Angus

for almost 4 decades, I drove past and ignored Cranmore but have had the opportunity to ski there a handful of times over the last 5-6 years and had a surprisingly good time every time. It's an interesting small mountain with an old style trail network. They have a pretty good snowmaking system but they need natural snow to open up some of the more interesting terrain.

Although I get there infrequently I follow SLoaf's conditions very carefully and they seem to be in good shape having avoided the big torch and rain and some snow since New Year's.

I've started watching the Kirkwood webcams and following their weather forecast. bonkers!!

I like to shovel. Actually have an old snowblower which broke 6-7 years ago and never have fixed, trying to figure out how to get rid of it.

I pre-bought some SLoaf tickets again this year and hope to do a couple Black Mountain Maine, Saddleback and SLoaf long weekends using my Indy Pass. Black Mountain is supposed to be a great tree skiing mountain with a very reasonable ticket price. Their Chisholm Ski Club has a fascinating history.

Sitting in Dublin airport trying to decipher my prospects this week for AM skinning at WaWa. Looking to be cheered up, I figured I'd look at the the Sugarloaf webcam and behold...a horsefly?

Driven through there many times. That whole area up and down hwy131 can get crazy lake effect snow. The town is a big summer tourist destination and in winter there are a bunch of small vertical but large ski areas - Boyne is HQed there - think owner of Big Sky, SLoaf, SR, Loon, et cetera. East and a bit south of there is Gaylord - maybe 5-7 years ago I was there in late January, in a coffee shop early in the morning and there were a bunch of mothers in there commiserating that their kids had literally had 4 days of school since the new year due to snow... Crazy amounts of snow was on the ground. The town of Mancelona in that general vicinity has a snow stake 10' high near the train depot. Flew out of the airport there once, craziest thing ever - heaviest snow rates I'd ever seems. Pilot came on the intercom said "we have a half hour window" everyone hustled on board, they plowed the runway and we we were off on max thrust.

1,832'

I was just trying to discern on their webcams what's falling from the sky at Wachusett - might be rain at base and then snow not that far up the slopes. It is dumping snow on yankee magazine webcam in Dublin.

So you think it's snowing in the early AM if I want to go to WaWa and take a few laps before the lifts open?

That's nothing. WaWa's gotten like 15' in 3 days. From this morning.

I don't ski there at all anymore but with the exception of castlerock area, I remember preferring Mt. Ellen especially that lift to the summit. Might be the lines were shorter and trails less crowded. Be kind of interesting to go back now and ski - probably 10 years or so since I was there. I remember being a kid in my school's library - gosh, creeping up on 50 years! - reading the profiles of mountains and glen ellen sounded awesome with it's high base elevation! I just browsed the new england ski history site and read this... In early 1967, Glen Ellen was named as a possible downhill skiing venue for a potential Waterbury 1976 Olympics bid, thanks to its large continuous vertical drop.

skinned up WaWa this morning primarily to make sure I understood how to transition in the 'field' from uphill to downhill mode. Everything worked fine except I was way overdressed and given my dismal fitness level, I was surprisingly gassed on the steeper sections. I was surprised to see how many skiers were there doing the same thing. WaWa had the guns roaring but turned them off a bit after 7am. Surprising amount of depth on the trails they do have open and along with resurfacing open terrain, it looks like they made snow on lower tenth mountain last night. Friend skiing at Kirkwood sent me video of him skiing powder yesterday as well as some near zero visibility conditions. Said they were doing avalanche control work this morning on the mountain and it was cold.

why don't you go to sunapee for a few hours? One route down but I'm guessing that's what you they will have really at Wildcat too. Terrain is more gentle, it's early season and you save a bunch of time/gas on the commute if you live in Nashua.

I don't want this to be taken the wrong way, as I said earlier, this is an unimaginable tragedy for the young woman, her family and her friends. However, I am somewhat annoyed by the descriptions of her in the boston papers as being 'experienced' - clearly, she was not and her lack of preparedness and bad decision-making had a cascading effect that resulted in her death. I know there will be reports issued later but the general public will not see them nor will they be covered on the front page of the newspapers. Not sure what the appropriate way of messaging should be but I feel like this is an opportunity for educating the general public to hopefully avoid these tragedies in the future. Again, this is just a terrible situation and I write this as someone who has made plenty of mistakes on the high peaks of NE.

Couple of things in this thread - I'm not really sure the day rate matters much anymore. What % of skiers on the mountain on any particular day has bought a day ticket? Not sure if this is statistic, the industry compiles but at this point most folks are skiing on a IKON, VAIL, or area specific season pass. I'm headed to Lech Austria (St. Anton) at xmas. I've never been a xmas vacation skier other than a day here or there locally but have a child studying in europe this Fall so thought 'why not.' Looking at things right now, I'm guessing I will spend approximately the same for xmas week what I would have spent early march out west. But I will have about 300kms of groomed trails to choose from...if they get them open, winter has started slow in the alps.

So sad. Lafayette brook is found on the north side and runs parallel to the greenleaf trail which is accessed at the Cannon Tram parking lot. It comes out at the AMC's greenleaf hut (intersecting with the bridal path trail) and from there you ascend to the summit. After you go above the AMC hut, you quickly are exposed to the elements - no trees. I've been up there with almost no visibility and it can be very disorienting. What a shame. Just a series of bad decisions I'm guessing.

Just drove up to WaWa and purchased an uphill pass. Place was pretty busy - parking lot was maybe 1/3-1/4 full. One route from top, two routes from the side hill and two learning slopes, pretty good job. Lakeridge - it's a gated community - so would say Bretton Woods wins!! Never knew about the place. They have some video on their website. Who would have 'thunk.'

Sugarloaf should get a call out too. They are running the superquad and timberline lift with top to bottom skiing including Hayburner which is upper intermediate/expert trail with a nice pitch.

Well, Wildcat beat WaWa by a day.

Just looked at the Killington Superstar webcam. They must have snow guns positioned 20-30' apart the whole way up the mountain.

Me too. My brother-in-law wanted to leave when Brady 'fumbled.' Traffic getting into the stadium that night was brutal. I think we didn't get in until early 2nd quarter.

Gosh, rain on summer vacation with young kids. As a parent was lucky to avoid it. As a kid - probably 55 years ago or so - two weeks on panther pond in the sebago lake area of maine. My parents and my cousins - probably 6 or 7 seven kids between the two families. All the kids probably all under the age of 7 - non-stop rain. One of my first memories, it was that bad. I distinctly remember the sun coming out on the maine turnpike as we fled the state. My Mom talks still talks about how she almost lost her mind. Folklore in my family.

Over the years, I've made a couple of stupid decisions relative to lack of gear, terrain choice and generally not appropriately planning for contingencies during the summer months in the presidentials and thankfully none of them have ended badly but the experience has definitely made me far more cautious especially as I've gotten older and my margin for error has shrunk. The issue over the weekend is that nobody should have been hiking alone given the weather; and frankly, I can't think of why you'd attempt a presidential traverse given the weather found just in the parking lot. Again, retrospective analysis is easy - I've been standing with a compass in my hand at the intersection of the AT and Lowe's Path just off the Adam's summit trying to confirm my route due to visibility of only 5-6' and totally disoriented. Sad and frustrating part of all this is that by any criteria, this past weekend was not a good time to be on the higher elevations of NNE and NNY state.

53 male from Andover Massachusetts, did not survive. sad.