Gore Mountain: 02/19/2010

Hawkeye Headwall

Conditions at Gore have been pretty consistent over the past several weeks. With scant natural snowfall, it's mostly been a game of following the snowmaking crew around the mountain.

We focused on the summit. Beth wanted to increase her comfort level on steeper terrain, like the headwalls on Hawkeye and Echo, so after skiing a couple warm-up laps on Wild Air, we headed up top.

We found firm but edgeable conditions on Hawkeye, good enough that Beth could feel confident turning through the fall line. There was nice snow all the way down skier's left on both the upper and lower halves. We moved on to Lower Darby and Chatiemac, finding excellent skiing under the snowmaking guns on Chati. We must have lapped variations of Hawkeye / Chatiemac ten times, which allowed Beth to significantly improve her comfort level on these trails. It also gave me the opportunity to sample conditions on Rumor, and in the woods.

Notably, half a dozen guns were blowing on the Rumor headwall all day. Around midday, a few more guns were set up extending the snowmaking about half way down lower Rumor.

The snow on Rumor was good, particularly under the guns, however the bumps were a little trenched out. I will certainly return to Rumor later this weekend to see if the snowmaking smooths out some of those trenches. Clearly management is committed to getting the headwall open this season, and the snowmaking that was going on all day on Chati and Twister was good to see too.

I sampled a few woods shots today: Darby Woods (KHS), the lower Straightbrook glades, and maybe one or two others. The inch-a-day snow we've had recently, coupled with manmade blow-in made KHS and the low-angled lower Straightbrook glades nice, I'd say a notch better than what we found last weekend.

Steeper shots and areas further from snowmaking still need more snow. I'll try to snap a few more pics over the next couple days to add to this report, and I'll update the conditions if there is any significant change.