Gore Mountain: 12/09/2012

On Sunday half of our family chose other activities (I’ll never understand that!), leaving the skiing to just Sylvie and me. Last winter was Sylvie’s first year on skis, so today was a great opportunity for her to log a bunch of early season runs with 100% attention from Dad.

Conditions weren’t all that great - granular, chopped-up snow – but skier traffic was light and coverage on the trails was better than I expected. Ruby Run to Sunway seemed to have the best skiing, and that’s where we took the majority of our runs. High clouds occasionally filtered the sun, but visibility was great with some nice views of the (mostly snowless) High Peaks to the north.

Actually the only bare spots were right around the gondola terminal

Heading down Ruby, with an alarmingly brown summit backdrop

Last winter was Sylvie’s first year on skis, and by the end of the season she had progressed from the T-bar to the Sunway double chair to the Gondola. Last weekend she did a few laps on the Sunway double and one run on the gondi. Today we made 5 gondi runs and a couple more on the Sunway double. I figure she logged close to 10,000 vertical feet in 3 to 4 hours of skiing today – not bad for a kid who’s not quite 5 years old!

Nice views of the High Peaks today

High Peaks close-up

The frankly lousy weather pattern of the last week looks like it will continue with only occasional, temporary improvement in the 10-day forecast, leading some to worry whether we’re in for a repeat of last winter. My take is that we’ve had a better early season than last year, and the snowmakers have done a great job when temperatures cooperated (i.e. November), but we sure could use some consistent, seasonable cold weather right about now. Not to mention some real snow.

One more close-up of the High Peaks: Marcy, Haystack, Basin, Saddleback, Gothics