whiteface prez weekend

after getting skunked late season last year, my son and i decided to take advantage of the decent current conditions and the weekend off of his hockey schedule to do our annual whiteface trip. we headed out after school friday to fight the nj/nyc traffic up the thruway for 6+ hrs to get to my cousins farm in black brook around 9:30.

on the gondi by just before 9 saturday morning for what was certainly one of our best days so far at the face. soft gun pow bumps with a dusting of fresh overnight was the course of the day. started with a little appy on wilderness and lowere mac - we couldn't beleive we were the only ones on the trail! moved on up to the summit and lapped skyward a few times. snowmakers were cranking as seen in the obligatory summit shot


then off to lookout mountain. ran hoyts - super fun trail with twisty pitches, and some fun hoot-worthy big low angle bumps skiers left approaching the chair at the bottom. lookout below hadn't been open on our previous trips so we had to go for it. the snowmaking wales made for some challenging drops but really constricted the flow, once was enough.


snow was great on wilmington so did that again before heading to the base for lunch


kid is really making me start to feel old  - just can't keep his pace


temps were perfect, low/mid 20's and sun - no wind. after after lunch on the bar deck we just lapped sky blasting some guns 'n hoses, alternating between lower sky and and vic. last run of the day from summit to base gave a sense of the awsomness of the mountain and was good for giving junior a poaching lesson, spotting him down the drop and waiting for him at the blazers exit.

skiing pow bumps 9-3:30 pretty much wasted my legs legs for sunday, tried talking the kid into doing a bc hike and ski from the adirondack loj but he wanted know part of it. back up the gondi 9:15 sunday morning. then right over to the summit to see if we could pick up where we left off on sky. groomed and blown off by the increasing wind we headed over to see if the lower section of hoyts had been groomed as rumoured. nothing doing and  from the chair the mogul troughs looked and sounded pretty scratchy as we watched some decent skiers struggle down. we passed on hoyts sunday for the great snow and protection from the wind on wilmington, smooth and edgeable.

we went back to the gondola for a few rides to warm up before they shut 'er down, last ride up was unnerving to say the least with a few stoppages. i guess most people went in for lunch at that point, th quad line was moving pretty well. ran a  nice run on parkway (again the only ones on the trail -wtf?), smooth edgable and freakin' fast, to get owned  by the kid on the skier cross course. ended the day with one more  wilmington cruiser before heading out around 1:30. we were pretty freakin cold by then (never saw a temp?) and junior has make up school days from sandy and had class today. our weekend got cut short but it doesn't like were missing a whole lot today. guess i'm gonna have to make another trip up to do the avalanche pass thing.

overall the snow was GREAT, maybe a slick spot here and there at heavy trail merges but easily avoidable for the most part. crowds on hill were avoidable or nonexisitant, lift lines were moving decently i think we had one long quad and 1 long gondaloa wait. damn good holiday weekend in my book - they even discounted tix $10 each instead of the full $35 gp dealio for the blackout day  

Nice job GGZ---hope we get the same next week---JR looks like he's turing into quite the ripper, of course skating will do that for a kid.

thanks , yea kid's killing it for sure! he's a junior instructor this year and doing 9 weeks of half day mogul clinics (they hope to establish a jr comp team) so he's spending a lot of time on the hill and it shows. he learned to spin 3's this year too so he's like a top off the small jumps and is working on progressing off the bigger stuff which is a little scary.

damn kids making me feel older than dirt

i'm sure you guys will have a blast!

Nice report! Sounds like you did all right for a holiday weekend.

I didn't even bother skiing this weekend. After 2 midweek powder days at Jay Peak, I just couldn't bring myself to any resort on a holiday weekend.