Angus

just looking at the steele hill webcam (sanbornton, NH) and it is snowing like a fury. hoping our neighbors who got a new boat delivered yesterday get out in it.

full on winter at the 'Loaf https://www.sugarloaf.com/conditions-and-cams

anyone driven thru franconia notch and taken a look at snow coverage at cannon? I'm thinking that I may go up there Saturday in the snow - and ski down from summit - if there is good coverage and a few other things fall into place.

I've wondered how much the lack of skier traffic has contributed to retention. I check the Sugarloaf webcams daily, you can ski the entire mountain. PF has said same of Stowe. I wish the Wildcat base cam was on but I'm sure they are loaded given what you see at BW. Just crazy.

@borderwx do you live in Holland. Always wanted to get up there, have family from 19th century from there.

Not sure if I had mentioned this on my entry about skiing Tremblant in early March but I was surprised to see BV from 89S on our way back. It gave me a different perspective of where BV is located.

The Sugarloaf webcams went on today - they have only had the base cam on continuously. Still wall to wall on mountain. The cam at top of Cannon that looks out onto Franconia Ridge showing lots of snow and ice.

I saw that and went to their website - they have very detailed instructions and guidelines for purposes of social distancing. Looks like golf courses are reopening in California.

A sign of the Spring, after a second work day, yard at lake is ready for Memorial Day. Literally, two weeks before I can ever remember the place cleaned up which is probably a function of available time and weather. Bugs were out today , not last weekend. An unscientific survey on RT. 3 Tilton at 130-2PM, only 1 in 25 cars had out of state plates.

50 minutes of nordic skiing this morning in a playing field adjacent to my house. Classic style but I've been out maybe a half dozen times on my roller skis since my last skinny ski at Tremblant six weeks ago. I was gliding on a lot wet grass at times - we got about 2" of compacted snow.

It's weird about your location and retention, are you higher than Farmington or get more snow. I'm always disappointed with the snow in Farmington late season in my infrequent drives to Saddleback or Sugarloaf.

folks at sugarloaf said they got about 7" last night.

Another day yesterday at WaWa. From last weekend, equivalent # of skiers but more hikers and the hikers were definitely families; and if had to speculate, groups of multiple families or couples not practicing good social distancing. Definitely shaking my head. Really no snow loss higher up mountain. They have pushed snow at base up the hill to facilitate melting? Basically took multiple runs on a couple different bump runs. Came home and roller skied around my neighborhood. Expect I will be back again. My son said he expects his next skiing will be the auto road on mt. Washington but I doubt it opens until the pandemic is in better place.

Had fun at WaWa this afternoon. Fair # of people hiking with skis, skinning or just families hiking on the slopes. Going up to the summit between noon and 1, there wasn't much softening. The east facing slope - Minuteman chair - had much nicer and softer snow. There was even a bump line to be skied. May go up early Tuesday for turns if weather forecast is correct. There is quite a bit of snow on trails as reported.

i will probably do this a bit just to get outdoors close to home.

I'll be interested to hear any reports from ski areas about how the skiers followed the guidance provided by the resorts...example an excerpt from Vail properties that I've received multiple times now..."We will ask guests to ride on chairlifts and gondolas with their parties only. We ask for our guests’ patience while we implement this new protocol. We will post signage with social distancing reminders and our employees will be on site to help encourage safe protocols."

I assume my ski season is done. I honestly don't understand how packed onto a ski lift even in the open, moving air is not going to cause transmission. The profit at this point is minimal to the areas - PF could confirm. I just worry about the seasonal labor being terminated 3-4 weeks early. I just finished reading an article in the NYTimes about some of the modeling the CDC has been doing and it is scary stuff.

What was striking yesterday, driving south on 89 from the border was the little snow even in the hills around the Bolton/Waterbury exits. My attention will now turn to ice out on our lake in NH!

drove up to Tremblant on Friday and nordic skied Friday and this morning (Sunday) before heading home. Downhill skied on Saturday. A couple of observations, the mountain skis much bigger than the vertical. Couldn't quite figure out why other than it has a bunch of subpeaks and a 'north' and 'south' side. It is a fun mountain. A good amount of tree skiing for all abilities, all of which is very well cleaned out - mostly hardwoods anyway - and the coverage was deep enough that we never encountered any stumps or rocks and tree limbs sticking out of the snow. Lot's of uphill lift capacity but also big crowds. Skied with daughter and son and we mostly just hopped in single's line to maximize our vertical. They have a lot of snowmaking capacity and they appear not to be shy about using it. They have a good base but hadn't had any recent snow and maybe a little bit of rain but as I said to my son, 'it's still eastern skiing.' on the main routes down the hill, there was a fair amount of boilerplate and the steep trails had man-made boilerplate interspersed with powdery bumps - definitely should have sharpened my edges before heading up. The nordic trail network was tremendous. Having skied essentially a 600m loop on a golf course all winter, getting out into the woods for kilometers of well groomed trails was awesome. We stayed at what I guess would be described as a boutique hotel adjacent to the 'ski village' and was able to access the nordic network from my hotel with less than a 1/4 mile walk The Laurentian region is beautiful. The other thing that was very cool was all the smallish sized ski areas north of montreal - all looking very busy.

I just checked the sugarloaf twitter account and they said King Pine was off-line due to maintenance. Again, I would never advocate compromising safety but that is aggravating! That's the new lift that replaced the lift that had the catastrophic failure a few years back. I skied Cannon today and the regulars said mountain ops had to put the place back together last night after the weather left trees and branches down all over the mountain. There was considerable boilerplate under the 3" that fell during the day. I skied Kinsman Glade which should not have been open IMO given the natural snow depth...dodging stumps and other obstacles the whole way down. Again, the regulars said they had lost a lot of snow over the week. I'm kind of ho-hum about the snowfields but I think the Brackett Basin thing is great - I was very much a doubter too until I skied there last April

Our neighbors on Winnisquam sent me pictures of themselves out on the ice in our cove this afternoon. What a spectacular day. They had been skiing for a couple of days at BW and those pictures looked great too. Winter in the NH lakes region is under appreciated.

Oregon is a beautiful state. Between the mountains and beaches - which are incredible - it is outdoor persons paradise.

They were hosting an alpine touring race this weekend. Following on Instagram but I believe the guy who won ended up skiing & skinning for 33+ hours. Good mountain.

Skied Crotched yesterday PM into the evening with my 9-yo nephew from DC. Talking to folks on the lifts, lots of NYers doing the Crotched, Sunapee, Mt. Snow loop over the 3-day weekend with their "Vail" pass. Thank goodness for snowmaking. Crotched doesn't have the most character but the snow product is consistent and it's a real nice asset in the local community. Noticed the nordic races went off in Dublin NH - just southwest of Crotched - yesterday with enough natural coverage. Only 3 days of alpine this season but all have over-delivered based upon expectations.

Skied at Bretton Woods today. Good size crowds and they stayed all day. Chose BW instead of Cannon and was the right choice. Very good coverage on man-made trails. Even skied some lower angle wood and natural snow trails and they were manageable. The gondola is nice - took two trips up at end of day after lines had abated. BW isn't my thing terrain wise but they do a really nice job for their customer. Fun day.