All for 5 dollars

In case you haven’t heard yet, Rumford does not have good skiing right now and interestingly, seems to be one of the few places that doesn’t have good skiing. I drove over there the other day to find the snow wind blown and very dirty apart from a few sheltered spots in the woods. On the other hand, despite some misfortune on the mountain that happened to make headlines http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12087306 (which I fortunately avoided despite being on the mountain for some tele skiing), sugarloaf has incredible skiing right now. I’ve gone just about every other day and the trails have only gotten better over the last week. On top of that, a half day there only cost me 5 bucks. That’s a small price for great skiing and spectacular scenery (the sugarloaf outdoor center is more or less surrounded by mountains). Of course, the low price might explain why their groomers have all broken down this week. On my last trip there on Thursday, one of the loops I skied absolutely reeked of diesel oil after the piston bully sprang a leak somewhere. With their snowmobiles broken too, who knows what things will be like after the warm up forecast for the weekend.
Enough bad news, the skiing really has been great, even at my old high school where I skied with some UNH kids today and in Augusta on the new race trails there.

For good measure, here are some pictures

Snow place like home

One of the benefits of being an English major at SLU is that you often have lots of essays to write in lieu of finals. For the first semester ever I got away with that this fall, and packed up my stuff yesterday morning (Monday) and headed back to Burlington. In reality I could've left Thursday afternoon, but I'm never THAT on top of my assignments. Still, by leaving yesterday I guaranteed myself an extra week of break and access to really solid skiing. I thanked my car Big Red for the Christmas miracle of not breaking down this trip, carried my skis inside and found a giant platter of York peppermint patties which I proceeded to immediately do work on. This morning I woke up to my dog barking at the snowplow, which is always a good sign. Sure enough there's a few fresh inches out there and a good forecast. Eric will be home later today, and we have a good crew to train with up at Trapps and Sleepy Hollow so the start of break is looking good. See you all at those Eastern Cups!

Steve's way of saying goodbye

Oh, here are the pictures from Higley a few weeks ago per Ethan's request. As you can see, the first snow dump in Colton was a big one, chest high in some spots. We even ventured out onto the new trail we cut this year for Higley Trail Day. We did train that day, but couldn't help throwing tele turns down all the hills.

NYSEF Opener

Well we tried to get to the NYSEF opener on sunday but nearly slid off the road in Potsdam and had to turn back. Would have been great to get in a race prior to the Eastern Cup openers and World Famous Osceola race, we will have team members racing in both of these events. Skiing the past three weeks has been great at both Star Lake right after returning from break and then we were able to ski at Higley all last week, even classic and in the woods. The current warm up certainly is not great but we should have something to at least skate ski on at Higley when it freezes up again. Maybe Adam will post some photos he took earlier in the week making turns in the powder on one of the woods trails.

Race Photos

Some photos from the classic sprint in Canada, sorry some are a little blurry, focus wasn't working right for a bit.

http://picasaweb.google.com/skibum540/CanadaRaceDay#

Star Lake comes through

We went from rollerskiing in a blinding snowstorm on Wednesday...

...to skating on excellent conditions, complete with grooming, at our mountain-plateau secret training facility in Star Lake. Two days of skating, then intervals this morning. OD ski on tap tomorrow.