Angus

snowing hard at sugarloaf base.

Graham Parsons played Cosmic American Music.

I was sharing ski pictures from wildcat on april 22 2007 with my nephew this morning - of course, there will no one to enjoy the bounties this time around - as long as @HIPPYVALLEY can stop himself from promoting it among the flatlanders! ;-)) I need to go to Poland Maine on Friday morning and hoping this is all wrapped up by then. I am going to then drive to NH and spend nite at our camp and thinking I will do a drive around mt. washington given I will have time and daylight.

That was a crazy month for SoVT. The reports from Magic were insane. My son drove up to Mt. Snow to ski after they got the 3' storm - the problem was the front face of mountain wasn't steep enough to ski outside the narrow paths they had groomed.

Take that back!!

My two-cents, I really like skiing Bromley. The terrain is pretty tame but the trails are interesting and kind of old-school. They have some nice, short but well space tree skiing and the vibe, family oriented, is very welcoming. Magic has great terrain but they need snow. I like Mt. Snow - the north side has some more challenging terrain but like Stratton, you get crowds on weekends.

one thing you might want to do before buying a big lot is a bit of discovery on is the prospective cost of road building. I happened to be riding a lift earlier this season with a guy who was relocating up into ski country and had a big budget - $1mm plus - and he told me about all these great pieces of property he kept finding but they were all thwarted by the road cost he'd incurred getting to the desired home location. I can't remember exactly but the per foot cost was crazy...the road was going to cost as much as his 4-5K sq ft home.

The prices along the lake are crazy. A few years back, when Saddleback went up for sale initially, I was speaking to someone - who I believe might have been considering a bid - and they described Rangeley as Maine's only four season resort town between the lake and mountain. South of the height of land on RT.17 is desolate. I think there is property that can be purchased along lower Richardson lake but winter access I believe would not be viable without a snow mobile. RT 17 use to be in horrible condition but I think I've been told it has been improved substantially - I probably haven't driven it in a decade.

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.

If you are a Nordic skier as well as a alpine, look around Craftsbury.

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

Lightning in metrowest Boston, Concord specifically.

that's what wildcat seems to have done on their base cam. hasn't been working for a week plus at this point.

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.

I hope it is a BIG THIRST!!

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.

Need to add my two cents to this public health policy debate, IMO the whole cannabis legalization impetus has been a combination of growing social acceptance - your original, widespread, regular user cohort is now in their early 70's and municipalities/gov't looking for new sources of revenue. With that said, the police are sick of busting otherwise 'upstanding' citizens on petty possession violations; but IMO, the real motivator for states and local gov't is the concession/franchises are a source of much needed revenue. My libertarian view (one I don't subscribe too regularly), is government just wants in on the racket - just like gambling. With that said, what amazes me is the lack of really good science that has been conducted on the effects of marijuana use. Until recently, the federal government tightly restricted the study of the drug.

"Live Free or Die!" What a chucklehead, especially if he/she is healthcare worker and should really understand the risks.

I was observing the same thing here a few weeks back. This winter has stunk further east of you on rt. 2 but it has strangely had snow coverage, albeit very thin. In other weird occurrences, my wife is in Portland this weekend visiting friends. I woke up this morning to find a social media post of her watching the sunset last night in front of the NWS in Gray??? I'm guessing she was at Pineland Farms shopping.

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