Monday, March 09, 2009

Anniversary at Sugarbush

We celebrated our wedding anniversary with a weekend at Sugarbush, which was a pleasant 2 hour drive up from the cabin -- with an early start -- and had a great spring afternoon skiing their southern Mt Lincoln area. Things got slushy in spots, but other areas were in good shape, and we skiied most of the important trails except for OrganGrinder. Well I skied the bottom part, which was good, but not the exciting part.

The next day it was raining so we went shopping in the charming little villages and did a drive by of Mad River Glen followed by dinner at the Pitcher Inn. The Pitcher Inn is probably the finest restaurant in Vermont, and is in a village not too far from Sugarbush. It was fabulous, and although priced like NYC, it's worth every penny. The wine list is deep, and very well selected, without the typical resort town scam of bad vintages from good houses. Great stemware, service, ambience, and food. You'll need to make reservations, but its worth the effort.

We woke the next morning to a spring storm of a half foot of fresh powder, so we went off to the northern mountain of Sugarbush, Glen Ellen. We got a pretty good deal for skiing here on a Monday, and skiied the whole mountain, including the usual closed Inverness racing area. Near the end of the day, we finished by skiing the fresh snow off the smaller lift on the lower left side. J. really enjoyed that feeling. (if you click on the picture to the right you can see the untracked powder we skiied) Driving home had a little quirk; we changed at the mountain and headed back to southern Vermont to change/wash/eat at the cabin. However we found the road mired in impassable mud about a mile from the house, so we wisely gave up and went into town to eat. We then headed back to NYC and washed up at home. It was such a range of conditions over the weekend: sunny spring conditions one day and cold, snowy, powdery the next.

Its great to be able share a sport you love with people you love.

Sunday, March 01, 2009

March 1 at Okemo

We had a nice day skiing at Okemo, although the ice was bad the day before, but they had done some snowmaking and grooming that made conditions better. We took J. over to the Jackson Gore side of the mountain for the first time, which she enjoyed, and I tried the new trail they had cut, called White Lightning I think. It was barely groomed, and does not appear to have been destumped, nor have snowmaking, but was kind of interesting to try.