A group of skiers and riders from Avie’s Ski / Sport made their way to Mount Snow on Super Bowl Sunday. It was indeed a Super Sunday on the slopes.
Cloud free skies, temperatures moving into the mid to upper 30s, and a zephyr of a breeze made for incredible conditions. Fast and firm in the morning, soft in the afternoon and even a bit buttery on the south facing trails late in the day. It was beyond picture perfect.
Beyond because crowding really wasn’t an issue. With only 42 of 80 trails open, one would expect lots of frustration on a typical Sunday, especially one as gorgeous as this one was. I guess most folks stayed in to make chili and other fixings for the game. Those that did venture to the slopes left by early afternoon.
Lift lines? Maybe 3 or 4 deep, at best, at the ever popular Bluebird 6-Pack lift. Essentially non-existence elsewhere. My niece Kayla and I hit the Canyon Quad half-dozen times in a row and only twice had anyone in front of us to get on the lift.
Overall, open trails were in good shape. I expected a lot worse given the unfrozen precipitation (I refuse to say the “r” word) and warmth Vermont witnessed middle part of last week. But there was good snow coverage, with only the occasional patch of glacier ice to watch out for.
There were no unsatisfied people on the bus as we left Mount Snow for the trek back south. Because everyone was elsewhere on Super Bowl related tasks, there was no traffic, not even in town. Our driver, Venus—yeah, like the planet—from Academy Bus Lines, had us back at Avie’s in Westerly in record time. I was home, unpacked and watching the game before half time.
The moral of this story is, ski on Super Bowl Sunday. It’s one of the best skiing and riding days of the season. While everyone who had the pleasure of being there agreed it wasn’t crowded at all, we all knew that had the entire mountain been open, like in a normal winter, that we might even had begun to feel lonely out there on the trails in the afternoon.
Okay, maybe not.
AlanD