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Anonymous
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Yup, there was easily a foot plus of new snow out on Mansfield. The only problem was getting to it. I had planned to make an early departure from B-town to be close to the 7:30 opening at Stowe. I made the departure time just fine, a little after 6:00. I didn't make it to Stowe until a little after 9:00. It's usually a 45 minute drive for me. The secondary street I take to get to the highway had not been plowed and snow was flying up over the hood of my car, fun! Hit the interstate and it didn't look much better than the secondary roads. 30mph or so all the way to route 100. Things were a little better there, and I thought I might make it to Stowe early enough to make some runs off the quad or gondi before my 9:00 check in time at Spruce. Somewhere around Topnotch on the mountain road, traffic came to a standstill. This seems to happen to me about once a season. Someone had gotten stuck on Harlow Hill (the last big uphill near the Matterhorn) and the road was closed for something like 45 minutes or an hour. But, I made it... <BR> <BR>Since I didn't have time to head across the street for a run before 10:00 lineup, a bunch of us sampled the goods on Spruce using the Alpine Double (Big Pig and LSD had not opened yet). Not much of a choice as far as terrain goes. We hit West Slope which is a fairly steep intermediate trail a few times. The snow was a consistency such that even on a floaty board, you couldn't get up enough speed to make any turns. Strange. It seemed like if the snow was a little more dense, it would be easier to float to the top and if it was a little less dense it would be easier to move through. As it was, you'd see someone moving though it and a huge pile of snow in front of them struggling to get out of the way. <BR> <BR>I finally got my "get out of jail free" card around noon and headed for the quad. First run was ugly with chopped up heavy snow and uncooperative legs during a trip through Tres Amigos glades. And there were sections that were scraped down to the noisy not so fresh surface underneath. Next up was my favorite, Partridge. I'm not sure if it was the snow or me, but I was much happier here. I finally nailed a drop I had tried and failed on at least a dozen times in the past. Headed to the Gondi and did my usual variety pack near Perry Merril. Some nice turns that would leave clouds of snow hanging in your wake. This was followed by a trip past the bench. woo-hoo! the main lines were fairly well tracked out, but we decided to not take the usual traverse out and descended more or less straight down to the road. There was some branch dodging, but there were two moments that made it all worthwhile. One was a good 100 yard open stretch of untracked that yielded that wonderful feeling of falling impossibly slowly that comes with the right combination of pitch and snow, and faceshots. Second moment was dropping into a little streambed for 20-30 yards that had filled in quite nicely, more faceshots. A few more runs were had in various places, but tired legs and minds made them not so memorable, at least compared to the rest of the day. <BR> <BR>The winds reported at MRG weren't felt at Stowe yesterday, at least not in the afternoon. I truly envy anyone who was able to make it to Stowe early, it must have been great.