Cannon Mountain, Franconia, NH 2/2

Cannon mountain was running their Superb Owl 2 for $72 lift ticket deal this past Sunday, so E. and I headed out for the 2.5 hour drive north Sunday morning.  Temps were supposed to be in the high 30s at the mountain, and we thought we might actually find soft-ish conditions.  We've been to Cannon twice in the past, once back in December and once last year this same weekend (same deal on tix), and we found that "firm" conditions by Cannon standards means hard enough to ice skate on!  Nonetheless, the mountain keeps drawing us back because it is quite big and has a lot of varied terrain, and has an "old school" feel about it, maybe because it's state-run, that I really like.  

We arrived at the mountain and the base temps were in the mid-30s, summit temps were around 20 degrees.  We headed up the lift, and didn't hear any metal scraping on ice.  "Are we at the right mountain?" E. wondered?  Here's a view of rt 93 winding it's way through the Franconia Notch:



The snow was looking really good as we took the quad up to the mid-mountain point:



Upon exiting the lift, we found a couple trails, notably the main connector over to the Cannonball lift to the summit, that reminded us that we were, indeed, at the right mountain, as they were pretty much large sheets of ice.  A good portion of the trails from mid-point down had soft snow, though, and it was really enjoyable skiing.  



There are two things about this photo of note:  The ceiling of heavy fog hanging and moving ever lower, and the windy trail off to the right.  Beyond this trail and over the ridge is Mittersill, Cannon's "lift accessed backcountry area."  Unfortunately it wasn't open Sunday, but we're very eager to get back up there once it is!  



E. and I did several runs down the main face of the mountain, hoping to catch up with a couple of his friends who were also there that day, but alas our paths never crossed.  Eventually we moved over to the short, steep black diamond trails along the skier's right of the mountain.  The snow was soft enough that I felt confident on those trails!  We finally took the Tram up to the summit.  When we got off the summit, we were greeted by the pea soup fog you see here that had rolled down to almost the base of the mountain very quickly, along with a heavy dosing of freezing rain/sleet!  That was our last run of the day, along with just about everyone else. There was a mass exodus from the mountain about 45 minutes before the last lifts closed at 4pm, as the freezing rain iced up your goggles, but without the goggles, the hard pellets were smacking you in the eyes.  Bummer end to an otherwise fantastic day of skiing!  We'll definitely be back again.