Thursday, January 5, 2012

West Mountain: 01/04/2012

Cold temperatures and a generally lackluster start to the ski season kept away quite a few of our usual Wednesday night telemarkers. But cold doesn’t really bother me, and I figured the skiing would be pretty good under the guns at West Mountain. Too bad for those who skipped, because the skiing turned out to be quite good: cold temperatures over the past couple of days produced nice, silky manmade packed powder conditions last night.

West Mountain's base and lower slopes, Wednesday night. 

The Saratoga Skier and Hiker, first-hand accounts of adventures in the Adirondacks and beyond, and Gore Mountain ski blog.

The snowmaking crew seems to be running the plant at maximum capacity to make up for what Mother Nature has withheld. I counted more than two dozen fan guns in operation last night on the single lighted top-to-bottom run that was open, with more going on adjacent trails. I’ll take quality over trail count anytime, and the skiing surfaces were as good or better as any snow I’ve been on this year.

Night skiing photos are pretty tricky to take, especially with my old beater camera. One of these days I’ll have to make it over to West during daylight hours so I can take some better photos. Here’s a recent daytime photo from West Mountain’s facebook page that appears to have been taken from about half way down Frolic, the trail we were skiing last night.


No guarantee that I'll have a report up for every Wednesday night, but I will be skiing most of them for the rest of the winter.

2 comments:

  1. Jeff - I agree. The conditions really were surprisingly good. Thanks to West Mountain for their good snowmaking job.

    Did you see the North American Telemark Organization's (NATO) recent inquiry as to what to call a group of Telemarkers? I think the suggestion of "Teleposse" is a good one.

    It was great to ski with you guys last night. I'll be back...

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  2. Sorry I couldn't make it, Jeff. I got the info, though, so I might be in at a later time. Later this month, the ACC class that I teach starts, and that has me at West on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Three nights a week might be a little too much West Mountain for me, but I'll see what I can do.

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