Powder Hound Heaven
Today’s turnout was greatly reduced by the cold forecast, the ski started with about -4F temperatures and some wind. We decided to all ski northbound, partly due to the relatively small (eighteen) group, partly due to having the wind at our backs, and partly due to the anticipation of powder in the glade downhill to Rt 30.
We had a nice breakfast and warm meeting room at the J.J. Hapgood General Store, then dropped off cars and a bailout car and drove to the start at Kendall Farm Rd. We had trail-breaking right from the start, gentle ups and downs through mixed forests. The long snowmobile trail climb stretched the group out a bit, but the next section of trail-breaking bunched us all up again. We had a quick (too quick for some) lunch at the top of the Rt. 30 glades. This fairly steep descent has been thinned nice and wide by Andrew, Dagny and others. As on Pony Hill (this is much shorter) yesterday, some folks stuck to the switchbacking trail, but many others found their own powdery route, and some enjoyed it enough to climb back up and do it again, yeehaw! Knee-deep and still pretty fluffy, I heard someone say “This is what I live for”. One skier took the bailout option at Rt. 30, the rest roadwalked up to another short, sunny, almost warm lunch at the end of Upper French Hollow Road. The temperature never go above 10F but the sun made it feel warmer, as long as you kept moving. After more lovely spruce and hardwood forests we had a undulating open woods downhill to our cars at South Road.
About 20 folks met at the Landgrove Inn for a nice dinner. We will be meeting back there Saturday at 9am in their lounge on the right side of the building. We are expecting 34 skiers, so we will do a key swap, carpooling is fine as long as everyone in the car is skiing the same direction. Optionally, meet at 7:30 at the Landgrove Inn for breakfast. High of 27F, bring your tee-shirts!
