Skied Thursday at Canaan Valley (separate thread), all day Friday, Saturday until 1 PM at Timberline.

The Valley has recovered very well from the warm-up and bit of rain over New Year's weekend. Trail base is excellent, tree base is very close to peak season.

Surface: excellent packed powder base and some remnants of pow stashes (or at least cut-up) here and there. White Lightning was groomed to perfection (and I mean perfection) Saturday AM.

Crowds: There is a reason I didn't ski Saturday PM and today (Sunday.) (I also have pager coverage for work.) Still, over-all holiday traffic looks to be a bit down from years past; people may have spread out their ski trips with the excellent early season conditions. Could ski directly onto the Silver Queen lift until about 10 or so, lines grew quickly after that. By 10:30, there was a consistent 5 or so deep for the singles line. Lift stoppages became frequent. The lower lift looked to be much worse and had longish lines (by T-Line standards) by 9 AM.

Still, the slopes were pretty much empty (and hence safe.) And I do mean empty, including White Lightning. During the peakish crowds I experienced, most of the people were either in the lift line or riding the chairlifts up. The lines and ride up may suck, but you do enjoy the trip down. I can't say that about many local areas during MLK weekend.

Whales/ta-ta's down the center of The Drop. Not as big at the bottom as in years past. They need to be spaced further apart for a better ride.

So faaaaaar, they haven't groomed OTW. By Saturday noon, some decent bumps were developing. However where the snow was scraped off, the nasty permafrost/compressed snowmaking layer was exposed. Some great snow, some bad snow. Until it warms, sliders will not penetrate that base layer. (As predicted.)

A scraped bare section or two was appearing on Upper Thunderdraft (natural snow trail only.) This is expected, but the trail skied very well on Friday.

Blue/single black trees have great cover, though you always find the occasional large obstacle (rock or stump) in Glade Runner. Cherry Bowl has pretty solid cover, though it is boney at the various cruxes (entrance, mid-level and exit.) The veterans know where they are. If you bushwack off the main lines, you'll hit stuff (rocks, stumps, logs, etc.) Still, even Friday PM (two days after the storm), there was plenty of boot-top plus pow or cut-up in there.

I didn't try Old Dominion since some Ski Patrollers said it had worse cover than Cherry Bowl (which is normally the case.) I'll bet the bottom was pretty sketchy on OD. OD normally has worse cover than Cherry Bowl.

The tree area TGV is nursing around Thunderdraft (if Jimmy took me to the right place) has excellent cover, and is fairly challenging since it is at a steeper section of the mountain. It is an obvious area since it is next to the lift. Looks like it gets blow-in from snowmaking on WL.

Still was able to hit fresh lines on Friday PM on Upper and Lower Spinal Tap. Some brief bushwacking and line knowledge required on that one. Beware, some serious rocks at the bottom in the drainage areas.

With the exception of last year, I recommend against taking 1-2 year old skis into the big boy trees at T-Line. Unless you ski the only the main lines, but they can get skied off quickly.

One more ski gear point. You really do need ski wide skis if you ski the Big Boy trees at Timberline. I know the Snowtime guys won't believe that one.

My fairly stiff 76 mm Elan 666s get really exposed (and so does my technique) once the main lines get cut-up or if I start hitting the really tight spaces to get the freshies. With deep uncut pow (as in last year), I could ski pretty much ski any line (and did) in the Big Boys on the 666's. Obviously, last year was an exception. A softer, wider ski really helps when busting the cut-up or when gorilla-ing tight turns at low speed. Also, twin tips are useful when backing up to hit a new line. My trusty old Pocket Rockets (90 mm underfoot) are a good tool. Only disadvantage is that the bases are pretty much removed, so there is not much base layer until you hit the core.

There are lines in the Big Boys to challenge any ability level.

SCWVA is pretty much skiing the same ski as the PR's.

Wider, less stiff skis will also suffer less base damage when you hit obstacles.

As posted earlier, I personally wouldn't take 1-2 year old skis into the Big Boys.

As-far-as Snowshoe: the economy, demise of real estate there, LIFT PRICES, poor service, loss of voluntees, all spell a huge decline in the industry (or maybe just SS?). But, if you can afford it - so far, smallest crowds I've seen there in decades! Ski it while they are still in business. Tip: never book "closing weekend" as they are known to abruptly shut down operations at any time due to lack of business!

I closed my eyes, took one photo of the crowd / lift / White Ligthning (both Sat & Sun) and you can see for yourself on www.visitcanaan.com that the slopes are... well... empty!

thursday

http://www.vimeo.com/18846815

Nice!

It's amazing how long a T-Line run can be if you milk some trees; your legs must have been tired at the bottom. Thanks for not giving away any non-obvious entrances on camera. Also, thanks for not filming the lift ride up; it would have been a feature-length film.

Couple of questions.
1) Chest mount camera?
2) Were you skiing free heel or lock heel? Looked locked, but with a name like ScottyB, I figure you're a tele guy.

Scott's going to be mad, but I've got a few pics from yesterday at Timberline. Plenty of good skiing and a great day to get my father back out on the slopes after an over 15 year break.

You have to be careful following Scott around in the woods. Be sure to keep your distance or you'll end up in one of these


You'll still have a smile on your face though!


You'll just need to wash your ski gear when you get home

...mud chicken...and it ain't even spring yet...

Hose him down before he gets back on the lift!

Cut through from the bottom of OTW to the Sally runout?

Those arte some of my favorite lines. You got a good day to hit them. At the beginning where you got hung up is where I got hung up when going with John L and Jimmy. That turn is VEEERRRRYYYY tight.

Thanks for posting the pictures David! You can't be trusted.

There's more to the story than the pictures portray, but who's cares about the details.

And yes Tucker, I went straight to the Ski Patrol shack to report the first Mud Chicken sighting of 2011. But the only person there I could report the incident to was jimmy.

Somebody turned left when they shouldn't have!

You mean the "other" left?

Ya so I'm looking around to see the first mud chicken, where is it and where on earth did they find a mudhole on this hill today?Scott says "it's me " . Good thing you had another coat.