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Stoneham, Friday morning, about 10:00. "Where the *(%&# is everybody?" <BR>Marc and I are doing warp-speed laps on one of the wide, but nicely pitched and slightly twisty trails that follows a shoulder down one of Stoneham's three peaks. Aside from employees and a few retirees, we have the place to ourselves. <BR> <BR>"Hey, it's just another work day in Canada." True. So true. <BR> <BR>At lunch Marc had to head back to Montreal, but I toughed it out for the rest of the day. Light snow had started falling just prior to Marc's <BR>departure, and it continued to come down harder and harder as the day went on. Each run got a little softer and so by the end of the day I wasn't feeling the manmade. Given that it was only day 4 of the season, I was feeling quite a burn in my quads and lats though. One advantage of alpine gear over telemark -- your skeleton supports you, rather than your muscles... <BR> <BR>Snow continued through the night... <BR> <BR>Saturday, at the Mt. Ste. Anne ticket office. Ste. Anne has a well run, efficient ticketing operation. They have about 20 windows spread around the outside of the ticketing/administration building. All of which were closed. <BR>Tickets were available yesterday inside the building, at the counter next to the very busy season ticket pickup desk. The line was.... Well, do you remember pictures of the bread lines in the Soviet Union from the nightly news in the 80's? It was sort of like that. Except that the Quebecois are kind of European in their approach to queuing. I briefly considered staging an "Ugly American" temper tantrum, but decided that no, I did actually want to ski that day. "Mooooo" "Baaaaaa..." Like a well behaved head of livestock, I plodded through, using my boot bag and a suddenly slippery floor to deter the less practiced of the line jumpers. <BR> <BR>There is a strange phenomenon at Ste. Anne. The place is choc-full of excellent local skiers. They all do just one thing, and they do it very <BR>well. They carve on ice under the lift. Over, and over. All day long. Which is fine by me. You see, it had snowed about 6" the night previous, it was still coming down, and there were these two ungroomed trails that hadn't <BR>received any snowmaking. The patrol had opened them, but had thoughtfully placed "Thin Cover & Bare Spots" signs at the top of each run. That, <BR>combined with a good amount of raspberry canes sticking through, and the fact that if you skied there your carving form couldn't be seen from the <BR>lift, ensured that those trails were largely untouched. It was quite nice. <BR>At one point I had 5 laps worth of tracks farmed* next to each other without any tracks crossing them for probably 50 turns... <BR> <BR>Remember what I said about telemark skiers being supported by their muscles? Well, at some point, my legs simply exploded, to the point where I couldn't even really parallel anymore. I guess that was okay though, as I was running out of "legal" untracked, and there was a nasty freezing fog getting lower and lower on the mountain. Turn, turn, turn, stop, chisel ice off <BR>goggles. Repeat. All in all, not a bad day for $24. <BR> <BR>It was snowing hard in Quebec City on my way home. I suspect the conditions today are going to be quite nice too. <BR> <BR>Sugarloaf has received 2" out of that same storm. 
oh boy, i'm so excited. The weather is really missing us ovah heah lately. <BR>-- <BR>*Farming: A technique for maximising untracked turns on limited snow. Parallel lines of turns are spaced closely to one another, similar to a <BR>farmer with a wobbly tractor plowing furrows in a field. <BR> ))))) <BR>((((( <BR> ))))) <BR>(((((
oh boy, i'm so excited. The weather is really missing us ovah heah lately. <BR>-- <BR>*Farming: A technique for maximising untracked turns on limited snow. Parallel lines of turns are spaced closely to one another, similar to a <BR>farmer with a wobbly tractor plowing furrows in a field. <BR> ))))) <BR>((((( <BR> ))))) <BR>(((((