Trip report - Stowe, Vermont - 11 Feb 2006

I skied today at groomed trails at the Trapp Family Lodge and the Mt.
Mansfield/Stowe Mt Resort/AIG cross-country centers in Stowe, Vermont.
Conditions were good to very good, providing that you like fast,
hard-packed snow. Not icy, just as the soft snow last weekend was not
quite slush. Although there were just-short-of-a-handful of spots today
with actual ice, and perhaps a full-handful of assorted trail anomalies,
all told. And the tracks were occasionally icy on some popular,
lower-elevation trails. Mostly, though, it was just: fast, fast fast.
I heard one skier in a tuck position on the Haul Road yelling out what I
took to be a "whoop" of delight. I tried to avoid vocalization myself,
but silently whooped my way around such trails as Bobcat, Bear Run,
Russel Knoll, Houston, and, especially Ranch Camp (the "connector" trail
between the two ski centers). And it was especially scenic today on
Hare Line, due to the cloudless ski.

Skiers appeared to have been skiing on the ungroomed Old Camp trail (the
upper part), but I did not check out the trail to determine the
conditions. I did encounter a couple of heavy metal skiers coming back
from an excursion on Skytop and Dewey. They said that the upper
elevations were full of water features.

It's amazing how different the same trails can be in consecutive
weekends, going from warm/slush-like/slow to cold/ice-like/fast. Also,
the Ranch brook itself was much quieter today, with less water and more
of an ice shield to muffle the brook. Last weekend it was so loud that
we could have recorded a radio documentary.

Lew Lasher
Stowe, Vermont and Cambridge, Massachusetts