Jay Peak doesn’t look like this right now, but that’s okay. There’s still skiing left, and other great activities on the horizon like climbing and surfing.
On my last day up there Rob and I took Brett over to Big Jay, this time for some touring as well.
Go get some spring skiing!
Soundtrack:
This past weekend Mother Nature continued to bless us with a moderate “refresher” snowfall. After lapping it up in the Jay inbounds, Kelly and I decided to mosey over to Little Jay in search of some untracked. With the internet yielding a surprising lack of trip reports concerning our objective, we really were just winging it. From asking around, we determined that we should park at the Big Jay parking lot, cross the street and follow a pretty obvious skin track up the mountain. Armed with this scant intel, we set off in search of pow.
The skin track was well traveled and easy going the entire way up. It brought us within about 50 vertical feet of the summit before dense foliage and steep, deep powder halted us. We took in the view for a bit before descending.
After a good look at the map and our surroundings, we realized that the only real way to screw up is to head too far toward skiers right, or W-SW off of the summit. Such a course would dump you in the wrong drainage, a bit of a hike from the parking area and through who knows what sort of bushwhack.
We decided to trend a bit toward skiers right for a short distance and then push back toward the left of East, toward the two streams which would certainly deliver us back to the parking area. In general I think this was the right idea, but we ended up too far into the stream bed which peters out into a bit of a mellow bushwhack. In hindsight the best skiing would probably have been to skier’s right or West of the the stream bed. The slopes in this region were tracked but plenty soft and getting free refills throughout the weekend.
Kelly, gettin’ deep!
It was one year to the day since I’d first skied Big Jay, and now we were back for more. On such an anniversary day, we couldn’t let the opportunity pass us by. In fact, it was the first day Rob and I met Jen, and we’d skied it together. Rob, Jen and I got to the top of the line early in the day, and figured we’d take our time getting down and snap some footage. I think our efforts paid off.
Some kind stranger snapped our photo, and didn’t snap up our line.
Someone told us it was all tracked. Lucky for us that wasn’t the case.
In fact, it was fresh and deep.
We switched off camera roles so we all had a chance to play.
One of my favorite things about leaving the resort is that it feels like you’ve suddenly been transported to a winter wonderland.
And when we were done we caught a ride back…
The Jay Cloud was in full effect and we hit the road good and early for first chair on Saturday morning. We scored first tracks on deliverance and found face-shots aplenty throughout the rest of the day. With a few inches of refresher, Sunday was in nearly as good condition as Saturday with well over a foot of fresh over the entire weekend following roughly four feet during the previous week. For day two we hit Big Jay, then made a slightly ill informed attempt at Gilpin, across the street from The Dip. The results…well see for yourself!
Photo Credit: Rob Fox
Photo Credit: Rob Fox
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