Stowe did not suck Friday!

[dan.boisvert]

I was able to make it up Thursday night before the storm started, with plans to meet and ski with epic and Josh Friday.  It worked out to meet Josh for dinner Thursday night at a mexican place with shockingly good food, and we made plans to convene Friday morning when the lifts opened.

I woke up Friday morning to find my car covered with snow--talk about inconvenient.  I'm trying to go skiing and there's all this snow in the way?  What the heck?  Then the roads were covered with snow, and the procession up the access road was doing about 5mph.  Again, whose idea was it to send snow on the day I was trying to go skiing?  That was really inconvenient.

So, I met up with Josh a touch after 8, and spent the next hour chasing him around the mountain through more and more snow.  The stuff was everywhere, and it just kept coming.  Around 9, we went down to pick up epic, and I chased the both of them for about an hour before epic had to go teach.  They kept dragging me through all this snow nobody else had packed down yet.  I'm not really sure how we found so much of it, but I was hopelessly lost all morning and just chasing outfits of the right colors; I disclaim responsibility.

After epic went in to teach, we had a brief break for breakfast before going out to find more snow.  We did that until it was lunchtime, and then went back out to find more snow.  Josh can find untracked snow seemingly at will.  I also noticed another interesting phenomenon.  Various friends of his skied with us here and there, but most of them skied with us for an hour or so and then went on their way.  I think this is because they're smarter than I am, and know that trying to keep up with him all day is a fool's errand.

Fortunately, I'm not very bright, and kept chasing Josh for a couple more hours, though from further and further behind.  Epic came out to join us mid-afternoon, and took over tour guide duties for the last hour or so, as Josh split off to go talk somebody out of skiing something that sounded like a bad idea.  Epic noticed my deteriorating condition and was merciful in his trail selections, for which I was quite grateful.

Lessons learned:

1) Stowe DOES NOT SUCK on a powder day!
2) Josh & epic are awesome hosts, and know Stowe like the backs of their hands
3) Josh has the same BSL as I do, and epic has skis with demo bindings.  Yay for an impromptu demo day!
4) At Stowe, they put orange ropes up to mark the trails that are really fun.  I think the tags hanging from them say something like "lots of fun awaits on the other side of this rope", but I can't be certain.  We never slowed down long enough for me to read them.
5) The snow reporters at Stowe are damned dirty liars.  They reported 4-6" on Friday, but there was clearly more than that at 8AM and it kept snowing all day.  Aren't there laws about truth in advertising?


Huge thanks to epic and Josh for being great hosts, and giving me a better tour of Stowe than I could have ever imagined.  Friday was one of the best days I've had in years.  Thanks, guys!

[LivingProof]

Dan,
Congrats for anything near keeping up with Epic and Bush on a day long basis. Epic destroyed my legs in 2 runs. You are the man!

Loved the orange signage explanation.

A great aspect of our forum is meeting and skiing with others at their home mountain.

[Liam]

That is a pretty awesome snow stowe report, Dan.  What skis did Josh and Epic get you on and did you see the wisdom of their equipment choices in Stowe Powder??

By the way, I really hope the mods here will extend a reinstatement to Josh on this site.  The guy takes strangers through his hard earned 'secret stashes', to me, that overrides all forum posting issues.  And, it really has gotten pretty stale around here lately and more insular than ever.

How big of a gang showed up for the pmts get together weekend??

[dan.boisvert]

That is a pretty awesome snow stowe report, Dan.  What skis did Josh and Epic get you on and did you see the wisdom of their equipment choices in Stowe Powder??

I should probably start by saying I loooove my Head Monsters, and compare pretty much every other non-groomer ski to them.  I have no clue what my skiing looks like on them (unconscionable for somebody who posts on the PMTS forum, I know), but they feel awesome and make me happy.  I showed up with my Monster iM78's, and tried 3 other skis:

1) Josh's Rossignol Sickles--I didn't get on well with these.  I couldn't seem to feel the tips, and started sitting back to avoid the tip-bury/double-eject routine.  Josh assured me that wouldn't happen and it was safe to get forward on them, but the lack of feedback from the tips weirded me out and we were too busy running for me to want to spend time slowing down and trying to figure them out.  I gave these back pretty quickly.
2) epic's Kaestle FX94's--I liked these a lot.  The dimensions felt great to me, I found the tips immediately, and they gave me just enough extra float that it made our couple forays into the trees noticeably easier.  The only thing more I could've wanted from these was a slightly softer/damper tip like the Monsters have.  Otherwise, they were awesome.
3) Josh's Blizzard Magnum 8.5's--he switched to these in the afternoon, and I tried them out briefly.  They felt like I might've liked them more on groomers, with a flex pattern that seemed pretty stiff and uniform from end to end.  I like a more progressive flex pattern in general, and especially off-piste, so these didn't really do it for me.  They had very good edge grip in the scraped off sections, though.

I don't get to try out that many skis, so it was really cool to get on some different stuff and see what it's like.  I think my next pair of skis will still be the Head RnR, but I'm feeling really good about that size after trying out the FX94.  What're the tips like on yours, Liam?  Do they have that damp Monster feel to them?

By the way, I really hope the mods here will extend a reinstatement to Josh on this site.  The guy takes strangers through his hard earned 'secret stashes', to me, that overrides all forum posting issues.  And, it really has gotten pretty stale around here lately and more insular than ever.

Agreed.

How big of a gang showed up for the pmts get together weekend??

It was a small crew this year--we had 6 actually make it.  We lost 5 people in the 3-4 days leading up to the event, due to last-minute work conflicts that seemed to catch a bunch of people this year.  We lost a couple more due to weather-related stuff.  The smaller group made logistics a bit easier though, which wasn't bad, given how many people showed up at Sugarbush for the weekend.  Finding a spot big enough to fit everybody for lunch has been really hard the past couple years, and it was cool to be able to get everybody at one table.

Next year, we're going to Maine.  I was bribed with the promise of lobster, therefore pre-empting any further discussion. 

I'm definitely keeping Stowe in mind for future years though, especially if the event sees some reliable growth that'll make the group ticket thing easily achievable in advance.

[midwif]

That is a pretty awesome snow stowe report, Dan.  What skis did Josh and Epic get you on and did you see the wisdom of their equipment choices in Stowe Powder??

By the way, I really hope the mods here will extend a reinstatement to Josh on this site.  The guy takes strangers through his hard earned 'secret stashes', to me, that overrides all forum posting issues.  And, it really has gotten pretty stale around here lately and more insular than ever.

How big of a gang showed up for the pmts get together weekend??

The door has never been locked against Josh here. The way to return has always been available to him.
The ball is in his court.
Acknowledgment of inappropriate posting seems beyond his abilities at present.
I hope that changes for him. It's a good life skill.

[epic]

4) At Stowe, they put orange ropes up to mark the trails that are really fun.  I think the tags hanging from them say something like "lots of fun awaits on the other side of this rope", but I can't be certain.  We never slowed down long enough for me to read them.

I can neither confirm nor deny any of that.

5) The snow reporters at Stowe are damned dirty liars.  They reported 4-6" on Friday, but there was clearly more than that at 8AM and it kept snowing all day.  Aren't there laws about truth in advertising?

They were metric inches. Nice meeting you Dan.

[HighAngles]

Dan - what an awesome trip report.  Sounds like it was a blast - wish I could have been there tagging along.  I saw some of the photos from SKI magazine of Stowe on Friday.  I never had those kind of conditions in all the years I skied on the East coast.

BTW - I skied the Head RnRs on Sunday and really, really liked the ski (and we only had a few inches of new).  I initially had trouble "feeling" the front of the ski, but then got them dialed in a bit.  Unfortunately the demo bindings were maxed out on the heel track and I couldn't try them out any further forward than the factory mark.  Anyhow, I think they're a great choice and of course they have the HH seal of approval for PMTS skiers.

[Perry]

Dan,
All I can say is very clever and funny post!  In my head I was following some jacket skiing faster than me through trees.............w ith a big grin on my face.

[meput]

At Stowe, they put orange ropes up to mark the trails that are really fun.  I think the tags hanging from them say something like "lots of fun awaits on the other side of this rope", but I can't be certain.  We never slowed down long enough for me to read them.

Gee Dan, you didn't apply your newly learned skill and teach it to us at Sugarbush.    I will say my skis say thank you for not leading us down any roped off trails. They took enough rock shots on the non roped open trails.

Next year, we're going to Maine.  I was bribed with the promise of lobster, therefore pre-empting any further discussion. 

A few crustaceans and boiling water is a lot easier, on me being the old geezer, than ~10 hours of drive time.