Royal Mountain Conditions

[Jim]

@Jim do you think Jake and Brooke have NYSB on their radar?

I think they have shared a few posts on their social media, so they're at least aware.

I spent the afternoon trying to convince my daughter to ski Royal tomorrow, but no she prefers the icy groomers at Gore

Should be really good again...

 

[Country Gun]

Size, vertical drop doesn’t matter. All we want to do is to get our skis in some soft fresh snow. By looking around at Royal. That the motto!
My son skied every glade available, I stayed low angle.

 

[Country Gun]

Money well spent, lift ticket , breakfast and beers all under $100.
No lift lines, fresh all day on a Holiday weekend.
WOW

 

[Jim]

Make it 5 in a row to finish up the holiday break: powder and packed powder. I skied for a little over and hour this afternoon and got into a few glades I hadn't yet this season: top half of Jacksland, Damsel Glades, top half of Duke, and the middle part of Duchess, and also returned to Merchant Glade. My favorite run was down Royal, with a really nice surface all the way for some high speed arcing turns.

That's it for the week for the main mountain. After school programs begin on the practice slope this week so all will not be quiet.

 

[mel]

Been a great 2 weeks at Royal, I skied over 100K vertical on ALL packed powder, seemed like every day we had freshies.
Looking down the Royal..

 

[Jim]

Royal announced that snowmaking is complete on Red Carpet, it has been pushed out, and the trail (as well as all the others) will be open on Saturday. From the picture I saw on their Instagram, I think it's a wider swath down the middle than last year's. I think the glades should make it through tomorrow's disappointing weather, which would mean 100% for this weekend.

My advanced Trailblaisers will probably want to try the Red Carpet, but we will have to work our way up to that...

 

[Jim]

Conditions were better than I expected when I was listening to the rain and wind last night. The packed powder has been replaced by frozen and loose granular, and with the snow pushed out and groomed on Upper Red Carpet, 100% of the mountain was open. It was fast but easily skiable early, we had some cookies by mid morning, which became a pretty nice loose granular with traffic and temps climbing to around 37. My Trailblaisers groups were on the main mountain so I spent my whole day up there and hit all the groomed terrain. There were people in the woods but not me today. I didn't get my first Red Carpet runs until after 2. The middle was thin, the sides were nice. Right now the way it's groomed, the steepest part doesn't feel so steep. As I understand it, the plan remains to let traffic and weather do its thing, so today was probably the easiest it will ski all season.

 

[Jim]

Royal got a couple inches overnight and a couple more during the day for a nice powder/packed powder day. Woods were pretty good and I got one of my Trailblaisers groups down through the Princess/Maiden/Damsel combination, all down Challenge (and for some, Red Carpet), and the top half of the T-Bar Line. I also worked with our visiting friends' kids for a while in the afternoon on the practice slope and took my own few extra runs on a couple steeps just before closing.

 

[Jim]

The weekly Trailblaisers program was postponed for the weekend so I got to head up a little later and didn't do any teaching. It was around 0 when I got out at 11:30 and didn't get much higher. No problems with the cold for me. I heard right away when I arrived that the woods were the place to be. 11" of fluff will do that. I asked where and was told "everywhere". All but 1 of my runs included at least some time in the woods. I got to ski several places I hadn't been yet this season. The only place that had a few troughs skied down to the hard pack was on the bottom part of the T-bar line. I can't really pick a run of the day because there were fresh tracks and soft snow all over. As for the main trails, Challenge and Red Carpet were ungroomed and were great. Other trails that had been groomed skied more like ungroomed man made snow than groomed out powder. Really nice day and tomorrow should only get better.

 

[Jim]

Royal is planning to be open for a special ungroomed powder Friday. Then the most trails will be groomed out for Saturday morning. I don't know the details of hours or services available but I'll share them when I learn. Unfortunately, I have class and meetings on Friday...