This was a real last minute strike mission, not deciding until about 7pm and leaving around 8pm Thursday night.A marathon ice to snow drive, arriving in Rutland around 2am, left room for just a few hours of shuteye.
The pico staff was still digging out when we pulled up around 7:45 the next morning and a few uphillers were poaching a line or two.
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There were bountiful opportunities for first tracks with minimal to zero grooming and whatever had been groomed was mostly reburied before first chair.
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We made our way up a mid mountain lift and “traversed” over to the summit chair on a trail with just enough pitch to feel out the snow quality: like surfing on water. It had a perfect amount of denser support pow underneath with a layer of blower on top.
The line under the summit chair was full of magical drifts, bumps, and drops reminiscent of a powder field in British Columbia. No photo documentation was had on that first run as sometimes you just want to be as present in your flow as possible. It was pure bliss. We lapped the summit chair for a few before the other lift options opened up.
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At some point we figured they must be almost done digging out the Outpost lift, a classic 1969 double chair of Italian design (I learned this from another thread on this blog) which services never groomed natural.
To our surprise there was no one in line and it hadn’t opened yet. The only tracks were from a couple uphillers. The lift attendant said “no more than 10 minutes” and gave us that look like “yea you’re going to want to catch this first chair.” And so we waited for it as others passed it up for currently spinning options. That turned out to be an excellent choice.
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We skied that side until it was sufficiently chopped.
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We had never been to Pico before and I can say it was just about the same exact vibe as Plattekill on a powder daize except double the size. Ski on lifts, classic rock bumping, and abundant deep snow boundary to boundary. I’ll still take freefall top to bottom as best powder run on the east coast but a few here came close.
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