from Jan Welch on 10 Feb 2020
Ski Day 26 (01/28/20) – Hunting Powder Stashes and Shredding Groomers at Jay Peak
My friend Jarrod came to visit me from Denver for a week and I wanted to take him to my favorite mountains, while he was here. The day before he left we made our way up to Jay Peak. They had just had several inches of fresh powder on top of their already plentiful snow conditions.
We put on our gear at the Tram Side Lodge and headed towards the Flyer lift. It turned out that Flyer would be closed the whole day and ALL the other upper mountain lifts were on hold because of icing. We spent the first hour and half just playing around on the lower mountain until Jet was opened. I had issues from the start with my goggles fogging over and they never cleared up for the rest of the day.
The first lift to be de-iced was Jet. While on the lift we could see all the untouched powder had a thin coat of ice over it. We made our way down UN and instantly started breaking through the ice on the moguls. It really wasn’t that much fun to be breaking ice nonstop, so we cut into the woods in between Jet and UN. The glade was full of non-crusty fluffy powder that made me feel like I was in a dream state.
At the bottom we ran my friend Gus, who works over at Loon and we went with him into Timbuktu. Gus is excellent snowboarder and was just ripping through the glades, while Jarrod and I were lagging behind, trying to figure our lines. Living in Denver, Jarrod prefers the steep and deep runs and isn’t too keen on trees.
We spent the rest of the day mainly hitting groomers, but I did manage to trick him into a few more trees and moguls. I also made a few solo glade runs, while he would take his occasional pit stops in the bar in the Stateside Lodge. Throughout the day, it became extremely foggy, with only about 20 feet of visibility. The conditions in the trees were excellent, but the groomers themselves were hard, with blown off snow and plenty of exposed ice. We lasted till about 2 before calling it a day.