Wintergreen Trip Report, 2/24
February 25, 2005
After watching snow come down all morning Thursday I decided to take the afternoon off and head up to Wintergreen. 10 minute drive home, threw my gear in the CRV and an hour later I was skiing! Cool.
Conditions were similar to those KevR encountered at Whitetail. I would say about 4 inches on top of the existing base. I several places snow had been pushed to the side exposing the hardpack, and on Lower Cliffhanger the resulting coverage was still fairly thin. Visibility was limited due to fog and the aggressive snowmaking that was occurring. I was actually very happy to see the snowmaking, though, since it indicates to me that mgmt is serious about extending the ski season as long as possible (I tried explaining this to a guy sitting next to me on the chairlift, but he was having none of it).
Despite the limited visibility and the necessity of having to "ski by feel" I had a great time. I spent much of my time hanging out near the sides of the trails, looking for at least some fresh that had not been skied off. This strategy had limited success (and led to a couple minor rock encounters) in the Highlands area. Once I moved over to the Big Acorn lift i had better luck and found some good stuff on the side of Big Acorn and in the trees to skiers right on the upper part of Sunrise.
All in all a pretty good day. And a final plea to anyone here who frequents Wintergeen and Massanutten - as long as there is snow at these resorts please keep coming out and riding, so that Mgmt gets the message and stays open as long as possible!