Angus

Wildcat needs snow!

LOL. Just pulled into rest area to figure out my AM strategy at Wildcat. I thought the temperature profile was wrong on MW. I will hike with the dog up to Hermit Lake. @wxeyeNH- steam coming off middle of winnisquam this AM. All the bays on Winnipesaukee are frozen with lots of ice houses

Plenty of snow to ski into Greeley pond from the Kanc side. Spectacular morning in there. Hiked up to Lonesome Lake in PM with friends, again beautiful. It was cold and windy when not protected by the trees. @wxeyeNH it is cold at the lake! There is ice but arrived after dark so will investigate in the AM.

my brother-in-law has a place in Chatham not far from Pleasant Bay, Eastward Ho golf club and maybe 25 years ago, he spent a winter living there while finishing up the construction of his primary residence. He actually now calls Chatham his primary residence and loves spending winters out there but I digress! He talks about taking the dog out around midnight before going to bed with beautiful, starlit sky overhead and waking up the next morning to a foot and half of snow. He said it was the craziest thing he's ever experienced.

@MarkO how much snow fell in the WV area this week? thinking of skiing into livermore road area via the Kanc/greeley pond trail but friend who was there last weekend said it was very icy. hoping enough snow fell this week to improve conditions.

During Peaks, Wildcat became something of a test bed for snowmaking from what I heard or read. I've always thought it paired well with Attitash - ability to use ticket at either area. Wildcat is restricted by its location - they can't build condos and I think they are limited to existing structure footprints. It's funny, when you ski there, I'm always amazed by the # of Maine skiers who live close to Sunday River who drive to Wildcat instead. Cannon and Wildcat are cut from same cloth. Cannon has benefitted by significant investment over last decade as a result of Mt. Sunapee being run privately.

So just saw this on twitter -  under the lift is starr line - closed and to the right is black cat - open. a friend skied black cat on friday and said it was a joke. they usually blow snow some snow on black cat to cover up the rocks 

4 hours ago, wxeyeNH said:

Newfound is half frozen over.   The bays have ice that was great for skating but now are covered with about an inch of snow.  Winnisquam is probably shallower and froze earlier.  Friday and Saturday will be in the single numbers so the ice will thicken.   Lake Winn has a forum with info for the lakes over there.  Maybe get more info with that of a FB group?  Have fun and dress warm

Thank you. I don't do FB but have been trying to interpret from the Winni forum. I'm hopeful that I will get to skate some! Think I will be staying in the insulated/baseboard heated efficiency not the cottage this weekend given forecasted temps! 

22 minutes ago, bwt3650 said:

How many runs were open?  Wanted to get over there this year, but seems like nothing but problems there.  Heard the views alone are worth it and some decent steeps, but not if they are going to be garbage.

1 hour ago, PhineasC said:

Not impressed by Wildcat grooming. Sloppy and half-assed is not the same thing as “natural” folks. And there is zero reason to leave the one green way down off the summit for kids ungroomed like a damn bump run. Come on. 

they are reporting 43 today - the usual suspects that require lots of natural are not open but there are a few that are open that probably shouldn't be - pick your way down type skiing. @PhineasC Wildcat is not BW or the Tuckerbrook area for better/worse. In the Spring, they let the whole mountain get bumped up. I guess polecat is the only green trail coming off the top technically, there are a couple of other ways down for lower intermediates but you'd need to know the mountain better. Sorry, wasn't great experience.

Yikes, see my comment a few nights ago regarding those trail runners in NH! How stupid do you get driving a trunk out onto any ice given the winter we've had so far. Can you even file an insurance claim for something like that?

@wxeyeNH how is the ice building on newfound? i'm planning on spending the weekend on winnisquam and would love to get some shore  line skating if it freezes sufficiently. thanks if you have any insight.

5 hours ago, radarman said:

You don't know what you're missing

the football program at UMass is a mess but I have a memory - early 70's when BC & UMASS played annually - of being out there in late Fall and the parking was on grass fields around the stadium. There must have been a big rain storm because cars were getting stuck in the mud and the field was just torn up...see it was weather related.

7 hours ago, powderfreak said:

This is a good headline...

Pair airlifted off Mt. Lafayette after one loses sneakers, runs barefoot in deep snow

By Paul Feely New Hampshire Union Leader

Jan 24, 2021 Updated 19 hrs ago

https://www.unionleader.com/news/safety/pair-airlifted-off-mt-lafayette-after-one-loses-sneakers-runs-barefoot-in-deep-snow/article_1a793a64-5d9f-5505-82a5-538257b9bbbc.html

 

This is the second incident I've heard of involving trail runners in last week, a trail runner got disoriented on the lion's head trail on washington last week and had to call in help. I didn't read the incident report carefully but the person was completely unprepared for the weather. this is just amazingly stupid, and you see lots of stupid in the NH mountains in the winter.

6 hours ago, weathafella said:

Damn-wire to wire snow otg on our trip home Thursday/Friday.   

I drove from Boston to St. Louis and back via Nashville and Washington DC - leaving Thursday morning and returning yesterday at noon - 2,700 miles. I don't think I saw a single cloud! I assumed when I planned my route a few weeks ago, I would encounter a couple of storms!

I would wait to ski wildcat or get an unbiased snow report. The reports of winds from the weekend will have completely scoured the slopes.

On a related note, got a text from a friend who skied Wildcat on Thursday and Friday and it was his #1 & 2 days of year. Of course, he also took a wrong turn and had to ski down a boulder field which he could not understand why it was open.

The issue at Cannon is the notch just channels the warm southerly winds during a rain storm just eroding the pack. Cannon turns to rain before Wildcat all the time. With that said, Cannon and Wildcat have best terrain in NH by far. I once read some history of Cannon and the location of the ski area went against the recommendation of ...Sel Hannah maybe?

Friend posted some video skiing glades today at BW, looked great. I love how the glades at BW can open with so little snow depth

It is funny bc I am already contemplating a Indy and Cannon pass next year due my dissatisfaction with Wildcat. Cannon is also a shorter drive for me.

I was the perfect age for the Blizzard of 78 - 14 soon to turn 15. Just enough independence. Two weeks of no school. One day decided to walk 9, 10, 11 miles to my friend's home in Hingham, thankfully deciding that crossing an ice strewn Hingham Harbor was not the safest short cut to his house. Took most of the day to get there, just walking down the middle of a normally heavily trafficked state road (228) occasionally stepping aside as emergency vehicles headed to Hull. Called my parents to tell them I wouldn't be coming home for a few days and they didn't much care. Everyone in the neighborhood just pulled together and shoveled each others driveways. The roads were all snow covered so you couldn't drive anywhere.

A few years back, a now retired colleague and I were talking about the storm in the office with a bunch of young people present. He abandoned his car on 128 around the Burlington/Lexington line and hiked into an adjacent neighborhood and essentially knocked on a strangers door and asked for shelter. He lived there with the family for 3 or  days. Our younger colleagues thought we were joking. The stories of people getting stuck in the old boston garden post beanpot are legend.

When the stores opened there wasn't anything in them after the first hour so my Mom just made bread which we ate with butter for two weeks along with some rationed food.

I think the best thing about the Blizzard was the absolute insanity it created for the next two decades everytime a weather forecast said 'heavy snow.' People rushing to the store, emptying shelves, sheer panic.

My family had just started skiing so my siblings and I would put our skis on everyday and just "ski" around in the woods behind our house - there was nothing else to do - and the landscape had been totally transformed - all the vegetation had been bent over and covered in snow.

We lost power for a few days, then it was restored; but at some point, we lost it again and I have this vague memory of my father absolutely losing it on the phone with some poor electric company representative. LOL. My Mother probably shooed us out the room!

Good times.

You've mentioned that 40" rule - that seems like a good rule of thumb. I saw people skiing Starr Line and Feline on Saturday which is littered with 3-4' plus boulders with 12-18" of snow on it which is just asking to get hurt or break a ski or board...If someone wants to ruin their equipment I don't care but I feel bad for ski patrol who would have to hike up and carry the knucklehead off the mountain if there was an accident. I would be pissed.

that looks great but I always worry about skiing in stuff like that if I don't know what's underneath - I'm very cautious. I saw a couple a skiers eject headfirst at high speed at Wildcat on Saturday and land really hard as they came blazing down the slope and caught something under the snow. One guy who I thought had seriously hurt himself, pulled himself off the mat and his friend standing next to me said something like 'you got to chill or you're going to seriously hurt yourself.' he just laughed.

Remember driving up 128 with my Dad after that storm and there were abandoned cars on the side of the road buried in snow. We lost all our snow - I remember being pissed! and started the Blizzard with bare ground or barely nothing. After the Blizzard there were repeated 'rumors' of other big storms but I don't much remember any substantial snow or rain for the rest of February. We maintained that snow well into March though. I was a freshman in HS and remember going out for the spring track and coming back from distance runs in mid-late march and lying down in the snow afterwards to cool off!

@HIPPYVALLEYI grew up on the S. Shore and had a few friend's Dads working at the shipyard. As a kid in the early-mid 70's , I literally watched that shipyard fold. The fathers all went out on furlough, seemed to continue to get paid for what seemed like years and then just retired. They were all union guys. I remember driving over the Fore River bridge watching the LNG tankers being build. Of course, you didn't realize what was going on. An amazing history.

Covid reality has set in for me and I will pursue my original strategy of skiing the VT areas on weekdays and skiing Wildcat on Sundays and Crotched on weekday nights occasionally. I will disregard the quarantine rules in VT rationalizing that I'm not setting foot inside a building, eating outside and riding a chair either alone or with only one other person (in the case of the quad). Hopefully, there is a snowmaking budget at Wildcat and it's the above average temps you've suggested which has prevented wildcat from making snow; and between snowmaking and natural snow, Wildcat will be able to make their normal push into the last weekend of April.

2 hours ago, powderfreak said:

What those people don’t know if there’s a fixed grip double chair right next to that (Lookout Double) that is open and goes to the same place...didn’t have a line all weekend.

But Sunday of MLK Weekend during a monster snowstorm and we never came close to actually running out of parking or having any traffic issues... rare.  Was very light on the whole compared to normal.

 

Yeah, b/c everyone from eastern Massachusetts was at Attitash and Wildcat! I like that double - the top of Lookout trail has a nice old school vibe, narrow, steep, big bumps and the chair hangs low to ground.

Skied at wildcat today. Turned to rain briefly in base area - never made it up very far up hill. Good base snow. 

Not a great look...

https://www.wcvb.com/article/skiers-snowboarders-frustrated-with-vail-resorts-refusal-of-refunds-credits/35219813