Black Mountain of New Hampshire 2/23/08

In my Quixotic attempt at becoming a better blogger, I'm going to add yet another post about our latest exciting adventure. Since Alex was on her school vacation last week, and we had a discount card that we received by making a donation to the Children's Hospital at Dartmouth, and this particular card had extra-good discounts to Black Mountain of NH and the infamous Wildcat on Feb. 23 and 24th respectively.... and this sentence is running-on too long... At any rate, we made reservations through our timeshare to stay in one of their "hospitality" rated resorts in North Conway, ironically enough where our actual unit is. This was a different resort. A much different resort. Okay, it was a converted motel. But hey, what the hell, we were there to ski, and Apres-ski. We only needed 4 walls, a ceiling, and 2 beds. Which is almost what we got. The walls and ceiling were there along with a Murphy and a pull-out with what I assume were mattresses at one time, and some flat, limp things that approximated pillows. I guess for $200.00 for an entire week, that's not too bad. What was too bad was we were only staying for 2 nights.

Meh... whatever, the skiing made-up for it. The drive up on Friday was fun, it snowed the entire time with not a lot accumulating until we reached the Spaulding tpke in NH. It made for pretty slow going and with 2 rest stops, and a lunch break, it took just over 6 hours to get there. Usually it takes about 4.5. I was a little bummed-out because I wanted to see just how many minutes I could shave-off by using our new, Super-Cool E-Z Pass.
Of course, that which makes for a sucky drive, also makes for Epic ski conditions. We got-up first thing in the morning to about 5-6 inches of fluffy champaign powder. A quick breakfast and it was off to one of the truly overlooked gems of White Mountain skiing.









Black Mountain

Yes, that's a hyper-link above, I'm too lazy to go into detail, click it and see for yourself...
Awesome. We got there about 5 minutes after the lifts started turning. In fact, I think we were only about the 10th car in the lot. After gearing-up, and getting our discounted tickets. ($64 for all three of us for the whole day) We went right on the lift no lines. In fact, the lines for the lift never went more than 3 deep. We skied from 8:30am to 2:00pm. The only reasons why we stopped were because we were so tired from getting over 12 runs (maybe more) in that time. That's almost unheard-of. Also we had to rest-up for Sunday's trip to Wildcat.










The summit double chair. A rarity in this age of High-speed Quads and Six-packs. Nice, it keeps the crowds to a minimum










View of Mt. Washington from the summit. Yeah, yucky clouds, wait 'til tomorrow!!!!











Something none of us have ever experienced, Untracked Powder!










Yes, I let my daughter have the honor of making First Tracks.










Alex has some weird obsession with crappy, old surface lifts. First handle-tows, then that damn T-Bar at Bromley, now the Platter-Pull. UGH!!!!

Really great day. Everybody got a little of what they like the best. Daniela found some nice, long groomed trails and was able to test-out her new boots. I was able to try a pair of Volkl AC30s I've had my eye on, and take them out in the powder and off-piste. Alex found some glades she enjoyed and rode the stupid Platter-pull. Twice.