Saddleback, ME | March 13, 2014

Rob Brown and I spent our Vulcan at Saddleback, Maine. It was a great day to explore Saddleback, this was my first time up there and we practically had the place to ourselves. The drive up on Wednesday night was a bit treacherous, we were almost sidelined by a logging truck (or two) and we saw a bit of carnage on Route 4, particularly on the hills. We saw one state plow sliding down a hill sideways, scary. Thanks to Rob’s buddy Eric, we had an outstanding lodge to stay at for the evening in Rangely. The morning came around and we checked the STE Weather page for snow totals – lots of snow across the board, Saddleback was reporting almost two feet. I think we got on the 4th or 5th double chair, when they let the first double on there were like 15 people lined up. We headed straight for Casablanca and it was deep, it’s not often I get to ski on my 195 Praxis Pow Boards but this was the day.

Myself, my brother and Rob Brown went up to Camel’s Hump yesterday to see how VT fared with Vulcan. Right from the parking lot we realized the snow had gotten really wet and dense the night before and it was going to be a challenge. Although the new snow depth seemed to be much deeper than what we had seen in Maine – the quality had gone to sh*t. The wet snow and my old touring setup didn’t work well – after 4 years of hard touring, my tired Naxo bindings broke at the toe piece, just like everyone told me they would. Skiing back down on 1 ski was a challenge, but a good workout. I’ll chalk Camel’s up as a cardio mission. It sounds like another 8″ fell in places last night and the rest of the week is supposed to stay cold. Spring temps are here and skiing is as good as it’s been all season, eventually we’ll have some stabilization of snowpack on George and we can get our annual pilgrimage underway.

Fail on pictures.

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