Telesnowmonkey
Active member
- Joined
- Nov 21, 2020
"Remember that time we went spring skiing in early March?" BadDNA captioned his photos of Attitash yesterday on Facebook. That pretty much sums up the conditions: sheets of hard packed ice beginning to soften up underneath a nice layer of corn snow, thin in spots, warm, and sunny!
We began by taking the Flying Yankee Quad to mid-mountain for our first warm up run. Our plan was to take the middle highway which meandered and wound it's way down the mountain. We came around our first corner into a heavily shaded spot and were greeted by a sheet of glare ice that we cautiously skated our way across. I ski-skated up to BadDNA and said, "well that kinda sucked. I hope we don't have more of this to look forward to." We looked across the way and saw that our planned route was closed, leaving us with "Moat," which looked to be a steeper, more advanced intermediate trail to make our way back down. The trail was hard frozen groomer base with a thin layer of corn on top of it, which wasn't making it look too inviting.
Meanwhile a group of three younger teenagers skied down from the trail above Moat and stopped at the headwall. One was a girl who seemed fairly new to skiing and was pretty unstable on her skis, and her friends were trying to coax her down the trail. Another woman had skied down the trail and was standing next to me watching the group, and I looked at her and said, "That poor kid looks about the same way I feel right now." She just chuckled and said take it slow and easy! I don't think she was with the group of teenagers, but after the girl wiped out a few times and was obviously having a crisis of confidence, she skied down to them and helped coach the girl down the remainder of the trail by showing her how to do easy stem christie turns. I thought that was very kind, as I've been stuck in similar situations in that past and have had a complete stranger help me finish skiing down a trail I had no business being on.
After we finished our run, BadDNA and I decided to head over to the western side of the mountain, which looked like it was more sun exposed and wouldn't be as icy. We headed over to the East Double Couple Chair and took several runs down Thad's Choice and then Spillway. The conditions were as expected, soft and corny, getting thin in spots. By about noon or so, it seemed most people had headed inside for lunch and had decided it was beer-thirty. The chairlifts and slopes emptied, but the deck was full and there was a decent band belting out rock songs from the 80s.
BadDNA and I headed up the Summit Triple. One interesting thing about this chair is that it crosses over the Flying Yankee Quad. It's pretty cool to look down and see the other chair moving up the slopes as you're heading up. If you want to be evil/a prankster, your call, it's also a good opportunity to knock your skis together and send a pile of soft corny snow splatting down on another skier's head. We stopped and got some nice pics from the summit:
The view looking north toward the Presidential Range
BadDNA and looking down toward Upper Saco
Looking down Humphrey's Ledges, which was closed
Looking down Upper Saco again
We took Upper Saco, to Lower Saco, to Chicken's Option, to Ammonoosuc, to Lower Cathedral back to the base. What a fantastic trail! Upper Saco and Lower Saco had these short, steep headwalls with flat runways, I'll call them, after them so you could stop and regather yourself. The views of the surrounding mountains were amazing. As it was getting toward later afternoon, the snow was beginning to set up and things were getting firm, so we decided to call it a day. Though we barely scratched the surface in trails, this seems like a great mountain with a lot of varied, steep terrain, with fun, windy trails. This is definitely one we'll return to next year, hopefully when there's more snow and more open terrain.
We began by taking the Flying Yankee Quad to mid-mountain for our first warm up run. Our plan was to take the middle highway which meandered and wound it's way down the mountain. We came around our first corner into a heavily shaded spot and were greeted by a sheet of glare ice that we cautiously skated our way across. I ski-skated up to BadDNA and said, "well that kinda sucked. I hope we don't have more of this to look forward to." We looked across the way and saw that our planned route was closed, leaving us with "Moat," which looked to be a steeper, more advanced intermediate trail to make our way back down. The trail was hard frozen groomer base with a thin layer of corn on top of it, which wasn't making it look too inviting.
Meanwhile a group of three younger teenagers skied down from the trail above Moat and stopped at the headwall. One was a girl who seemed fairly new to skiing and was pretty unstable on her skis, and her friends were trying to coax her down the trail. Another woman had skied down the trail and was standing next to me watching the group, and I looked at her and said, "That poor kid looks about the same way I feel right now." She just chuckled and said take it slow and easy! I don't think she was with the group of teenagers, but after the girl wiped out a few times and was obviously having a crisis of confidence, she skied down to them and helped coach the girl down the remainder of the trail by showing her how to do easy stem christie turns. I thought that was very kind, as I've been stuck in similar situations in that past and have had a complete stranger help me finish skiing down a trail I had no business being on.
After we finished our run, BadDNA and I decided to head over to the western side of the mountain, which looked like it was more sun exposed and wouldn't be as icy. We headed over to the East Double Couple Chair and took several runs down Thad's Choice and then Spillway. The conditions were as expected, soft and corny, getting thin in spots. By about noon or so, it seemed most people had headed inside for lunch and had decided it was beer-thirty. The chairlifts and slopes emptied, but the deck was full and there was a decent band belting out rock songs from the 80s.
BadDNA and I headed up the Summit Triple. One interesting thing about this chair is that it crosses over the Flying Yankee Quad. It's pretty cool to look down and see the other chair moving up the slopes as you're heading up. If you want to be evil/a prankster, your call, it's also a good opportunity to knock your skis together and send a pile of soft corny snow splatting down on another skier's head. We stopped and got some nice pics from the summit:
The view looking north toward the Presidential Range
BadDNA and looking down toward Upper Saco
Looking down Humphrey's Ledges, which was closed
Looking down Upper Saco again
We took Upper Saco, to Lower Saco, to Chicken's Option, to Ammonoosuc, to Lower Cathedral back to the base. What a fantastic trail! Upper Saco and Lower Saco had these short, steep headwalls with flat runways, I'll call them, after them so you could stop and regather yourself. The views of the surrounding mountains were amazing. As it was getting toward later afternoon, the snow was beginning to set up and things were getting firm, so we decided to call it a day. Though we barely scratched the surface in trails, this seems like a great mountain with a lot of varied, steep terrain, with fun, windy trails. This is definitely one we'll return to next year, hopefully when there's more snow and more open terrain.
