Tag Archives: Jay Peak

Jay Powder Day!

At long last Ullr has smiled upon us and our prayers have been answered in the form of a bout a foot of snow across Northern New England! Anticipating this long overdue dose of snow, Rob, Ziehl and I cranked out a week of work in less than days, loaded up the car and hit the road bound for Jackson NH, where we crashed at the Denaro residence. Armed with a fire-hazardous quantity of coupons and discounts, we set our alarms for 7:30 AM.

We rolled up to Wildcat and were pleasantly surprised to see that the weather was fair, and the place was empty. They’d gotten 8-10 inches of fresh with a bit of a rain crust. It was one of those days where it was technically debatable as to whether or not we were slaying pow or slaying gnar, but in any event we were finally slaying something.

We spun laps on the triple until we were good and sick of it, at which time we swung by Attitash to see how things were shaping up over there. In hindsight we should have stayed put, but it was worth a shot.

By around 3PM we concluded that we’d skied pretty much all that was worth skiing in this neck of the woods, so we loaded up the car and headed off to Lincoln, NH to rally with Alex, Denaro, Shane and Hannah. We crossed the Kanc just as the weather shifted into high gear, without incident thanks to Rob’s new Nokian snows. We feasted like kings at the Woodstock Brewery, showered at Alex’s condo, and then rolled up our sleeves for some serious logistics. Coordination would be paramount if we were to make it from Lincoln to Jay in time for first chair the day after a blizzard. We unloaded the car, paired down our gear to the bare minimum, repacked the car with every we’d need for the following day minus whatever we planned to wear that day, drank some beer, set our alarms for 5:15 AM and hit the sack.

Almost immediately after we’d hit the sack our missing companions, Shane, Hannah, Alex and Denaro showed up and woke everyone up… We exchanged salutations of dubious sincerity and went straight back to bed. Miraculously we were all on the road by 6:05AM the following morning. The waking up and driving into a blizzard in the wee hours of the morning in 0 degree weather wasn’t so great, but the skiing was. We managed to get first chair and found fresh tracks on several occasions during the day. Check it out:

The astute listener may have noticed my incessant griping regarding the cold starting shortly after the first run. Well the wind chill was -40F, and around 1 PM I succumbed to my better judgment and went in to thaw. Upon yanking my boots and socks off, I discovered a couple of pearly-white big toes with severely limited sensation – OK no sensation at all… About 5 minutes later they turned a nice, angry, shade of black, at which time I nearly dumped my beer and snacks all over the floor in horror. Unfortunately there is little that you can do aside from keeping them warm and dry, and hope for the best, so I wrapped my feet in a blanket, passed out and dreamed of sweet powder turns while the rest of the crowd took their last few runs and collected my hiking boots so that I could hobble back to the car later.

To my surprise and relief, by the time Ziehl and Alex came by with my hiking boots, both of my afflicted big toes had begun a fairly remarkable recovery transitioning from a frightening black to the mundane black and blue characteristic of a simple bruise. By the following morning they had recovered nearly to the point where I could walk normally. There’s almost certainly some amount of permanent damage, but no where nearly as bad as I’d originally feared. Seems like a may have dodged a bullet this time… Hell, I might even be ready to ski again next weekend, as long as it’s not going to be 40 below zero again!

Gear List (click links for more product info):

Jay Peak Sidecountry

Another long overdue post from February 12th. This time we returned to the mecca of east coast powder skiing and tree skiing: Jay Peak. As usual the best skiing was in the woods and out of bounds. The two main areas of interest were the woods to skier’s left of Beaver Pond and the woods to skier’s right of Timbuktu. What was wrong with the woods actually inside of the ski area you might ask? Nothing. Except that they don’t have as much fresh pow 🙂 Here’s an overview of the area:

View Jay Sidecountry in a larger map

Me getting fired up for
the descent.

Our first foray our of bounds for the day was off to skier’s right of Timbuktu. The nice part about this, is that contrary to what you might expect about skiing out of bounds, you can’t really screw this up. In the worst case you just wind up on the road and hike/skin/ski back. If it’s a snow storm, beware of highway trucks – we nearly got clobbered by one and had to jump out of the way quickly. But the slog back to Jay was otherwise uneventful. Highlights of this area are: lots of untracked pow and a few cool drops. Their precise locations are unknown to me, unfortunately.

Rob surveys our
newly found line.

Some time in the afternoon we headed over to look for more sidecountry accessed via the Long Trail. Our info indicated that you should enter the woods over by the Beaver Pond, find the Long Trail and follow it as far as North Jay. Any time between North Jay and entering the woods is candidate for powdery woods. We ended up wasting all sorts of time trying to find the long trail, which was buried in snow making it pretty hard to find. Finally we just decided to go North which was the general direction of the LT. The route we found was nice, but it wasn’t as long or as steep as we’d hoped. On the upside there was no shortage of untracked. In hindsight we should have done one of two things differently. There was a steep knoll just south of where we dropped in which would probably have been more fun, if not the same length. If we had had the time, the best option would have been to head all the way up North Jay and find something off of there. It would certainly have been longer and the topo seems to indicate several routes of decent pitch. Eventually all of these runs mellow out and you have to skin or hike back to the ski area. There is a network of x-country trails which we found helpful in filtrating.

Bottom line: anyone who says there’s no powder skiing on the east coast ain’t lookin’ hard enough.

A glimpse of the bottomless pow.

Gear List:

Head Monsters, Marker Dukes, Mad River Glen, Jay Peak and La Niña…

…Are all my new favorite things.

Northern Vermont got blasted with snow last week and over the weekend. Mad River Glen and Jay were both 100% open so we packed the car and headed north. MRG had been mostly closed during the week, so we figured we’d hit MRG on Saturday for some fresh tracks, and then migrate up to Jay on Sunday to take advantage of the overnight snowfall they were expecting.

I’d never been to MRG before, but I’d heard the stories: they have a single (chair lift), don’t do much in the way of snow-making or grooming, and they still don’t allow boarders. Additionally, from a brief chat with a patroller, Rob discovered that ropes and closed signs at MRG are kind of like stop signs in Italy: more of a friendly suggestion. This all made for some exceptional tree skiing: scratchy in places, but mostly knee deep powder with deeper drifts. The woods there are both tight and steep. We spun around 8 laps in the woods before we ran out of gas around 2 pm.

Jay got nearly a foot over Saturday night, and fortunately for us (but not so fortunately for every behind us) we managed to get the first chair up. We were among the first people to hit the woods to far skiers left (Beaver Pond and Andre’s). Again, there were a few bares spots, but mostly it was knee deep powder, with thigh deep drifts no uncommon. It snowed all day, and we continued to find fresh tracks until our last run of the day, just past 3. Behold:

Be envious!

Plenty of snow left by the afternoon…

Of course, in order to best enjoy these epic January conditions, a sweet pair of powder boards are necessary. Thanks to Quiver Killers, I was able to pull my Dukes off of my BD Havocs and plop them onto my Head Monsters with relative ease the night before. At 193 cm long and 95 mm under foot, the Monsters are, well just that: monsters. When I first pulled them out of the box like two years I began question my judgment in buying such a pair of skis on the East Coast. And then they sat in the corner of my room while I decided what to do with them. The excellent snow conditions over the weekend prompted me to pull ’em out and take ’em for a spin. It took me a run or two to figure out how to handle them in the woods, however due to a variety of factors, I found them to handle nearly as well as a significantly smaller ski. The Monsters are exceptionally light, even for their size (in fact they are the lightest of all of my skis). Coupled with the snub-nosed form factor of the Dukes, the whole setup keeps a very low moment of inertia. I found that this really lets me throw them around quickly. The Dukes are mounted well aft of center which allows me to pivot on my heels quickly and easily, and the added length up front lets you keep an aggressive forward stance. All in all, they could hardly have worked out better. I can’t wait to take these beasts out west…

The Vermont sunset on the way home from Jay.