Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. No snow had been made; too warm. It was classically bad, an inch of icy crust over grass. Each blade of grass that stuck up was surrounded by a 1/4 inch thick straw of clear crystalline ice. It totally railed the skis unless they were jump turned a foot or so off the surface. My grandkids at ~ 40, 60, and 100 lbs. can do that all day. They tore it up, hucking themselves off rocks, water bars, and the plywood exit ramp at the top, which ended a couple feet above the ground. At one point my daughter just looked at me and laughed saying, "They are sooo happy." I made a few turns and then decided that my knee didn't need a re-injury. Watching the boys made for one of my best ski days ever. 2 other skiers, lots of hikers.

Denis,

Nice report as always. With the exception of Mid/Northern VT (and NH/ME?), tough Thanksgiving in the Northeast.

Quick question: did your Mom and Dad ski? Wondering during what generation the ski bug hit your family. My parents were somewhat healthy, but I caught the flu.

Your Grandkids have hit the skiing lottery.

John,

Thanks for the kind words. If I can't be skiing I like to tell about it. My parents did not ski but being in the Boston area I got skis for Christmas one year at ~ age 7. They were solid wood with no edges and no binding, just a hole sideways through the wood for a raw hide strap. Since you couldn't really twist them the trick was to line them up straight before stepping in and pushing off. If not it was the splits, or crossed tips. If you got it right, just a ride to the bottom until you ran out of hill. Most kids reacted like this Schulz cartoon taken from Chip's page, http://www.whitegrass.com/Nov2011/IMGP5647.jpg and put their skis in the basement to collect dust forever after. I was one of the stupid ones who thought it was fun despite its limitations. At ~ 12 I got an adult pair of skis, Sears J.C. Higgins brand with bear trap bindings. At that age I was about 4' 8" and perhaps 70 lbs. The skis were 6' 7 1/2" (pre-metric measurement), which shows my age, and still had no edges and were made of solid wood with no laminations. A couple of friends and I would shoulder our skis and hike to the golf course after school to herringbone up hills and ski down. This was aided greatly by a couple of big snow years in the early - mid 1950s. In HS we went on youth group trips to NH and I skied real mtns. on those things, on ice (this was before snowmaking and grooming). Those skis went about as fast sideways as pointing straight down the hill. You learned to look for where it didn't shine and subtly direct your travel to such a spot and turn or stop on the soft snow. Beyond this point, the story could get long but those were the formative events.