Lincoln Woods, Cannon, Bretton Woods

Commuting to Boston is not what I do. But lately I’ve had to head in on several occasions for some testimony. It’s like going to another planet. We are closed up in a small room with no outside contact for 8 hours. That is why I had no idea a nice storm was developing in the mountains on Monday. Monday night, I left the hearing and got on the commuter train all set to get home and settle in for a big Pats-Jets game on Monday Night Football. The Wi-Fi option on make the commuter rail a pretty sweet way to get into town. I logged in and started my routine: email, weather, ski reports. Whoa! 8-10” at Cannon and more elsewhere? After some quick calls and rescheduling I’m on my way to NH. Chilly and I hit the road by 7pm and were nestled into the condo and watching the Pats by 9:30.

Saturday at 6am I took Chilly out to play in the 2-3" on the ground here in Lincoln. I had planned a quick 20 minute walk but she was loving it and I’m still interested in exploring up here. So we ended up doing about 2 hours on the trail. This trail system I've found leads right out of our place and seems to have endless possibilities. I'm sure there are local names for these trails but until I learn them I'm dubbing this whole network 'Outback 69'. The reasons are obvious when you see it. So this morning it was Outback 69 North. She found a nice big stick to run with.


And I found this. ??


Even with the extended hike I got on the Peabody lift by 9:15. Cannon was reporting 10.5" in the past 24hrs. That was a stretch. The best pockets held around 6". Fresh lines were still found on trail edges. The only trails that didn't ski well were those that had been hit with the guns (esp. Middle and Lower Ravine) . It seemed like the blown snow mixed with the real stuff and eliminated in fluffiness. The front 4 were getting heavily poached and looked good although I didn't bother.

The problem with Cannon on a pow day is that Cannon skiers are all die-hard pow-hounds. We're all thinking alike and fresh lines get used up faster than sunscreen at the albino family beach party. But that's not the case everywhere......

So off to Bretton Woods at ~11:30. BW was reporting 10-16" and that was no lie. Huge swaths of untouched were in plain sight. 8-10" was found everywhere that hadn't been groomed. Although the pitch can be a problem here it was ridable. After 4 fun, fresh runs on the lower mountain I finally realized that the Rosebrook chair was open. At the top was an early Christmas miracle. Upper Express was open, it had 12+ of fluff, and it looked like less than a dozen skiers had hit it. Thank you. I hit that 5 consecutive times. The fluff wasn't bottomless and the board took a few hits. But that's to be expected in early December and I had the right board for it. Unfortunately there is no decent cut back from there to Rosebrook Chair so those laps meant top-to-bottom and 2 chairs up. But the lower mountain was still in great shape so it was nothing to complain about.

At both mountains early season hazards are abundant. Water bars, man-made death cookies, and sharp stuff lurk beneath the fresh. So be on your toes. I got a stick wedged so far into my binding buckle that unstrapping at the bottom was a major ordeal.

Got back around 3:00 and C-dog was ready for round two. So another hour and half on the trail. This time was Outback 69 East. We found that it's an easy walk through the woods to the Kancamangus Ski Hill where they had the snow guns blazing. We explored some more, pushing the limits of energy and light. We got back in just as dark settled in pretty solidly.

I shot a lot of video but don’t have time to edit now. Here’s some unedited footage from Bretton Woods on Upper Express.