In what is now a well established tradition of both my family and the SkiVT-List internet group, I climbed and skied a mountain on Thanksgiving morn. It was Mt. Wachusett in central MA near my sister-in-law's house where we slaked our ravenous appetites later. Traditional start time is 7:00 AM but this was a relaxed start at 8:15. 7 skiers, VTer's, Massholes, and honorary Massholes were present, Jim, Dana, Mark, Matt, Patrick, Evan, and myself. In preparation for opening on Fri. Wachusett had blown snow top to bottom on 2 runs. Conditions varied from beautiful corn on a firm man made base, to tank treads to chicken heads, baby heads and cow heads in pea soup fog and 38 deg. temperature. The groomers were out and we heard them moving eerily in the fog. Don't ask me why but they were not grooming anything, just making tank tread tracks in the snow. It was great! Well, sort of Anyhow my first turns of the new year are on the books. (Skier's New Year is Sep. 1)

A few pics.

Summit shot http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa301/markrenson/WaWa_TG_2007/IMG_0162.jpg
Matt
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2061793423&size=m
Dana with elephant head on the right
http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa301/markrenson/WaWa_TG_2007/IMG_0167.jpg

Heart the turns, heart the Atomic Rainiers.

Good going Denis. Did they let you drive up to top or does the family tradition demand a march from the base area?

I hosted my Worcester area cousins this weekend in VA and sent them north this AM well stuffed with Turkey dinner leftovers the last few days.
I view Thanksgiving feasting as the last good preseason opportunity to put on a few inches of natural insulation before ski season starts:-)

You are kind of expected to skin if possible but there are no hard & fast rules, except to keep grinning no matter how bad it is. This is pretty much standard in backcountry skiing. The only way to tell that a good backcountry skier is suffering is that they tell more and worse jokes than usual.

In some years we have parked at the State Park entrance walked 200 yards on the road and then skinned up which cuts the vertical in half. This year we parked at the base and got the full 1000 ft. Mark had to bail early to go to his Mom's dinner in Conn. When we returned to our cars we found he had left us a 6 pack of Heineken. b/c skiers are like that too.

Edited to say that sometimes Tday is at my daughter's in Burlington, VT. Then the skin & ski is on natural snow and much better. 2 yrs. ago we skied 18" of new powder at Mad River. It was the 2nd biggest storm of that season.

Looks fun! Must have been difficult skiing on the ungroomed manmade stuff but i doubt you can ever complain about turns on thanksgiving no matter what the conditions

From the pix looks like some of the turns could have been tricky for the early season.

Congrats! You were having more fun Thanksgiving AM than myself; I was heading up the NJ Turnpike at about the same time.