First things first - it was Audi day today at Bretton Woods, hence the 2
hour trip from Burlington for a free McSkiing lift ticket.

For those of you who haven't been there, Bretton Woods is a fairly flat,
1500 vertical foot ridge which sits across the road from the Mount
Washington Hotel.   It does advertise itself as New Hampshire's largest
ski area, which sort of makes me wonder about the Granite State.   Its
location does afford it some gorgeous views of the Presidentials, which we
were able to enjoy thanks to the high cloud cover today.   I remembered
reading last year about the new West Mountain area at Bretton Woods, which
promised to bring some much needed challenge and glades to the mountain.
The rest of the original mountain is almost all green and blue (and wide
open flat greens and blues at that), so West Mountain became the first stop.

The trail map offerred some promise, as there were plenty of black and
double black diamond trails to be had.   First glade was Maple Woods, a
double black.   Grade inflation!   First of all, the glades were not like
the glades I am used to at Jay or the MRG woods.   Instead of going into an
area and cleaning out all the small saplings, the trail builders at Bretton
Woods instead cleared one line of everything all the way down, meaning the
"glades" were really nothing more than 10 foot wide runs, which fun as they
were, did not quite offer the freedom or sense of adventure I usually find
in a powder hunt through the woods.   However, one advantage of Bretton
Woods' relatively low elevation became abundantly clear very soon - in the
birch woods, even where no clearing had been done, there was plenty of room
to turn and find untracked powder.   This became the pattern for the day -
we hit all the "glades" on the mountain and then started improvising.  Every
glade had the same one line - Rosebrook Canyon, John Grave's Glades, etc
etc.

Nothing on the mountain is seriously steep, but fun can be had if you look
for it, including a few rock ledges in the woods, the high-speed cruisers,
and, as always, the hunt for powder.   We were aided in our search by
Bretton Woods' less than adventurous visitors, who even 2 days after the
Friday snow, had left plenty of powder on the marked glades and even more in
the rest of the woods.   The snow on the open runs was in great shape,
primarily because this week's natural covered over the manmade.   One
turnoff was the crowd.   On more than one occasion we witnessed punk-ass
9 year old snowboarders yelling random obscenities and comments at those
skiing below.   We also had the joy of a group of five year olds eating
lunch next to us (with the attendant noise) while their parents sat at the
next table ignoring them.

All in all, I wouldn't have paid the $51 lift ticket in a million years, but
for a free ticket, it was worth my time at least this once to check the
place out.

Walter

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