Sorry, a little late.

I made it to Snowshoe early on Wednesday morning for some skiing. It was VERY last minute. The forecast around 8PM the evening before showed nothing but rain. I checked again around 10PM and it was 100% chance of blue skies. Kind of weird, but I decided to jump on the opportunity.

It was around 28 degrees when I got there and the first several runs were very much hardpack and very loud. After the sun got a chance to work its magic all was well. There was REAL corn all over the place. It made for some of the funnest skiing of the year. I thought of it as hero snow because I felt like I couldn't make a bad turn. Very sweet.

I started out skiing off of the Grabhammer and Powdermonkey lifts. Once they opened Ballhooter I ventured over to the Widowmaker lift. By that time everything was nice and soft. Camp 99 skied great (probably the best groomer of the day), Widowmaker skied even better (for a while). They had let pretty much the entire slope bump up over the past weeks and the troughs had some "fresh" snow from the night before. The first run skied great with nicely spaced bumps (for this not so skilled bump skier) that made for very nice/forgiving turns. After spending about 30 mins over there they "fresh" snow was more like cream cheese (I stole that one from Denis) and was more work than I cared for. I spent at least another hour over skiing off of Ballhooter, still finding some fresh corduroy.

It was then that I was moving at a pretty good speed and hit some snow that was more like glue. I was dangerously close to being thrown over the handlebars, which would NOT have been good. I kept my speed down with small turns for the next few runs but still continued to hit those unfriendly patches that would grab my skis out from under me. At that point I decided I was skiing to apprehensive and my legs were pretty much jello anyway. I called it a day. I did 18 runs in just over 3 hours. Not a bad day's work.

Here's a few:

Plenty of snowpack



Riding Ballhooter, checking out the next run



See the X at the bottom left of the shot? Those are both my tracks (that's how few people were there)



Bumps on Widowmaker



Playing with a pretty sweet iPhone App



Oh yeah, I made Snowshoe's Facebook as well. I'm famous!!

It's their March 24 Vid upload
Around 0:45 mark

Looks like a great day, wish I made it! I have hopes for a day trip to SS next week if the weather/snow holds out.

What is that iPhone app? Looks useful.

Theodolite.

It's a pretty sweet App, although it does tons more than I'll ever be able use or even understand. And it was written by a fellow DCSkier!

Nice, thanks for the pics. What would you say is the chance the snow will hold out until Thur/Fri of this week?

I'd say both days will be pretty sweet. I'd be there if I could.

I'm hoping the crowds will be low, especially since it looks like they shut down Eagle Express and Powder Ridge lifts for the season. I'm taking my daughter who had her first lesson this year, I figure it'd be good to get her out there one last time, especially if the weather is somewhat nice. A good time for a 6 year old to hit the slopes!