Category Archives: Alpine Skiing

A Cog-side Jaunt

With the grandest of plans in the makings for Sunday, Kelly, Shane, Ben and I decided to take a leisurely stroll up the Cog in search of soft snow outside of avalanche terrain on Saturday. We surmised that the light East winds and recent snowfall would have loaded up the Cog pleasantly, so we went to investigate. What we found was a decent amount of skier and snowshoer traffic, a bit less snow than we’d hoped for, and a bit more fog than would have been ideal for route finding above treeline…

All nitpicking aside, it turned out to be a decent tour. After an 11 o’clock start, we pushed past treeline around 1PM. We ate and drank, and considered our options: climb into the fog in search of snowfields or just ski the Cog. With poor visibility and a late start, we opted to just enjoy the Cog rather than shamble around the summit cone in search of the elusive pow. After a brief schralp through some wind affected crusts above treeline, we cruised a tracked, but soft Cog and enjoyed just about every minute of it!

Gear prep…

Gear failure…

Ready for action!

Low vis.

The good part…

…To Those Who Wait: Highlight Reel

Part 2 of Nemo at Wildcat! Due to limited goPro juice, the footage only shows the first few hours of the day, although the best snow at the resort was in the morning. As usual, some great turns never made it on film, but I was psyched just to have a reason to use my new toy.

We’ve got a mash-up for you from Brian and I’s perspectives, check it out:

…To Those Who Wait

While many New Englanders hunkered down and prepared for the worst, there were those among us who geared up and prepared for the best…

…well at least the best we’ve had in a while. All the hype surrounding Nemo gave us hope that at least the resort skiing scene would get back on track, and in many ways it did. The storm tracked further south than would have been preferred by some skiers, but pockets of the North received a healthy dose of our favorite natural resource. Determined not to miss a single ounce of the precious stuff, and not to be marooned in the soon to be paralyzed Boston, we hit the road at the crack of dawn Friday morning.

The Clipper components of the storm arrived over Northern VT early on Friday, delivering a good refresher dose to the ailing snowpack. We skied Jay for the day and then followed the weather southeast toward the center of the storm. For the arrival of the Nor’easter we wagered that Wildcat would have the best ratio of slope-angle to snow. We hit the jackpot and were greeted by upwards of two feet of dense snow which filled in all but the largest nooks and crannies in the Northern Whites. For day one, we hit the slopes armed with insulating layers and GoPros. Stay tuned for some highlights! Day two brought a spectacular blue-bird day with temps mercifully approaching the 20s and almost no wind. We decided to take advantage of the great conditions and pull out the point-and-shoots, just so we’d have evidence of the shredding that was perpetrated once winter finally returned…

Thusly rejuvenated, we returned to Boston to get back to work so we’d be ready for the next time Old Man Winter decided to come out of hiding.

Fighting for Scraps

Last weekend was right on the heels of the serious warm-up which occurred throughout the Northeast, and Sweeney and I were itching to do some touring. Despite the previously warm weather and sudden cold snap, the Avy danger was considerable on Saturday due to unexpectedly high winds and snowfall, which didn’t leave many safe options open. We decided to take what we could get, without getting ourselves in trouble.

Skinning up the Gulf of Slides Trail

Even so we had some fun touring in the woods, avoiding avalanche terrain and any slide paths. We took Kelly and Ben along with us as well, for their first East coast tour, and skied down the Sherbie which was nice and soft.

Incredible morning lighting framed the terrain on our way up to Jay.

Next the day we set our sights on Jay as we’d read they received a fair bit of snow over the weekend. As we parked a steep weather front greeted us, suddenly obscuring the mountain and bringing on huge wind gusts. Sweeney and I hit some woods near the Orchard where he kindly pointed out a cool feature and snapped some pics.