There’s many a skier who thinks a mountain has to be huge, gnarly, and XXX rated (assuming that Xs equal black diamonds, in this case) in order to be fun. And, frankly, we couldn’t agree less. King Pine in East Madison, NH (just a little south of North Conway), is a great example…and, on this day, proved its worth beyond pure enjoyment.

A little background. We’ve skied the area before; it’s a short hour from our house, and has a great deal that allows you to downhill ski, XC, skate, you name it, all on the same ticket. Fun way to spend a day! Except when Mother Nature hasn’t provided any snow for XC, and it’s been generally too warm to make the ice safe for skating…in other words, today. We were looking at downhill skiing only. But, we decided to head over anyway, for two reasons. First, we knew that they’d done a major snowmaking upgrade over the summer; replacing their diesel system with an electric one for both environmental and operating cost reasons, and in the process increased capacity by 50%. We’d been impressed by the snow quality before, so thought…well, maybe we’d get lucky. Second, we had two reasons to go to a mountain that had more relaxed terrain than we often ski. I’d recently picked up an AT (Alpine Touring) setup. With new skis/boots/bindings, all with VERY different characteristics than my regular skis, I wanted some time to learn without scaring the daylights out of myself. And, Susan, as a relative newbie to downhill, wanted to work on some specific training techniques; that’s hard to do on an icy black diamond. Off we went!

The week between Christmas and New Year’s is a busy one for ski areas, and with a small area like King Pine, that can be a concern. We didn’t need to worry, though. As busy as it looked in the parking lot and the lodge, we found that the multiple trails down from the summit allowed skiers to dissipate and keep it from being crowded. Ideal conditions for our goals, in other words.

And speaking of ideal conditions, we were spot-on about their snowmaking improvements.  The majority of their trails were open, including the black diamond Jack Pine, and in over 4+ hours of skiing, we didn’t encounter even one patch of ice. Period. Sure, there was some of that hard, scratchy stuff, but nothing that we couldn’t put an edge into, and in some ways the conditions improved during the day as skiers “groomed” it and created a nice, soft layer on top, particularly near the edges of the trails.  In the afternoon, the left side of Red Pine was simply outstanding, with about 4-6″ of the soft stuff to play in.

One of the most overrated facets of some mountains is “feet of vertical”.  King Pine doesn’t carry any bragging rights in that world; 350 feet of vertical is, um, pretty small. But, they make use of every foot of it; there’s no runout at the bottom, no skating along a flat trail, hoping you don’t have to pole for a  hundred yards to get to the lift.  Skiing is fun right to the bottom.  And when you’re trying to work a technique, you get tired a lot faster than when you’re simply skiing. For us on this day, 350 was perfect; we could focus on our turns, maintain as perfect form as we were capable of, right to the bottom, then relax and keep fresh legs on the way up.  There was no “dude, we got 12 runs in!”…we had more than that before noon!

Did we accomplish our goals?  Oh, yes…Susan was looking to move her turns to more “S” than “Z”, and  worked over and over on the “$100 bill” technique (if you want details, email us!). By late in the day, she looked like an entirely different skier than the one I’d started the morning with, both in technique and actual speed on each run. And my skis?  Going from a pair of Blizzard Magnum 7.6 and custom Dalbello Kryptons to a pair of vintage-ish Karhu BC100s (yes, that means 100mm underfoot) with AT bindings and Garmont G-Ride boots definitely meant a steep learning curve. Each run gave me more confidence, and allowed me to test how the tips and tails reacted to balance shifts; to try them in big, swoopy GS turns as well as tight, short radius blasts along the edge of the woods. End result…love the skis, feel confident on them, and now have a built-in muscle memory for the way they react. Now, when I take them into some unexpectedly difficult terrain, I’ll feel confident and prepared!

We’d have had fun at King Pine even if we’d simply gone there to play in our usual way on the slopes; the trails are well laid-out, fun, and have enough difficulty that it’s up to us to ski them in the way that we like best. But on a learning day…it truly was a great time! Now, we just have to wait for some  natural snow so we can go back and play on the few trails we missed. It’s funny how many skiers we know who have never tried King Pine, or some of the other smaller mountains around; we’d say that it’s a shame, but on the other hand, what they don’t know equals better skiing for us…