Jim
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2022
It looks like there's not yet a Bousquet thread, so here we go.
I made my first return since 2016 to this old favorite this afternoon, using an Indy Pass redemption.
It was a sunny day, but still windy and cold. All of the main trails were open and groomed to a nice packed powder/frozen granular. I skied pretty much everything twice, encountered only a few small patches of signature Bousquet hard pack (but the day was young, wait 'til school gets out and the kids start scraping down Easy Rider). The cover on the snowmaking trails is good and I expect they have a good amount of season left unless it gets really warm and wet. There's decent cover off the main trails but not skiable or at least no fun until it warms up or snows. There's enough snow on Dino's and even rarely-open Icicles and Louise's that they could probably open up when it gets warm. My runs of the day were Grand Slalom for carving with speed, and "JPR", my favorite way down from the top: Jewett to Parker to Russell. Ruberto's felt even steeper than I remember and was skiing great.
I'll give a little background on my history with Bousquet. I skied there a few times a season during grad school at RPI in the 90's and while living in Williamstown (and also holding a Jiminy 5/7 pass, so I was mostly at Jiminy) from 2000-07. The vast majority of my Bousquet time came in 2007-08, when we rented one of the (at the time) newly opened condos below Drifter. It was too expensive but really great living on a ski slope. Before that ski season, I inquired at Bousquet about becoming a ski instructor and they took me on and trained me up. I took full advantage of living there, skiing Bousquet for 39 days (sadly I still had a real job so couldn't get out every day) and riding their chair lifts over 450 times. So yes, I got to know the mountain and the people there really well. Since then, I've been back only a handful of times.
Back to today. I was vaguely aware that Bousquet had made some improvements but I didn't know any details. I was very surprised to see an entirely new lodge! Honestly, I liked the old one better. The new one feels more like one of the new Thruway service areas than a ski lodge. The old one was well worn and gritty and I thought it was great. I'm sure the new one has some nice advantages and worked just fine for me booting up. One thing that also seemed odd to me was that there was no food service open when I arrived after 1. It was open when I finished skiing at 3:30. I was also not aware of the replacement of the Yellow Chair. It used to run from the far west corner of the ski area, behind the learning area, to the summit. It was a rickety old double chair. The new "Yellow Chair" is not yellow at all, except one chair, it's a triple, and it loads from right near the base lodge. It's close to where the old Black Chair loaded. That one was rarely used, not sure it ran at all the year I was there so much. New Yellow lets off right where the old Yellow let off at the summit. This lift configuration led to some trail reconfiguration. Grand Slalom doesn't go down as far as it used to (to the old yellow loading area). There are a lot fewer trees between Grand Slalom and the other trails so things feel a lot more wide open on that side of the mountain. What was the practice slope between the lodge and the old Yellow loading area is now a parking lot, and the practice slope was relocated to where there used to be some water slides, just below the bottom of Russell. The Blue Chair remains just as it's been as long as I can remember. It only goes up about 2/3 of the way, and was closed until just before I called it a day. I rode it for my last run. It felt like it could stall at any moment, with subtle speed ups and slow downs throughout my ride up.
I'm glad I got over to Bousquet today. It was a short and fun outing. I kind of wish it was a little more crowded so I would have had the chance to ride up the lift with others.
Aiming for an Indy afternoon at Catamount tomorrow after some meetings at work in the morning.
I made my first return since 2016 to this old favorite this afternoon, using an Indy Pass redemption.
It was a sunny day, but still windy and cold. All of the main trails were open and groomed to a nice packed powder/frozen granular. I skied pretty much everything twice, encountered only a few small patches of signature Bousquet hard pack (but the day was young, wait 'til school gets out and the kids start scraping down Easy Rider). The cover on the snowmaking trails is good and I expect they have a good amount of season left unless it gets really warm and wet. There's decent cover off the main trails but not skiable or at least no fun until it warms up or snows. There's enough snow on Dino's and even rarely-open Icicles and Louise's that they could probably open up when it gets warm. My runs of the day were Grand Slalom for carving with speed, and "JPR", my favorite way down from the top: Jewett to Parker to Russell. Ruberto's felt even steeper than I remember and was skiing great.
I'll give a little background on my history with Bousquet. I skied there a few times a season during grad school at RPI in the 90's and while living in Williamstown (and also holding a Jiminy 5/7 pass, so I was mostly at Jiminy) from 2000-07. The vast majority of my Bousquet time came in 2007-08, when we rented one of the (at the time) newly opened condos below Drifter. It was too expensive but really great living on a ski slope. Before that ski season, I inquired at Bousquet about becoming a ski instructor and they took me on and trained me up. I took full advantage of living there, skiing Bousquet for 39 days (sadly I still had a real job so couldn't get out every day) and riding their chair lifts over 450 times. So yes, I got to know the mountain and the people there really well. Since then, I've been back only a handful of times.
Back to today. I was vaguely aware that Bousquet had made some improvements but I didn't know any details. I was very surprised to see an entirely new lodge! Honestly, I liked the old one better. The new one feels more like one of the new Thruway service areas than a ski lodge. The old one was well worn and gritty and I thought it was great. I'm sure the new one has some nice advantages and worked just fine for me booting up. One thing that also seemed odd to me was that there was no food service open when I arrived after 1. It was open when I finished skiing at 3:30. I was also not aware of the replacement of the Yellow Chair. It used to run from the far west corner of the ski area, behind the learning area, to the summit. It was a rickety old double chair. The new "Yellow Chair" is not yellow at all, except one chair, it's a triple, and it loads from right near the base lodge. It's close to where the old Black Chair loaded. That one was rarely used, not sure it ran at all the year I was there so much. New Yellow lets off right where the old Yellow let off at the summit. This lift configuration led to some trail reconfiguration. Grand Slalom doesn't go down as far as it used to (to the old yellow loading area). There are a lot fewer trees between Grand Slalom and the other trails so things feel a lot more wide open on that side of the mountain. What was the practice slope between the lodge and the old Yellow loading area is now a parking lot, and the practice slope was relocated to where there used to be some water slides, just below the bottom of Russell. The Blue Chair remains just as it's been as long as I can remember. It only goes up about 2/3 of the way, and was closed until just before I called it a day. I rode it for my last run. It felt like it could stall at any moment, with subtle speed ups and slow downs throughout my ride up.
I'm glad I got over to Bousquet today. It was a short and fun outing. I kind of wish it was a little more crowded so I would have had the chance to ride up the lift with others.
Aiming for an Indy afternoon at Catamount tomorrow after some meetings at work in the morning.
