Sugarbush, VT: 03/15 & 03/16/2012

For the last five years or so, I’ve gone away around Saint Patrick’s Day with a group of work associates for a couple days of skiing and “professional development.” OK, forget about the professional development, it’s really all about the skiing.

Heading down Ripcord, off the Heaven's Gate chair

Gore Mountain: 03/10/2012

It’s amazing what a strong March sun can do to snow, even with temperatures hovering around the freezing mark all day. In typical fashion for this winter, the foot of snow that fell 10 days ago was followed by a couple of 50-degree days, rain, and then a flash freeze. The last part of that equation left me fearing we’d be left with rock-hard, boilerplate surfaces today. What a pleasant surprise it was to find instead that the strong March sun quickly softened surfaces everywhere into spring conditions, even at the summit.

West Mountain: 03/07/2012

With temperatures in the mid-50s and a late afternoon sun still above the horizon, the scene was quite a bit different from last week when I left work in Albany to head up to West Mountain.

Adirondack Sports & Fitness Expo this weekend

This may come as a shock, but I think we’re going to have an early spring. As much as I love skiing and winter, I’m also looking forward to getting out on my mountain bike soon. And hiking, climbing, paddling and running.

So if you’re not out skiing, you may want to check out 7th annual Adirondack Sports & Fitness Expo this weekend at the Saratoga Springs City Center. A complete listing of exhibitors, plus schedule of demonstrations, seminars and clinics is located here. Saturday’s hours are 10am – 5pm, Sunday is 10am – 4pm. Admission is FREE.

West-West-Willard: 02/29 & 03/01/2012

If you’ve followed my Wednesday night updates from West Mountain (OK, it’s been a couple weeks) you’ll know that we’ve had more scratch than soft for surface conditions this winter. But Wednesday night this week finally coincided with one of the few (only?) snowstorms of the winter.

When I left work in Albany late Wednesday afternoon, there were a few inches of wet snow on the ground. The snow continued to come down at a moderate to heavy clip as I pulled into West Mountain’s parking lot an hour later. The 3 to 4 inches of new snow that had fallen at that point certainly improved the trail surfaces, but it was still difficult to avoid bottoming out on the rock-hard underlayer. Eventually the accumulating snow improved the surfaces enough so that the last few runs of the night were noticeably better than the first few.