New Year's Day storm

January 1, 2008

West Mountain

Can you believe it, upstate NY get a ton of fresh snow... Woke up the morning of the 31st to 6-8 inches of new fluffy powder, then get another 1-3 inches during the day of the 31st, and finally it snowed all day on the first starting at 8am, with another 4-5 inches during the day. Sweet.

I could not pass this up, so I hoped in the Jeep and headed up to West. Now, this is a small mountain, but there was so much fresh snow I did not care. Conditions were the best I've ever seen there and some of the best snow I've ridden on in years. They had not groomed any of the new snowfall yet, so there was powder everywhere. Plenty of untouched powder on the sides of the trails about 12"-15" deep. It was hard to find a totally untouched line on a trail, but there was plenty to go around, and the snow was falling all day, pretty heavy at times.

Chris has inspired me to try to ride glades, it's a whole new world of riding. Plus when I go to Jay I don't want to embarrass myself by totally sucking in the trees. I did not think I would find any glades, but I went to the far right side of the mountain to the triple chair where there were less kiddies and a better chance of hitting fresh stuff. After riding the main double to the top, I used the ride to the triple as a warmup and to get used to riding again, a little rusty for the first outing of the year. Riding up the triple I scoped out some potential spots where I might be able to go in the woods. There are no 'official' glades at West, actually you are not supposed to go in the woods at all, but I was willing to risk it for conditions like this.

Took the triple up and rode down A.O.A and cut onto The Connection. From there I dove into the woods before hooking into Midway. No tracks at all in here! Powder was deep enough that it was very difficult to get up after falling and all logs and underbrush were covered. Found some nice lines and a few cool chutes. It looks like someone was in here over the summer cutting large clusters of smaller trees and brush. Tried to teach myself how to ride in the deep powder thru trees and learned a few things. One was to always remember Chris' advice...'look for the space between the trees', and the other thing I figured out was to lean forward for a split second to get the tail of the board up so I could swing it around to either side.

Next run hit the this same glade, but from higher up off A.O.A. This glade was terrible, no lines and tons of underbrush. Struggled to get out of this crap.

I ended up meeting a few other snowboarders and brought them to the first glade run and did this most of the day. Much easier riding once the initial trail is blazed. Had a great time hitting this glade over and over and rode some different lines each time thru. No drops. Get more confident in the trees today. Hopefully I can hang with the big dogs at Jay.

Hit most of the groomers over the other runs, Mach II, Go-Go, Coy Dog, Banister, Midway, and Frolic. One nice highlight was a felled tree off the side of Alley that formed a perfect rail slide with a drop back onto the trail. Hit it twice nicely, no tricks though. Was jamming to Helmet on the iPod before hooking up with the other riders.