Dan and I met at Jiminy on Wednesday for a bit of post powder skiing.  I
brought two non-listers from work.

I was very depressed after reading the reports from Tuesday at Jiminy.  For
starters, it sounded like all the powder would be tracked out from the number
of people; and then there was the mention of grooming - blech.  Sure enough,
when we got there everything that could be seen was groomed flat as a
pancake.  They left a little bit of totally tracked up near the sides of some
trails; but not much on-piste.

First run before meeting Dan was out at John Hancock, hoping to find some
powder left, but it too had been groomed.  More depression set in.

Before meeting with Dan, we were riding up with an instructor and I quizzed
her on the woods rules at Jiminy.  Here is the tautology that she gave me:

"Well, I think the policy is that its either a designated trail, or, ... its
not a designated trail"

Wow!  So, from then on; we just performed the trail designation ritual before
hopping in.

We did find some narrow woods to the skier's left of **** ******.
Interestingly, the next day while skiing at Hunter; I met up on the lift with
someone that claimed to have helped cut it.  He was the one that offerred the
location; so he at least knew about them.  If it wasn't for that, I would
have believed he was just shooting his mouth off (he seemed to shoot his
mouth off a lot).  We also found some nice lines just outside of one of their
official glades.

Their Widow's White liftline "trail" was officially opened.  No ropes over
it, the lift attendants were telling people that it was open.  That was fun.
I put trail in quotes because it is not marked on the map and to the best of
my knowledge has never been opened before this storm.  Nor were the lift
tower's padded.  Personally, I think it was a big liability mistake on the
side of the mountain; but who was I to complain?

While we're going down the liftline and Dan is sampling the powder off the
side, a boarder yells from the lift "Be careful, there's stumps and s**t in
there".  Really?  You mean they don't clear the woods of those pesky trees?

So, despite the original pessimism, it was a great day.  As most of you know,
Dan is great fun to ski with.

In the four hours and forty-five minutes that I had to ski (had to drop off
and pick up my daughter at day care), I counted 16 runs, many of them gladed
(so thus "slower").  I can't believe we skied that much.  Mind you, we didn't
stop for lunch, but I had to make a stop and miss a run to get my ski leash
replaced.  I was absolutely exhausted.  I couldn't even make tele turns (or
at least what passes as tele turns by me) near the end.

Eric

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
SkiVt-L is brought to you by the University of Vermont.

To unsubscribe, visit http://list.uvm.edu/archives/skivt-l.html