Early season skiing isn’t kind to many smaller resorts; lower ticket prices equals less money for hyper-powered snowmaking. The 2011-2012 season was particularly rotten; even large mountains had thin cover a lot of the time, throughout the year.
But Mother Nature was a little nicer this year, and one good early snowstorm and some continued good weather meant…yeah, let’s go try some of the areas that we haven’t been to in a while. And for us, coming from Portland, Mt. Abram is only a little over an hour away, so is a great option when we have a short day in mind. Sunday, we had to be back home for a 3:00 meeting…hey, we can get a good thigh burn between 9 and 1, right???
Time actually seems to come to a standstill when you pull into the Mt. A parking lot. Even on a Sunday in January, you’re parking within feet of the lodge, which is a Quonset-hut affair (okay, it’s a Rubb Structure, but you get the idea) that has the feel of old and simple, even if it’s not. The “real” main lodge burned from a lightning strike in 2011, explaining the seeming lack of sophistication for a good-sized ski area. There’s not a lot of seating, which isn’t a problem most of the time, but there were a couple of race events going on so we had to wait around for a few minutes to pull up a table and pull on our boots. Everyone seemed to be taking the delays in stride…no sign of crankiness at all. That always bodes well for a pleasant day on the mountain…if they’re happy in the lodge, they’re usually happy on the slopes!
Once outside, though, the waiting stopped. Even with only one chair, a non-detachable double, headed up to the top, there simply was no line. Okay, we may have had to wait a whole minute once…but that’s it. That can be a recipe for leg burnout with high-speed lifts, but with a non-detachable, it just means a nice, relaxed flow to the day. And that pretty much describes the skiing, as well; nice and relaxed, no sense of pressure. There wasn’t anyone forcing their way through crowds and irritating everyone, since there WEREN’T any crowds.
We started off to mountain right, taking Upper Easy Rider to Lower Easy Rider a few times to get our legs loosened up. Pretty quickly, though, we realized that loosening our legs up was about all that was going to happen; the combination of having a number of trails closed due to Mother Nature not being TOO generous with the snow, and two marquee trails, Boris Badenov and Dudley-Do-Right, closed for races/race training, there suddenly wasn’t a whole lot open over that way (actually, Dudley was partially open, but it was hard to access while avoiding the racers). We tried taking Sweeper, but it led us to more closed trails. Hmmm. Might be a short day; with few trails open and signs that they were getting scratchy already, the afternoon might not be all that fun.
But then we followed a savvy local as he pitched off Sweeper into Fearless Leader, went about 20 yards and shot off to the right onto a trail that wound over to Round-A-Bout. Aha!…the Holy Grail! Suddenly, we had our own groomed secret stash; even at close to noontime, it was virtually untouched with large patches of corduroy still waiting for our edges. A number of runs there, let us take advantage of the grooming and the utter lack of traffic to do great big swoopy GS turns from side to side down the trail. The sun even came out a bit for us, and the light over there (it’s the southern exposure on the mountain) was great for January.
Still…we were glad that we’d already planned on a shortened day. On this day, particularly with two premier trails closed to the public, Mt Abram was lacking the variety needed for a long day of skiing; luckily, with moderate ticket prices, we didn’t feel short-changed. A good point to learn, though; if you’re making a trip to a smaller mountain during periods when snow conditions might mean fewer trails open, it’s a good idea to call in advance and find out what plans the mountain has for the day. We heard more than a few grumbles from other people on the lifts; Boris, in particular, appeared to be the favorite trail for a couple and they weren’t at all happy about not being able to ski it.
End result? Hey, it’s early January, and we’re finding good skiing without having to fight the crowds who (rightly) assume they’ll get more snow at bigger money resorts. It’s a win all around… Now, Mother Nature, please get your act together and get us some more white stuff to play in!