Catamount Conditions

I’m sure they’ll make snow aggressively this week. I got to chat with two members of the leadership there on Saturday and I would say the future looks bright for Catamount. I can’t wait to ski the new trail they cut next to Catapult.

Same!  Marty's Run and Shawenon ski great so I have high hopes for the other new ones too.  I believe the new owner was working the meadows triple for a while on Sunday but I didn't get a chance to chat him up.

Had a brothers' ski day at Cat today - that means no kids, sandwiches are stuffed in pockets, and my brother and I look for the best snow and try for max vert.  He regularly gets 50-60k at Hunter.  Fortunately for me, the slow lifts at Catamount make that impossible - the 26K we got are about all my legs can take these days.

The snow was firm but completely carveable everywhere the sun hit - which eventually was all over the mountain since it was bluebird most of the day.  They did a great job prepping the mountain after weeks of problematic weather.  It skied like we were in the middle of a snowy winter - just don't look at the brown on the sides of the trails and at the base.

In the morning, the sweetest snow was on the skier's left side of Glade all the way down, over to the same side of On Stage.  They had run a cat up in the morning just before opening so there was an area of semi soft carving snow we played on before the sun unlocked the rest of the main face.  New runs Shawenon and Marty's Run were skiing nicely but didn't quite have the goods the way Glade did.  We must have lapped Glade 12 times or more over the course of the day.

We had been watching the sun move across various areas of the moutain, and in the afternoon it seemed like time to jump onto double diamonds Catapult and Ripper.  They were fun, and Ripper is just awesome with its wideness and steepness - but both were a little scratchy for our taste.  Would have been more fun with snow you could be a little more confident in.  My bro grabbed a run on Lynx while I hit Glade again; he agreed with my earlier assessment that it's good, but needs some fresh snow to really be fun.

With the double diamonds out of the way, we took a few laps on Ridge Run over to the Mass side of the mountain, ending up on Walter's / Promenade and Mountain View / Holiday.  Snow was fine over here but not great enough to keep us from venturing back to the west side for more Glade runs and further west for Shawenon and Lower Sidewinder.  

They are cutting glades on Lower Sidewinder that look like they will be a blast.  Can't wait to hit the mountain after a couple of storms, if we ever get some, to try out the couple new glade areas (quirk of Catamount - the trail named Glade has no glades whatsoever).  

All in all a really fun, sunny, carvy day - they truly are doing great things at this mountain and can't wait to see how it shapes up over the next few years!

Almost didn’t get out today, rallied just in time to be on the snow by 11 AM. Glad I did- beautiful spring like conditions here today

I was there yesterday too, about 9-12:30.  It was great!  Much better than a week ago.

In case anybody is shopping...

Friday: glorious, soft, deep trenching snow that stayed that way most of the day. Ripper had the goods and earned itself a 6-pack of runs from us.

Sunday: slush, ice, rocks, dirt. A real end of season vibe. Hopefully something happens with the weather so this week isn’t their final one of the season.

Mountain pretty empty both days, although a race brought a lot of cars to the lot on Sunday morning.