Okemo Mountain: White Friday, 11/24/2017

They say that Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year, but in our family we prefer to celebrate the day after Thanksgiving by going skiing. Often "White Friday" marks our first ski day of the year, but with the early start to the season that we've had this year it's already our third weekend skiing.

Okemo has worked out well for our early season outings. Thanks to their snowmaking firepower, they reported the most open terrain (a little over a hundred acres) in the east.

At this point in the season we don't expect to be skiing the trees, double-black bump runs or natural snow terrain. We mostly want terrain and lift choices (check), good coverage (check) and some elbow room to let our skis run (check).

Daniel and Sylvie

My brother David

Sylvie

Beth

Since the kids are usually half way down the mountain by the time I make my first couple turns, it worked out well that my brother Dave - also a telemark skier - tagged along for the day.

Friday started out overcast, but the clouds cleared off by mid-morning. Temperatures got up into the mid-30s. I don't think you could ask for a nicer early season day.

We alternated among the six or eight open routes down the mountain. The best skiing seemed to be the runs off the Solitude quad, where we found great snow, a nice pitch and no one around. Nor'easter, a black diamond run off the six-pack bubble chair, also skied great early in the day.

We made the mistake of taking a lunch break at 1pm. We probably should have kept skiing for a few more runs because by the time we came back out the shadows had overtaken the trails. So it was flat light and ice for our last runs of the day, typical November.

I'll admit that it feels a bit weird to be 3 weekends into the season and not skiing Gore yet, but we'll make it there soon enough. For now we're enjoying checking out some new areas on our MaxPasses while the season gets going.