A buddy and I made the snowy trip up 219 to Snowshoe early yesterday morning. We skied from 9 til noon in order to make it back to class by 2.

Our first 3 runs were on the main side underneath the Ballhooter and Grabhammer lifts. Each run was always at least boot deep and often times knee deep. And boy was it light and fluffy!! We wanted to make it over to the new stuff by the Widowmaker lift, but the Ballhooter lift was closed, so we decided to try out the Western Territory. Our first run was down Cupp. Upper Cupp basically sucked. They were blowing snow and we couldn't find fresh snow anywhere. Lower Cupp was pretty good. A little choppy, but still lots of fun. Upper Shay was spectacular. Both the left and right sides were full of knee deep.

After 2 more runs on Upper Shays (to lower Cupp) we ventured over to the stuff by the Widowmaker lift. Both of the 2 new runs were a lot of fun. The glades on Sawmill were fun and interesting, as there was a lot of scraped ice transitioning right into knee deep powder. A little too tricky for this skier's ability.

Anyway, after several there we headed back over and made some more runs under Ballhooter and got off the mountain before 12:30. Despite the slow drivers on the way back, we walked into lecture while the prof was still on her title slide!

Here are a few from the day. Didn't get many. Was too busy!

One from the drive


Another


Lower Something


Ballhooter


Ballhooter


Camp 99


And one from the iPhone
http://www.vimeo.com/8593721

Hey David nice turns you ski like an instructor or sumthin. When you comin up to dryfork to see the old crew? Way to get after it.

Slam Damage..Slamage!..Wray to go!!(that your last name?)...Getting up there looked like half the fun!

Jimmy, I'd like to make it up sometime before Snowy Luau, but I don't know if that's going to happen or not. Worse comes to worse I'll be there for Snowy Luau. Hopefully I'll bring some Pow with me.

BTW, I forgot to mention. Even with all the fun I was having at the Shoe, it only made me miss Timberline even more....Ah, there's no place like home!!

Rather than start a new thread, here are a few from yesterday. I made it out from about 1-4:30. There were plenty of nice turns. 4-5 inches of VERY light pow on the sides of some trails (just had to know where to look). ZERO crowds. We were never even behind someone getting on the lift. It was a ghost town.

The Western Territory was the best skiing on the mountain. Upper Shays was awesome. Lower Shays was pretty good too. It was actually the first time that I've ever skied it when it was groomed out. Sure was much easier than the other times!!

The trees off of Sawmill were purty good too




From the Powdermonkey lift (I think)


Did some OB skiing


This is to the right of the above sign. There's a ton of work going on over there and above too. Anyone know what they're doing?? More trails or more homes??


Me looking really sloppy on Lower Cupp.
http://www.vimeo.com/8716045

David,
You look pretty good on the boards! Where is the out of bounds sign. I'll be at the Shoe this coming 5-7 days (rain of course!), but if I can find the sign I maybe can find somebody that can explain what's going on. Connie, you mentioned you were told something about future expansion plans, can you share this info?
ANYBODY ELSE GOING TO BE AT THE SHOE MLK WEEKEND AND INTO NEXT WEEK? MAYBE WE CAN SKI A RUN OR TWO TOGETHER!
LOU, ARE YOU GOING TO BE UP?
The Colonel

About 1/3 of the way down Sawmill Glades. To the right. And it was more of a "You are entering Snowshoe's property. You must have a lift ticket to be here" kind of sign. Not really an OB sign. Just thought it was kind of funny.

If you go down to the very top of the glades and look to the right you can see the work I was talking about above the sign. There are plenty of houses back in there. It really looks like they are cutting a trail. Possibly something for beginners to get down to the Soaring Eagle lift? So they could call all of that property ski in/out?? Who knows? I meant to take a picture, but we didn't go back out that way. Maybe next time...

Made it Snowshoe yesterday for a few hours of skiing. Needless to say it was pretty sweet! Lots of snow everywhere. Anything untracked was about knee deep. Things got skied off pretty quickly though on the main side. We made several runs on the Camp 99 and Sawmill/Glades. They were both very sweet as they haven't seen a groomer in a while. Even though I suck at skiing moguls (I guess skiing too), they were a blast. Even found a few nice lines through some THICK trees. I didn't stay in there too long though, as I know that Snowshoe doesn't "encourage" tree skiing and the last thing I want to do is get a season pass pulled (I miss Timberline more than anyone can imagine). All in all a great morning!

Here are a few shots from one stop I made in the woods. It was too good and cold to take too many pictures.

Nice little hidden line I found "somewhere" on the main side


This picture didn't come close to capturing the beauty of the thickness of these trees, with all of the snow everywhere


Those are my 50" ski poles. I'd say there was AT LEAST a 40" base in there.



Like I said, I'm not the greatest skier.
http://www.vimeo.com/9521860