Jim Schley

November 28, 2009 – Mad River Glen, originally uploaded by jimschley.

Winter is off to a very slow start with lack of white stuff and unusually warms temps that have prevented the resorts from making any of it, but weather changed for the better on Friday. Lots of rain and wind fell in the valley, but the mountain saw snow, and the higher the elevation, the more snow that fell. As we were absolutely itching to get out and slide around on the snow, we decided we needed to head up the mountain and check it out. We headed over to Mad River Glen, and the conditions at the base didn’t look promising, with only about an inch or two of snow on the ground, but we were confident it’d be worth the effort to climb up. As we skinned, the snow got deeper and deeper as we got higher. The wind was blowing pretty hard, but the skies did clear up and the sun came out as we got into the afternoon. By mid-mountain, we found well over a foot of dense, heavy, wind-blown snow. It would be hard to estimate how much piled up in total because the winds were blowing so hard that there was a lot of drifting. There were several spots where I buried my pole several feet deep. The downhill was fun. The snow was wind-buffed and required aggressive turns, but it was dense so there really wasn’t much concern about depth. It was really fun to get out for the first time this season. Woo hoo!