Ski Day #1 – Saturday 11/30/13 at Labrador Mtn. All local CNY ski resorts opened on Black Friday but my hill, Song, was reporting ONLY beginner terrain open off the Gunshy chairlift. (this lift serves the Bunny Hill and lower 1/8 of Stormy Weather short runs with nothing top-to-bottom) I chose not to ski the bunny hill all day and stayed home. On Saturday, Song had the same report for the morning with the promise that the Triple chair opening with Bali Hai in the ‘early afternoon.’ Thinking that if and when this happened that the conditions would be fair to poor, a very normal tradition on the first day at many resorts. I chose to buy a $25 ticket and skied at Lab instead. I actually had two reports on the conditions at Lab from colleagues on the opening day. Both said ‘the trails were skiable’ with a mix of powder, hard-pack, and death-cookies. One friend (also a Song skier) chose, instead, to ski the two trails at Lab (top to bottom) rather than the bunny hill. He reported that the conditions were “50% power, 25% death-cookies, and 25% styro-ice) Now for those non-skiers; Death Cookies is a term that we use to describe manmade snow which has frozen into icy frozen granular snow, that has been busted up by the groomer, normally into football-sized or larger chunks, with the blade, being pushed and spread out on the trial, and later by the tiller then ground into smaller chunks (ranging from grapefruit to golf ball-sized). Needless to say, this snow (if we can call it that) is far from what we normally ski on all year, and is not much fun. Styro-ice is a descriptive term for man-made snow which has frozen into a surface that is hard & dry, but still capable of carving a ski edge into, again, not the best nor that enjoyable for skiing. The blue sky shots were taken on my way in from the parking lot at 10:30 and luckily I did get in a few runs before it clouded up. On my way into the lodge I ran into Kay and Ken (friends for OSC : the Onondaga Ski Club). They were parking their skis on the rack, but unfortunately I did now find them again. So what condition were the two tails in on the second day of the season? Jocopie, after a second grooming was now down to marble-sized chunks – here we mean, the larger 1” marbles not the normal ½” standard size. Again, still nowhere near was we’d call ‘packed powder’ but the next trail over – Muzzle was actually very nice. Mostly powder and packed powder with a frozen base underneath which showed up well on the headwall by noon from all the skier traffic on the hill. You’ll note that the majority of skiers chose Muzzle over Jacopie in my pic taken on the way in. This pattern played out throughout the day, with a few kids skiing thought the snow guns on the Nastar trail – Red Wine. I checked this later and found it to be total ‘stryo-ice.’ So after a couple runs – finding new pain a left foot which hadn’t been a ski boot for 8 months, I went in to unbuckle and wiggle those stiff muscles around some, then went back out for more runs down Muzzle. The trail was fun and I managed to rack up 12 runs on it before the wind picked up and I decided to call it a day. After getting home I got a call from the same friend who skied Lab the day before, he was on his way home from Song after making some late day runs on Bali Hai his report was (and I quote) “You did the right thing by paying $25 and going to Lab, it SUCKED” Bali was all death-cookies and getting to the chair was questionable. I told him I had heard that under the chair was better, he said, under the chair was DIRT. With that trustworthy report I reversed my original plans to ski Song on Sunday. So today, I chose to skip the re-groomed Death-Cookies & dirt, and instead, stay home and watch the FIS Men’s Super G World Cup from Lake Louise, Canada on the Universal Sports Network. (way more fun) Team USA had little to no luck on the local downhill. Best US finish was Bode Miller with 18th, Ted Ligety was a disappointing DNF (did not finish). Following that I caught the end of the NBC coverage of the Woman’s GS at Beaver Creek, where the new Slalom Queen Mikaela Shiffrin nearly won her first World Cup GS falling to 2nd place when Sweden’s Jessica LINDELL-VIKARBY finished by only 9 hundredths of a second faster. Now for those of you who aren’t well versed in small fractions of a second, the average time it takes to blink your eye is 300 to 400 milliseconds or 3/10’s to 4/10’s of a second. She lost by roughly a quarter of a blink! That ain’t much! I’m going to stick my neck out and predict that this 18-year-old wonder will be the next Lindsey Vonn. Unfortunately the forecast for the coming week is warm (35- 40 ˚) then returning to the mid-20s sometime next weekend. Luckily Verizon finally added the Universal Sports Network to its channel offerings and we picked it up. We really can’t complain, because normally we don’t get on our local hills until the 1st or 2nd week in December, and sometimes not until Christmas. But we really are due for an old-fashioned long, cold, snowy winter. (hint-hint big guy upstairs) That’s all (for now) Folks!
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 02:31:28 +0000
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