At Blue Knob last month, it was tough staring at the closed tree runs, thinking just a few more inches and they’d be riding nicely. Luckily, a few week later, my wish came true. President Weekend’s Saturday was hardly a zoo at the Knob, the glades were all open, and the snow was more western than eastern. All glades were successfully conquered, and the picks were the Ditch Glades, a windy steep-ish stream bed with excellent cover (and one bush), and the wide open Laurel Run, which had bumps seemingly formed with Japanese-like engineering precision. D-Trail and East West Glades were also in good condition, just a little more twiggy. And with the rest of the mountain in uniformly excellent condition, even Extrovert, this is quite possibly the best day we’ll ever have Knob riding.
The following weekend, a day at Wisp was classic SWAPS* behavior. Sat in the lodge at 9am, watching it rain, eating a monster breakfast sandwich, catching up onwork, and praying the mid-morning cool down in the forecast would happen. When we saw heavy snow ay 10.30am, we knew it was time to boot up. An hour later we were carving the whole mountain, on and off groomed, under a deep blue sky. How the conditions were this good after a 2 day warm up and a decent rain shower, I have no idea. We did the usual Wisp circuit, skiing straight on to every lift, and at 4pm said goodbye to a surprisingly delightful ski day.
Sunday at Seven Spring is normally a pretty good choice crowds-wise. This was no exception, and under a blue sky, we got plenty of runs in off Gunnar before 10am peak hour arrived. There were a few bare spots off-groomed, but this was good Spring-like skiing. Stowe bumps kept us occupied in afternoon, and the gentler mounds on Avalanche and the glades between the runs were perfect tele-practise terrain for yours truly. By the time we left, it was dumping wet snow – hopefully hailing the return of winter in the Mid Atlantic.
Blue Knob 5500m, Wisp 5300m, Seven Springs 6900m vert
Season Totals: 32 days, 252,900m vert
3 powder days
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