Sugarloaf 3/15 & 3/16 2014

Eammon and I took a chance and purchased lift tix to Sugarloaf for this past weekend back in December when we saw a 50% off deal on Liftopia.  We ended up getting excellent conditions, with 2ft of snow falling Wednesday-Thursday!  

We got to the mountain around 8am both days and were on the lifts by 8:30.  Temps on Saturday were in the lower 40s, so it was pretty ehmmm... crowded?  The lines looked really long, but in reality we never had to wait more than 10 minutes to catch a lift. Lines that move this quickly make me smile.

 

We had soft, creamy snow bumps all over the mountain that day.  Right after Eammon put the camera away, I caught a tail on a bump and fell right on my face.  Now that would've made for an epic photo!  Instead you get me still on my feet.  


The Snowfields at the summit were open, but I was too chicken (bawk! bawk!!) to go up and try them after skiing a black diamond off the King Pine lift and looking up at them from the top of that chair.  Holy steep!  

A view from the summit:


A pic from the first run down King's Landing:


We skied until about 3:30.  We really wanted to ski until the lifts closed, but we were pretty spent, so we went back to our hotel.

Day 2, started off at about 0 degrees.  It warmed up to about 7 degrees by the time we got to the mountain, with 30-50mph winds.  The summit chair and King Pine chair were on a wind hold the entire day, but the SuperQuad that gets you fairly close to the summit was still spinning.  Once we got up there, we decided we didn't really want to be up there,though. It was frigid and the wind was harsh!  Conditions varied between frozen, solid, icy concrete and actually fairly decent piles of powder where the wind swept it all into nice stashes.  It was tough skiing, though, very hard to get an edge in even with newly tuned skis, and we gave up around 1:30 on Sunday afternoon.  

Another view from the top, bluebird skies!  


Snowfields:


One of the lower trails that had fairly decent snowpacked powder (vs. ice):


Final notes about Sugarloaf:  We stayed at the Spillover Hotel in Stratton.  Accommodations were spartan, but it was clean and the staff was extremely friendly.  Since we were only there to sleep, that's all we cared about anyway.  They also accept dogs.  We ate at the White Wolf Inn (American), The Rack (BBQ), and the Shipyard Brewhaus for dinners.  All places were excellent, especially the Brewhaus.  I was surprised, expecting regular pub fare, but I got a really nicely done steak and  really flavorful lobster mac & cheese!  We stopped at the Looney Moose for breakfast before heading home yesterday morning, and that was wonderful as well.

Oh, and we took the long way home yesterday and decided to do a drive-by on Mt. Washington:

Thanks for the pics of MTW, it looks incredibly full of snow all of a sudden....

Maine doesn't look half bad either.

Mt. Washington looked like it had tons of snow on it!  I want to get out there and try to do Tuckerman's at some point.

Sugarloaf did not disappoint.  If you ever have a chance to go, it's worth it.  There is a huge side-country region that we didn't get to explore this time around, too.  The staff was super-friendly and professional, and all the locals we talked to were very helpful, as well.  Plus the region is really pretty!!

Great report snowmonkey, smile in the first pic says it all!

Definately hit tuckerman!