The Gore Mountain Blog

This is less of a TR and more of a realization. The great early season skiing, and especially New Years Day have changed my approach to lift service skiing. Not sure if approach is even the right word. Actually it started last year on Valentine’s Day after the first of four or five major storms that made Winter 06/07 one of the best ever. I was driving North after the storm and I decided that I was finally going to get something “fat.”

By phone, I spoke to Jan at The Mountaineer in Keene Valley – a great, professional shop. After 45 minutes on the phone I ordered a pair of K2 World Pistes with G3 bindings to be shipped UPS. These skis are only 80 mm underfoot, but coming from a cross country skiing background — to me — they were fat. Probably more important…these were the first skis I’ve had with significant sidecut.

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I’m having a hard time with this post. When you ski 9 days straight, it’s tough to remember exactly what happened. This much I reasonably sure of:

Thurs 12/27 pm: Arrived to find ankle high snow on the path, fallen since our last visit. We heated our building, made some dinner, watched some Elmo, hit the sack. It snowed 4″ that night.

Friday 12/28: There was talk of a mix, but when I walked through it in the AM, it was fluffy. The whole mountain skied very nicely. I think 2 or 3 glades were open, The Cave, Pinebrook, I forget. Surfaces were soft almost everywhere. 50/50 maybe locals and flatlanders. That night the call was for a mix after midnight.

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