The East Coast Gathering 2012 March 15th-18th Vermont - Page 10

missed the gang today. i had a few friends up and we had the privilege of skiing all day with "josey".  josey is a long time instructor at stowe and led us to great 

areas, that, we'd never ski without his guidance. josey had heidi skiing bumps in conditions that she hates and heidi smiled all day. the skiing ended about 2 pm, since our legs were jelly, even little rippers.

 

we headed to the bar at spruce and ran into "epic", eric was teaching all day and had a little one in his charge, eric said, man, you have no idea how it feels to do wedge turns in a foot of slush all day. rest those knees pal....... 

 

all i can say, is that joining epic ski has been great for the fox family...........   we've met, laughed and skied with great people.

 

dave, josh, eric, buzz, "pepperoni eddiie", kevin, dave and mark " i nuked my boots" crank. i wish we had a litle more winter left.  hopefully, we will ski together again,

next year.

 

bazzer, living proof, phil, tricia, sue, bumpfreaq, fair to middlin, jimmy, cirque, tog, king grump (and his posse) and everyone. ( my memory is limited)

thanks for making our first  family trip to tahoe wonderful!  

 

 

 

 

Where & when are folks meeting tommorow? & where should one park?
Thanks!

I just got here myself, but I assume that the info back on page 5 is still good -- copying for convenience,

I am going to be there for 7:30.

I'm planning to park on the Mansfield side.

 

Day 4 -Stowe

First meeting spot at

7:30 am Forerunner Quad base - yes the earliest lift opening in the USA come on out and enjoy a uncrowded stowe. Best time to ski.

Second Meeting Spot for those who are not early risers.

10:00 am Forerunner Quad base

Lunch

11:30pm Spruce camp - The Great Room


Apres Ski

starting at 4:00 pm The Matterhorn


Dinner -


7:30pm - Frida's

 

Nice! I too will prob be at the Mansfield lodge/lot.....

Consider this a sidebar to the main story of the East Coast Gathering.

 

So, I told y'all I had to pass on today because I had to use up two tickets to Bolton Valley before the end of the season, which is fast approaching here in Northern Vermont (if you hadn't heard the news yet, btw, MRG's last day is tomorrow).  If you haven't heard of Boltron before, I wouldn't be surprised; it wasn't on my radar at all until I moved up here to go to graduate school.  It's situated about halfway between the Richmond and Waterbury exits on I-89, and, at 30 minutes (along with Cochran's), is the closest ski area to Burlington.  It's a real mom-and-pop kind of place, great for families and folks who want to get out and make a few turns after work; the lifts spin 'til 8pm four nights a week.  There is actually some respectable backcountry and sidecountry skiing here too, as well as enough in-bounds tree skiing to keep one busy for much of the season.  There is also a great Nordic center as well, with, so I'm told, a lot of really good prepared trails.  It's one of those areas that's used to be always on the verge of getting NELSAPed, but staged a comeback with strong support from locals.

 

Anyway, there was some pretty thick fog this morning, so my ski partner and I decided to wait it out and didn't get on the hill until 11 AM.  We were rewarded with soft snow and, once the fog burned off, bluebird skies:

 

 

Snow coverage on open trails was pretty good.  There were defnitely a few spots where you had to pick your way around patches of grass/bare earth/granite, but most of what they had was luscious, creamy corn:

 

 

Telemark turns were the order of the day, and as we started racking up the laps, the corn got creamier and creamier, until it started getting a little too gloppy and we decided to take a break.  Being St. Paddy's Day, the Guinness Girls were working the deck with cheap, keep-the-glass pints and other swag, but we opted for more refreshing fare - Woodchuck Amber and Allagash White:

 

 

While tucking into a pulled pork sandwhich and a reuben (hey, it's corned beef and cabbage, right?), we experienced one of my favoirte aspects of the "locals" ski mountain - running into just about everyone we knew.  We caught up with neighbors, coworkers, friends of friends, and my buddy Miro & his family, who I actually haven't seen since the summer because he's been kinda busy.

 

It wasn't getting apprecaibly colder as the afternoon wore on, and while the snow didn't get as sticky in the shady spots, it was starting to get really punchy all over the hill.  We both found a few creeks running down the sides of trails that we weren't expecting to break through onto, and Kristy nearly drove her ipod through her sternum with her knees when she hit a compression jump by the side of the trail that had rotted out since out last run.  She was a trooper, though, and we finished out the day with a few laps in the terrain park (on pins!).

 

Skier chicks rule:

 

 

Since the lifts were running until 8, and we took our sweet time getting to the hill and at lunch, we ended up quitting a lot later than we anticipated.  It was 6pm when we finally got off the hill, and there was still plenty of sunshine; they weren't even warming the lights up yet.

 

Now, as I sit here typing, I realize that call tomorrow is at 7:30 AM.  If I make it to Stowe that early, I think it will be, at 12-1/2 hours, the shortest turnaround time I've ever had between two lift-served ski days.  I gotta go to bed.

Edited by Slow Eddie - 3/17/12 at 6:53pm

I wish I was there. Sounds just about perfect. Love love love the fun late (eastern) season conditions. Heart

 

Starting the way to early ride.......

Just MFD & I @ 730...... Lapping , hope to catch the rest of the folks at 10!

8:10 update kevinf arrives!!!!

have fun........

830 & the gang is all rolling!

10 am update 10 of us, bumping up! Plan for octagon lunch 1140 bbq

At Octogon looking for people unsuccessfully.

I'm wearing brown pants with red suspenders. Blue Langes. My girlfriend has a green top, white pants, and orange Rossignol boots.

We're currently sitting inside by the window near the grill.

We found Hoss!

Thanks all for a great day of skiing!  I'm sure full reports will be up shortly!!

Ok, finally getting some pictures up.

 

MRG on Thursday morning with the famous single chair poking above the clouds

 

 

The Stowe crew on Saturday (left to right is Danny, Kristy, crank (Mark) and myself):

:

 

And the Stowe crew on Sunday (seated left side is Justin, iriponsnow, mdf and Josh, seated right side is Mike (freeskier?), Danny, myself, and Alexei (mx22?).  Leaning in over the top is slow eddie.

MRG had some "interesting" coverage:

 

Top of Stowe on Saturday morning:

 

Danny on Starr:

 

Chin Clip in all its bumped-up glory:

Pond-skimming to get back to the lift on Sunday:

 

Yeah, it was WARM.

 

I made a last minute decision to come up for the weekend, but managed to miss everyone. Lack of computer cost me. Went to Jay on Saturday where I now see that idea was abandoned. Still had a good time. It was still frozen first thing in the morning but quickly softened. Stayed in the sun and lapped the Jet early until the Bonnie chair broke down for a bit and then everyone headed to Jet. Made a couple runs on tram size. After lunch lapped the bumps on Can Am for awhile until my legs gave out. Today made it to Stowe but mistakenly thought there was a meet point at the Gondola. Thought I would find someone by lapping Liftline, which I did for awhile, but finally gave up around 12:30 when the heat (and my legs) started to get to me and I realized I had to make an 8+ hour drive home. Sorry I missed everyone, sounds like a great group.

Just got back home... It was great meeting you all guys and I'm already looking forward to the next year's gathering. Huge thanks to Josh for getting this gathering organized and kept in check, epic for valuable lesson, slow eddie for sticking with the 'slow' group and everyone else (I'm not even going to try to list the names, too many people and with my short name memory I don't want to omit anyone) for coming and making this a truly epic gathering:)

 

P.S. Justin is not registered on the forum, so he asked me to relay to you guys that he was sorry for not being able to say his good byes - on my last run, he pretty much had enough of bumps and went over to spruce side. He was really grateful for all of the advices he received from you guys.

 

Cheers!

What a great day!  Sunshine, a great group to ski with, and perfect slush bumps!  

Those bumps were just about perfect -- big enough to be interesting, but not too big to ski normally;  and soft enough to smash one once in awhile, but not so soft that you got bogged down. Skiing with you guys pushed me to up my game a bit.  I had a ton of fun.

This day deserves a place on my "best days ever" list.

 

My camera has 237 photos or vids on it.  I'll dump everything to photobucket tomorrow or the next day, and post a few hightlights here.

I had a great day skiing with all of you.  Thanks for making this happen, Josh.

It was great skiing with all of you, I had a blast! I hope next year, Josh and I may be able to show you around a bit more of the mountain, rather than sticking to marked trails pretty much all day!

Photobucket is still uploading, so here are a few from Stowe on Sunday.  These are at the bottom of an unofficial cut-through called "Tomba."

 

Josh (Josh)

 

 

iriponsnow (Brian)

 

 

cometjo (Danny)

 

Somehow I didn't get pics of the rest of you at that spot -- the perils of a half-blind photographer.

Upload is finished.  Photos and a few videos are at

http://photobucket.com/stowe_gathering

Those conditions remind me of the BumpPhests from a few years ago..  Looks like lots of fun!

 

Here's a bump picture of Freeski919 (mike).  I only have photos on some of the easier bumps because that's the only time I could get out in front of these guys!

 

Here's one of me skiing the technical line  through the slush piled up on top:

 

Great pictures, thanks for sharing!

Great pics.  Anyone want me to pull these into an Eastern Gathering Trip report?

 

MDF your pics are amazing.and I like your technical line.

Stowe looks great.  Lots of snow.  Thanks for the pix.