Left Plymouth @ 5:30 AM
Crotched Mt. @ 8:00 AM
On the Lifts @ 8:50 AM
My friend Steve and I skied the groomers at Crotched for the first hour or two. Everything was solidly groomed, with loose snow on the side and some nice bumps forming on Pluto's Plunge and UFO.
At about 10:30 we found a side path (more like a footpath, but covered in snow) off the side of Cosmic Blast heading towards Crotched East (the Old Crotched Mt). THis path led to a steep, deep glade with lots of deep snow (~36") and very few tracks.
Yes, that's a tree.
We pushed further horizontally and ended up on the Old T-Bar liftline. This was also steep and uncut, with boulders and rocks everywhere. But the snow was deep and I only tagged rocks a couple times.
The glade itself was apparently skier cut during the time Crotched was defunct, and was excellent. The snow was at least 3 feet deep in these woods, with no apparent bottom to hit. At one point I grabbed a tree to help myself around a corner and the tree fell down on top of me.
We skied that glade for the next four hours. 2 people at most had been down it before us, so it was practically untracked. We changed that. A couple little kids followed us into the woods and got in way over their heads. They basically fell down the entire trail. After lapping this glade for four hours and continued to get boot to knee deep pow shots, Steve and I hiked the summit of Crotched. It was a very short hike up, and a very short hike across to the top of one of the new expansion trails. This trail also had 3-feet of powder on top of an uncleared boulder field. There were two ~6 foot drops. I hit one of them while steve watched. This new trail dumped us out right in front of the path to the secret glade, and we hit that again. Second time to the summit and we were gonna ski the whole t-bar liftline. Then we found this:
First Tracks 4 days after the storm?!:
Steve skiing it in horrible style
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/ViabiUIYqLE&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/ViabiUIYqLE&rel=0</a>]]>After this powder field, we bushwhacked through some thick woods, slogging through the deep snow and found another expansion trail which we skied back to the main trails. We took one last run through the glade, but it was really too dark to be in there. The lights were starting to come on at the main resort so we spent the rest of the day/night there, on the groomers, in the marked glades, on the bumps. My legs were burning and sore such that I couldn't make one run down without stopping to rest my quads.
All in all, an excellent day. This is the kind of day that I frequently look at pictures of and wish I was there. That sounded kind of arrogant, so im sorry, but it was that good. The best runs of the day weren't even marked runs, and the powder was deep. Lift lines were non-existent and the skiing was cheap. $39! Definitely will be back at crotched this year.
I'll add the pics after they finish uploading.
One of the trees at Crotched was decorated for Christmas.
