Winter has yet to loosen its grip on the ski mountains of the northeast, Gore included. A mixed bag of sleet, snow and freezing rain coated the mountain on Friday, setting the stage for "interesting" ski conditions on Saturday. Actually, the skiing was pretty good wherever the groomers had been.
There's an amazing amount of snow on the mountain for this late in the season. Saturday's conditions really didn't allow for skiing in the glades (a tad too crunchy), but the coverage is there. Every trail that we skied had full edge-to-edge coverage and plenty of base. There are no bare spots other than a thin spot or two near the base.
No surprise the mountain was nearly deserted. Although quite a few of our friends were skiing Saturday, we hardly saw anyone on most of the trails we skied. The best skiing was in the middle two-thirds of the mountain - the summit was a bit icy, the bottom mashed potatoes. Since the daycare is now closed for the season, Sylvie skied with us all day, including her first tour of the summit and first time skiing Uncas, Hawkeye and Open Pit, all black diamonds.
The real highlight of the day came after the skiing, when all of our ski friends and just about all of North Creek turned out for a fundraiser at Gore's base lodge for our friend Lori Phoebe Benton, who was recently diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma. BEST WISHES AND GET WELL LORI!
Saturday closes out our ski season, and it felt a bit odd not to be skiing in more typical spring conditions, in t-shirts with a big group of friends. Gore just announced that they will be open for one more weekend, one of their latest seasons in my memory. We'd be there in a heartbeat, but we'll be leaving for a week in Florida next Saturday. Then again, I suppose it's possible to ski till 11am and still make our 3pm flight...
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