple weeks ago he thinks that smuggs is the most underrated mountain in new england- and that, in-bounds, it has probably the steepest trails up top (cept perhaps the top of starr). said smuggs is steeper, MRG more sustained/better overall layout, both wicked sweet.

just thought i'd throw that in to help sell how awesome smuggs terrain is.

 

[hamdog]

oh. so that's what a double fall line is... :wink: i wasn't sure that's where you were going with the question. i think ono took care of it.

 

[Patrick]

smuggs is definitely burly. a current manager at MRG, who worked at smuggs for years, told me a couple weeks ago he thinks that smuggs is the most underrated mountain in new england- and that, in-bounds, it has probably the steepest trails up top (cept perhaps the top of starr). said smuggs is steeper, MRG more sustained/better overall layout, both wicked sweet.

just thought i'd throw that in to help sell how awesome smuggs terrain is.

The place is awesome, I'm sure that Lucky Luke (ex-season pass holder)would agree with me.

I love Smuggs, although I haven't unfortuantely been able to experienced it in it's prime in the last 15 years.

I remember the first time I skied Liftline, it was in a snowstorm when I was a teenager on the back in the early 80s. I was alone on what was a real freakshow experience. I also remember my buddy that was chicken and though I was crazy. A great memory.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I suspect Matt Duffy's reports from 2001 would showcase Smuggs at its best. I reference a few of them here: http://members.aol.com/crockeraf/pwdrarch.htm .

 

[Anthony]

The story of this area is a interesting one as at one time ( late 70's early 80's) it was the place to be . As kids we would take the Murray Hill bus to Smuggs from Montreal all the time . I must have taken 40+ trips there in those days . Over the years the buzz over Smuggs has faded and switched over to Jay . When Smuggs was popular Jay wasn't as it was served by a aging tram car and a T bar up the jet. Smuggs is a great area served by a slow chair that is often on windhold. On weekends the line up for the main chair would go way up the hill . It is probably still like this. Times change and now Jay is in the spotlight , who knows which area will be next.

 

[Patrick]

The story of this area is a interesting one as at one time ( late 70's early 80's) it was the place to be . As kids we would take the Murray Hill bus to Smuggs from Montreal all the time .

We're you the one smoking that wacky tobacky in the back. :lol:

I was on those same buses in the same years. Great memories especially on days where I skied alone Liftline as mentioned earlier above while my mom was back in Montreal. Another great memory was the day were it was -28c in Montreal and there was a sign at Smuggs at the bottom of Sterling lift (Madonna was closed); "Extreme Wind Chill -100F"

Free roaming teenagers not afraid to go skiing in any conditions and taking the metro and city buses with ski gear at rush hour to get back home.

Murray Hill buses would depart from the Sheraton Mont Royal (location of Les Cours Mont-Royal - no longer a hotel). They would have buses leave everyday for great ski destinations of Tremblant, Lower Laurentians (St-Sauveur/Gabriel), Jay and Smuggs. Yes, all these destinaions were available on the same day. Those were the days.

You didn't need a car, which is perfect when you a kids not old enough to drive. :wink:

 

[hamdog]

a gondola to the summit of madonna would be ideal for sure; and protect us from the brutal wind. dam was it windy yesterday afternoon! not fun. although i haven't had to wait in any lift lines longer than 10 minutes yet. that was on the sterling lift between xmas/new years. all other days....walk on. yep. i guess times have changed. :wink:

btw, the past two days have been incredible. best days of the season yet.

 

[Anthony]

Hey Patrick , We were the guys with the Molson X ( Stubby Bottles ) and the 6 ? long boards with no side cut and safety straps . You haven?t lived until you got hit in the head by a lost ski pulled off by a tree branch only to boomerang back at you from a elastic safety strap.

Hamdog , Our favorite runs back then were Upper FIS and Doc Dempsey, Smugglers Alley over on Sterling was also a good one. It would be good to take those trails again with modern ski equipment.

 

[Patrick]

Hey Patrick , We were the guys with the Molson X ( Stubby Bottles ) and the 6 ? long boards with no side cut and safety straps . You haven?t lived until you got hit in the head by a lost ski pulled off by a tree branch only to boomerang back at you from a elastic safety strap.

I lost my safety scrap on the previous pair of ski before moving up to some Fisher Racing Cut 190cm long.

I was also a bit young to drink Molson Ex on a bus to the states, however I remember getting some Carlsberg beer on the now gone summit chalet at Gray Rocks in May 1982 on one of first ski trip with my mom's 1976 Buick Skylark. Oh yeah, I was only 16 at the time. :lol:

Our favorite runs back then were Upper FIS and Doc Dempsey, Smugglers Alley over on Sterling was also a good one. It would be good to take those trails again with modern ski equipment.

You should talk to Lucky Luke, he showed me some spots (that are still not on the map) which were totally wild.

 

[ono]

a gondola to the summit of madonna would be ideal for sure; and protect us from the brutal wind.

i'd have to disagree with the gondola-
well. i'm not a huge fan of fast chairs- at least at a place like smuggs or other narrrow-trailed easter resorts. there trails are too narrow to take massive amounts of skiers that a gondola would deposit on top. (MRG, for example, the single only drops 6 people a minute on top- 360 an hour= never crowded on the hill) i'd rather wait at the base in line, than trying to slalom between other skiers...

yeah- the winds on madonna suck. i can take the cold- hell, i like it. it makes ya feel alive, and lets ya know you're on top of madonna- a pretty awesome place indeed.

but windhold- happens and really sucks. said they put in new low-profile towers or something. don't know if those work. wish they could find a way to make it work w/o going to the extreme (ie Funitel/double-cabled gondola) anyway, i doubt smuggs would ever put one in- wouldn't fit the place, and would over-tax the trail system. i just can't see gondola cars heading up the liftline there at all...

ya know how the bottom of madonna 1 is really low? i just found out it was like this to get the world record for longest top-driven double at the time back in the 50's. they had to drop it lower to get enough length for the record. (that chair's 50 years old- damn). the IBM big whig guy who built up smuggs had an ego i guess...
just my 2 cents.

 

[Patrick]

a gondola to the summit of madonna would be ideal for sure

I wouldn't change a bit about the Madonna lift, add a greater capacity and eventually they will widden and blast the upper trails which would have a hard time dealing with the greater capacity.

Sterling has already been change over the past 20 years and will change forever when they replaced (was it done?) with a much greater capacity Sterling lift. :roll:

If you want to change for a gondola, I wonder if any of those old Stowe gondolas are still around somewhere? :lol:

 

[hamdog]

not a high speed gondola fellahs. just a heavier lift that would protect from wind. maybe it would be even worse in wind. i don't know. just a though, not a proposal.

 

[Patrick]

not a high speed gondola fellahs.

That's what I thought you meant. I wonder how heavy were those old gondola cars at Stowe and lower the towers at the top. :roll:

 

[yak]

Smuggs was my old stomping ground when I was at St Mikes in the late 70's. Other than a few new trails and a couple of new lifts, it hasn't changed much. In fact, one of my college cronies is running the patrol there now.

Does anyone remember the trail "Ball Snapper" ? Locals used to put up a sign every year, and management would take it down, only to have it replaced again. (It's the little bailout chute that goes to the left above the big rock under the Sterling lift). I remember jumping the rock when we used to have our Winter Weekend at Smuggs - maybe something to do with the kegs of beer at the base of Sterling and the "beer races".

And one of the best double fall lines on the mt is on Sterling - Black Bear.

 

[ono]

yeah- that trail's called chute now. right before the big drop- the drop is fenced off (if it wasn't before)

funny you should mention that, cause i was reading (just yesterday) some article online that was talking about a trail on sterling under the lift (chute) that "had a different name years ago... if you asked a local, you may get the response 'B.S.'" i thought i'd never know what that meant... weird.

about the chairlift- i don't know if there are (or were) plans to upgrade sterling- i never heard of anything. last time i checked, nothing's changed. still same old.

there is that wicked fast rope tow next to sterling that only racers use. that thing BOMBS up the hill- maybe twice as fast as the lift. i remember watching the racers zip up that thing (and heard them yelling the whole way up) they may have taken that thing down in the past 6 or 7 years.

 

[yak]

no, the fence was always there, but boys will be boys.