Cold, empty, firm & fast. Saturday at Gore was almost a carbon copy of the previous weekend. If anything, conditions were just a bit better than last weekend thanks to an inch or two of snow Friday night and a solid effort from the grooming crews.
Like last weekend, our crew favored the upper mountain trails and we spent the first half of the day bouncing between Rumor, Lies, Hawkeye and Chatiemac. On the advice of a ski pal who was returning from Burnt Ridge, we took a couple runs on Sagamore and Echo after lunch where we found the best snow of the day (Echo). The upper third of Sagamore was a bit windswept, but the rest of Sag skied nicely too. Despite the good skiing, the entire Burnt Ridge pod was eerily quiet.
Speaking of Burnt Ridge, we haven't skied there much this year and our runs Saturday afternoon reminded us that how that terrain pod would be so better used if it and the Ski Bowl were better connected with the rest of the mountain. It's not impossible to improve those connections, but some money would have to be spent on trail improvements and snowmaking upgrades. Hopefully some of the $20 million in upgrades recently proposed for Gore and Whiteface can be redeployed from frivolous projects like the mountain coaster, zip line and lodge expansion for corporate meeting space into improvements that will more directly impact the skier experience at both mountains.
Here are a few pictures from the day:
Enough about last weekend. As I type this report we are just hours away from the first flakes in what could be the biggest storm in 2 to 3 years. It is possible that natural snow terrain and both on- and off-the-map trees could be back in play by the time the storm winds down on Wednesday. No matter what, conditions later this week and into the weekend should be among the best of the season, and what looked like an early end to the season just a few days ago now looks like great skiing into early April.
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