It's amazing how quickly a strong April sun can bring the ski season to an end. After starting out the month with mid-winter conditions and full trail counts, Gore and Whiteface were working hard to piece together skiable routes just two weeks later. With some creative route finding and a willingness to slide across some occasional snirt, we closed out our season at Whiteface on a high note.
We had pegged Good Friday as our final ski day weeks earlier, and kept our fingers crossed for good weather. You couldn't have asked for a better day: sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-fifties. A quick check of Gore's anticipated conditions for Friday made it easy to decide between Gore and Whiteface:
Open routes at Whiteface included Approach / Wilderness and Excelsior off Little Whiteface, Paron's Run off the summit quad and a handful of other runs. Though officially closed, plenty of skiers were accessing Skyward through the "ghost trees" on skier's right, bypassing Skyward's melted-out headwall.
Although coverage on the open trails was generally excellent, the approaches and connectors were getting thin. Sometimes all you had was a narrow ribbon leading to the good stuff. We enjoyed the adventure, knowing we were taking advantage of the very last skiing of the season.
There's always a chance we may make it over to Killington for some May turns (they're shooting for June 1), but our season is effectively done. After enduring some ups and downs over the course of the winter, it's great to be closing out the season with a long stretch of great days, including this one.
We're already looking forward to next winter...
No comments:
Post a Comment