Once again, the gods of airlines did not appease us.  After taking off 
over
one hour late while they unsuccessfully tried to fix the first 
lavatory, the
only other one broke 45 minutes into the 3 hour tour.  So, they turned
around back to the snowless land of Texas.

We got back out, but of course we missed our connection to BTV.  We
stayed the night at JFK and got the first plane out, but still didn't 
arrive
until 11am.  The girls were shot, so skiing wasn't likely.  However, I 
got
a day pass to go run somewhere.  Close to the airport was critical, so
I chose to up the number of resorts that I've skied at and try new-to-me
Bolton Valley.

Nice place, but with the warm temps and the low snowfall total, the
mountain was hurting.  There was no exploring the off-trails there...
Heck, there wasn't much exploring on-trails.  Lots of bare patches, lots
of rocks lurking there, not a bamboo pole marking in sight anywhere on
the mountain.  But I had fun, skied from 1:40 to 4:05.  Since I 
officially
"experienced" the mountain, I can add it to my list, and more 
importantly
keep my goal alive of making 20 days this season (this was #13).

We arrived at Smuggs on Sunday (after breakfast at our favorite Village
Cup in Jericho) and commented on the lack of snow overall.  It was
looking pretty bare.  We skied all over Morse with the kids.  There were
plenty of bare patches and lots of trails that were totally void of 
snow.
Nothing off-piste of course.

The niar started during our lunch break, right after they closed Village
Lift for dniw!  Apparantly none of the other lifts were on hold.  Its
kind of hard to believe that this lift would be susceptible.  Never mind
for us - we ride the Mogul Mouse lift anyway.  The mountain was
deserted.  The kids were fine skiing through the fairly light niar, so 
it
was kind of nice to have "hard core" kids.  The propaganda obviously
worked well for us.  We skied a nice Snowsnake twice at the end,
with my 4 year old doing much better than the ski school that was
scattered like fallen soldiers all over the trail.  It was getting a 
little
worse, so we went in just before 3, and met up with Skiing Grandma
who was over at Stowe cross-country skiing.

Today we're going to try and introduce Anna to M2 and maybe
Sterling.  It looks like there is more snow over that a ways.  We
are looking forward to a change in the weather soon, and hope
dearly for it.

Looking for reports from Sugarbush.  Anything to report?  Of course,
given the chance of wind on Wednesday, we are not sure if we
will venture away from Smuggs on that day.

No matter what the weather, I will be out, looking to make my
20 day season!!!

B&K - bless us with your presence and maybe the snow gods will
smile more favorably on us Texans.

Eric Morton

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