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Anonymous
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Well the fat lady got a case of laryngitis; at least for a while, and I squeaked out a pretty good" POWDER" day after the warmest day on record for the area. I do know one thing, Sunday was a powder day at Whiteface, not everywhere but you definitely could find it. <BR> <BR>I had been trying all winter to meet up with my buddy John from Peru, NY but one thing after another got in the way. Sunday we finally made it. I had told my buddies Greg and Dave yesterday that I thought today was going to be a crap shoot but John said he would be there no matter so I headed over. <BR> <BR>The first thing I noticed was the Ausable river. On the way home Saturday it was calm and placid, mostly frozen over with a little puddling of water on top of the ice. Sunday AM it was raging like I haven't seen in a long time. It was totally cocoa brown and shooting flumes 20 ft in the air with massive tree trunks entangled in ice jams. Lake Champlain water levels have got to be rising now. <BR> <BR>I pulled into the lower parking lot at 8:20 and it wasn't filling very fast. I had just finished booting up and a voice came over the intercom saying, "attention all skiers and riders, for your sliding enjoyment today we are opening with mixing bowl lift, the bear lift and mid station shuttle operating." There was an eerie silence in the lodge as everyone just kind of bummed. It turns out there had been a wind related power problem overnight that wasn't yet rectified so they could only use electricity sparingly. I think winds were sustained over 25mph and gusting steadily around 50 to 60. That also played a big part in the available trails Sunday. <BR> <BR>No sign of John yet so I jumped on the shuttle and took a warm-up. Tower 10 hill was windswept and the long runout was spotty with drifts and mostly exhibiting frozen groomer tread tracks. The crap shoot was looking like a blowout. I headed over to somewhat sheltered Burton's cut off and got first tracks in boot top powder. Same thing down lower Thruway. No ice scraping yet, hmmm. Then out onto tower 10 and survival skidding on icy mogul tops and shin deep powder in the troughs. I stood around the lift line for five minutes and still no sign of John. My quads were cramping a little from Saturday and I decided another warm-up was in order. I jumped on with a single in line who was about 6'4" and wearing a bright reddish orange jacket with white Salomon rear entry boots and the longest skinniest green Volkls I have ever seen. They also appeared to have the first model of Marker bindings that incorporated ski brakes. It really started dumping huge on the ride up; probably the most intense snowfall I have been in this season. He said he was from NYC and this was his only weekend to get skiing this season. The kids were all grown up and moved out so the excuse to go more often wasn't there and his wife didn't have any desire to ski. He bemoaned the hard time he had yesterday trying to move slush around. He didn't think today looked too promising. I told him I thought I could find something worth the effort by bushwhacking as far to skiers right from mid station that I could. I did Burton's again and climbed the bank on the far side of Thruway to Draper's. Several had gone this route and were relishing in the fresh powder down Draper's. I continued across probing for access over to Parkway. Visibility was zero but I found a washed out catwalk and took my chances straightlining it down and not hitting any dirt or biffing. I came out alone into totally covered boot deep powder and stood for a minute soaking in the total fury of the storm and my solitude. Out of the catwalk pops the bright red/orange jacket and the long green Volkls with an ear to ear grin. I holler over the storm, "what are you doing? Trying to follow the locals to find the good stuff?" I thought you were headed for something worth while he replied and together we cut fresh S's to the bottom of Parkway. We split at the lift line with him expressing sincere gratitude for the turns. Heck, as soon as the sun came out he could have figured that out himself. It was now 9:15 and my face was totally numb and encrusted in ice from the blizzard. After just two runs I really needed to thaw out so I decided to go inside to the rental area and ask if John had been through. <BR> <BR>John was just finishing getting his kids outfitted for the day when I found him in the rental area. We headed to the chairlift and found the Valley triple up and running. A little more vertical wouldn't hurt and it's two or three minutes faster to mid-station. It was still snowing like crazy accumulating down my neck, in my lap, through the vents in my goggles, you name it. We were almost to mid station and John points out people starting to go up LWF double. I don't remember how we got the safety bar up fast enough to debark but we did and loaded the double with only six people before us. As we rode up we gawked and drooled at the entire "face" area in totally untouched powder. We got first tracks down Mt. Run carving silent swishing S's all the way almost non stop. John was flabbergasted. Simply the best run he has had all winter. He asks where to next. I vividly remember McKenzie from the day before. Up we go to the LWF summit. After we break over the top of Mt. Run we get hit in the chest with pile driver force winds. Conversation stops as we concentrate on trying to breathe. Near the summit we see "walls" of snow blowing straight up hundreds of feet in the air. This is the strangest scenario I have ever been in. Snow coming down harder than I can ever remember and it going right straight back up. As we hit the ramp it took all our effort to get out of the chair. <BR> <BR>The top of Excelsior, which is the ridge line where you can see down to Lake Placid in one direction and down to Wilmington in the other, had hurricane force winds coming straight up the Lake Placid side. Excelsior was devoid of snow. Wall to wall solid ice, somewhat porous and edgeable from a survival standpoint. We made the turn onto Approach and found most of it similar but now the wind was at our backs. To the immediate right hand side was a 8 to 10 ft. strip of dense windblown powder that we could carve excellent turns in but the texture helped keep us slow enough to stay in control and not get simply blown over the side. By switching sides of the trails and following the wind pattern we could stay in snow all the way down Approach. Get out in the icy parts with that wind at our backs and it got pretty scary. Empire was closed, naturally and we never even considered poaching that. Then to our amazement we found McKenzie also closed. Bummer! So we did top of Wilderness to lower McKenzie. Heavy windblown powder in icy moguls was challenging to start but after hitting the part where the groomers had gotten up to it became simply gorgeous carving powder. As we came over 2200 road onto lower McK we looked up the upper section and wondered why such a gorgeous scene was closed. Now it was time to look for something exotic. Another trip to the summit and I took us down Excelsior, again working the drifted sides perfectly to avoid becoming a bobsled. We shot over Connector in full side to side powder carving effortless turns and out into the top of lower Cloudspin in same conditions. My goal was not lower Cloudspin but lower Skyward. Skipping through the woods on a little known single track access we came out on virgin untouched powder under the stationary summit quad. This was candy, this was unreal, this was massive corn moguls the day before and silent soft powder 24 hrs later. Easy street to mid station was soft packed powder from it being the best run off the Valley triple and the wind sheltering was holding up very good on this trail. We head up again but John indicates no way to the top this time. We get off at the top of Mt. Run and hook a hard right to the edge of Parkway in deep drifted powder. Crossing straight over the headwall to the left side we stay in the downwind side and simply crank limitless powder turns all the way to the intersection of tower 10 hill. John decides to check on the girls snowboarding progress as it's 11 oclock and the lesson was supposed to be at 10AM. No sign of them around the base anywhere so we go inside to see if they are around. It turns out that with a scheduled call first appointment they could not provide a snowboard instructor for some reason and rescheduled for 12 noon. The girls decide to eat lunch and just hang out to make sure they didn't miss the rescheduled appointment. There goes half a day down the drain.