We probably have one or two weeks of skiing remaining for us, but a few places will stay open well into April. We’re thinking of heading up to Jackson NH this weekend and ski the two Black Mountains (Maine and NH) and visit friends.
I skied three days this past week (Tues, Weds, Sat), and it was sad to see the snowpack degrading so much from day to day. The resort still intends to stay open until April 19, but it’s hard to imagine it actually happening. Maybe they’ll be able to keep one run on one chairlift open that long by harvesting snow from the rest of the mountain. They’re is supposed to get some snow in the next few days, but I doubt it’ll be enough to make much of a difference, so I think my season is likely done. If I go up in the next couple of weeks, I’ll take my fishing gear as a fallback activity.
Closing Day at Berkshire East in western MA, we were just passing through and took a few runs which may be our last runs of the season. Lots of bare ground, warm and sunny, but we had fun and so did all the people in shorts and t-shirts.
I ended my season on April 11, which is later than I’ve ever skied before…mainly because I had an Ikon pass this year I wanted to make use of. The last two weekends were at Killington in Vermont. It was getting pretty sketchy there toward the end, although they will likely stay open for another month with the Superstar trail, which had about a 20-foot base thickness, it looked like. On my last day, they had a pond skimming contest.
Before that I had a great time at Sunday River in Maine in late March. Skied over 33K vertical feet in one day, which is a record for me.
And I also set a personal record of 33 days of skiing this season, with a total of about 570K vertical feet and 600 miles of skiing! (Yes, I like tracking my stats with an app.)
Finally, I picked up two new pairs of skis at the end of the season: a pair of Atomic Redster Q7.8 skis that were on clearance, and a pair of Stöckli Montero AR skis that were demo skis. I wanted skis that I thought would handle New England hardpack better than my all-mountain skis, and so I demoed skis over two days at Sugerloaf in Maine in March.
If you want to keep skiing in New England; Killington, Jay, Sugarbush, and Black Mountain (NH) are planning to go into May. Sugarloaf and Stowe are closing tomorrow.
For those further south, Camelback in PA will stay open for one more weekend into May.
I decided not to push my luck after my last day at Killington, not to mention another 6-hour round trip for increasingly sketchy conditions. At one point in April I had to take my skis off to cross a 20-foot open stretch of dirt in the middle of a trail in order to make it back to the lift. At least the lift ticket was included in my pass price.
We didn’t go north this weekend, unfavorable weather forecast. But plans are still on for next weekend to do one day skiing off the Mt Washington Auto Road and one at Black Mountain.