Pulled into the guard station at work this AM and wished I had checked my cell phone before I left the house. The Suitland Federal Center had closed earlier in the day due to broken water main. I was wondering why the parking lot was so empty. Doh! Memo to self...

What to do when you've got an afternoon to kill? Whitetail 4 hour flex ticket (nearly 4.5 if you boot up before buying the ticket.) To add to my day's growing adventure, it took over 30 minutes to get past the daytime construction gridlock near Tysons, and when I finaaaallly pulled into the ski area parking lot after 1 PM, I noticed that Whitetail wasn't exactly mid-week deserted. In fact, the parking lot was pretty durn full. Schools are out? Yep, turns out both Montgomery and Howard County schools had some sort of teacher service day. Fortunately, lift lines weren't bad at all (especially on the Expert Chair) and the main issue was more frequent lift stoppages than normal.

Temps probably maxed out in the upper 20's, so the snow surface was *ahem* fast and slick in some spots. Us Valley Boys have gotten real spoiled by the snow conditions of the past two years. Maybe even getting a little soft. Still, there were turns to be made and plenty of vertical to be had by riding on actual lifts.

It looks like winter and the snow makers have been treating Whitetail well. The base on Limelight (blue under the High Speed Quad) was the most I've seen. (IIRC, I haven't been to Whitetail in a couple of years.)

Avoiding the rugrats, I spent about 4 hours at the Expert Chair. Bold Decision had the best snow. By just about any standards, it is a very nice trail. The flatter - headwall -flat transition is good practice for working on speed control and good practice for having fun. On skiers left, there were several bizarre-o snow features. Huh? They were more like enhanced water bars than whales. A couple were fun for launching some air (especially one pretty good sized drop near the top), but several were just useless wastes of snow, if not even dangerous. Plant a tip into one of those suckers and you're getting a free ride to the hospital.

Exhibition was bumped up with surprisingly good lines. (I rarely say that about that trail.) But since it remained below freezing, many of the troughs were heineously firm. They glistened. There was some decent snow in less-traveled lines and out of the troughs. Line choice was key, but you had to be creative. It was not a day for zipper lining the troughs. Didn't see anyone on the mountain even attempting that; plus there are some pretty decent bumpers at Whitetail.

Still the challenge of Exhibition was worth it. I hit some decent lines until "my last run." It's always the "last run." Hard landing on that surface. Head first yard sale, losing hat, goggles, but kept my skis on. However, one of my poles was a casualty. (My poles have been bent and straightened out so many times, they look like the curved poles of a downhill racer.) The bottom of the pole was nearly at a 90 degree angle to the rest of the pole, plus I put a good sized dent in the shaft. Not much more life left in them, but it was a good run.

Overall, not a bad day considering I did show up at the office in the AM.

Thanks for taking the time to write that up. Might get out there sometime soon. There are a surprising number of those unexpected school service days. When I was a kid they never let us out of school unless...

I had a similar experience at Wintergreen on Friday AM - surface was fast and slick and my first thought was, "OK, bit of a shock to the system after the Valley last week". Still, like you said plenty of vert to be had and it is nice to experience all the snow surfaces that the Mid-A/East Coast has to offer...

I'm jealous that your local hill actually has a bump run. Here I'll step in with my annual observation/complaint that Wintergreen usually is not terribly aggressive about letting bumps form. Last year was an exception, with all the natural snow, but it is usually pretty late in the season (if at all) before there are any moguls...I asked a patroller about this once and he said that more natural snow is needed to let bumps form on a consistent basis, but I wouldn't think that Whitetail gets much more natural than Wintergreen, does it? Maybe we are more subject to thaw/refreeze cycles down here and that has something to do with it...


Sorry to hear that - at least it was the last run so that you didn't have to waste precious time getting a pole from rentals.

Bill,

There was maybe a few inches of snow in the trees, so Whitetail does it all with man-made, including the bump runs. Trust me, I seriously doubt any area in the Mid Atlantic has a worse freeze-thaw cycle than Whitetail. With it's orientation, the slopes get a lot of sun. Generally the bumps soften up during the day (sometimes even get mushy) but get pretty hard at night. Since it was a colder than normal day, the bumps were firm all day.

I give Whitetail's ops credit; they have a nice commitment to moguls and terrain parks. In addition to the bumps on Exhibition, they have a short section of starter bumps at the top of one of the blues. Some of those "starter bumps" get to be pretty big, but it is a short stretch of them so a newbie would not be getting in too much over their head. Also, Whitetail now grooms a narrow section (far skier's left) of Exhibition as a bail-out lane.

I think WTG is just making excuses.

My ski pole is still usable (skied some groomers after the fall), but it is liable to break in half at any point. I have an unused back-up set (actually better), but I may need to cut them down just a bit. It was going to be my "last bump run" of the day before dialing it way back, and that turned out to be true.

When are we going to see some helmetcam footage? You're slacking!! Bring that thing to the Valley this weekend. I'll be skiing with the wife mostly on Saturday, but I'll be on my own on Sunday. You know you want to film me!

Like JohnL said, this is crap, Whitetail is 2000 feet lower than WTG and faces SSE.

I was there a few years ago and the side of Wild Turkey was bumped up and that was not a great snow year. Are they not allowing this to regularly bump up now?

I also applaud Snowtime for the "school bumps" on the easier runs and the bailouts. I know there is a desire to protect the masses from injury, but on the other hand, people need to learn somewhere and preferably not on the hardest slope at the resort.

Years ago my daughter did her first bump run on Lower Eastwind at Liberty. She was struggling a little as I watched from the top before dropping down and two skiers pulled up and said--"not a good place for that little girl to be." I held my tongue as I thought where else is she supposed to learn, this is the only blue mogul run in 300 miles.

As of Friday, Jan 21 Upper Wild Turkey was still groomed flat.

There are usually bumps on Upper Wild Turkey by the end of the year, but I seem to recall there being years when they never really let them form. Maybe this was the case the season before last? Other WTG'ers can correct me if I am wrong. At any rate, there are no bumps now.

Don't get to Wintergreen so often anymore. Many years ago they used to have bumps on Upper Cliffhanger. This report from Feb '06 shows one half of Wild Turkey bumped-up: http://www.dcski.com/articles/view_article.php?article_id=892&mode=headlines

change "is needed to" to "is needed before we" and it makes perfect sense

Whitetail also has practice bumps at the top of Snow Park(a green trail). Props to management for sticking with this concept. There was a lot of carnage when we first started doing this. The practice bumps on Snow Dancer and Snow Park are made by a groomer. Initially they were discovered similar to the way a lot of people ignore a new traffic light. It's taken some experimentation to find the best spots to put these features and learn how to mark them.

Also note that Whitetail keeps one cat's width groomed on Exhibition (skier's left) to allow for bail outs and that the bumps on skier's right of Exhibition are slightly smaller due to less snow coverage/traffic. These aspects help to make the decision to try Exhibition less of a "commitment" than in years past.

Last time my son and I went there, he decided to snowboard on a little side "trail" that some folks had cut through the edges of the woods. I thought I saw him fall and when I stopped to check on him, he said it was all ice and he felt like he was on one of those car rides that make the turns for you and just sat down so he could stop before he caught an edge or hit a tree. The slopes were good that day but he is use to finding a little more powder in the trees. This was on the backside of the snowmaking equipment and was just a really white ice. The snow ennded about 5 feet into the trees.

I went to Whitetail last night and had a real good time. Huge crowd in parking lot and lodge when I got there around 5pm. Must have been very busy during the day. But no trouble quickly buying night ticket and only moderate line on HSQ of 1-2 minutes, it went to ski-on after about 8pm. No line on "experts" chair all night. Biggest lines were on the beginner chair (Easy Rider), but they weren't too bad either. I liked the new, longer, very easy trails they've added to skiers left and right off that chair. They help spread out the novices.

Very nice "night ski" weather with temps in upper 30s and no wind. Snow stayed fairly soft and you could avert scrapped hard pack areas. Exhibition skied really good. I took the line under the chairlift about 7 or 8 times. The bumps were smaller there and more widely spread, but nice and soft. There was about 8 inches of natural from Wednesday's storm in the area around the resort.

Bold Decision and Far Side had a sprinkling of bumps and loose snow, but also fairly scrapped in some areas. The run under the HSQ skied quite well. The terrain park is really impressive and had a lot of boarders going for big air.