West Mountain: 01/11/2012, UPDATED 01/14/2012 WITH SNOWMAKING VIDEO

Wednesday telemark night at West Mountain, week 2. While those who skipped last week missed out on a fine night of skiing, those who skipped this week probably made the right call. Loose granular snow over a hardpack base plus crowded slopes (mostly school groups) added up to less-than-stellar skiing. It’s still skiing though, and those of us who braved the slopes were all smiles by 9:15 (in the bar) as the first beers were poured.

The trails (it’s really still just one route down from the summit) were in serious need of love from the snowmaking crew, but I can’t really fault West Mountain. Temperatures have recently been above freezing during the day without dipping low enough for optimal snowmaking at night, and snowmaking operations that have occurred seem to be concentrated on trails that aren’t yet open. On top of that is the uncertainty over whether Thursday’s weather event would be snow or rain (happily it’s a snow event!), and I can understand the reluctance to devote resources to re-surfacing Frolic.

It’s too bad that Thursday’s early morning snow didn’t begin about 12 hours earlier, but it’s a moot point now as the outlook for this weekend and next week is for far better skiing conditions with snow and much colder temperatures in the forecast.

Update from West Mountain, Saturday 01/14/2012:
Video shows snowmaking progress on The Alley, Chute, Turtle Back, Banister & Inch Worm. We are hopeful to have the triple side of the mountain running by next week.