6:25 time for another hour of sleep
At 4:45 my alarm went off… four hours of sleep had never felt so bad. I lay in bed trying to commit to whether I was going to do it. I had spent last night getting my shit together pulling things out that had been stored for the summer.
Last night was promising…It was like a misty fog here in Waterbury at like 7 pm. Temp was like 44 down here so I was hoping that the altitude change meant it had already started.
I have had a long week and a seven hour drive to do tomorrow so I was totally okay with not getting up as the snooze button was pressed for the second time.
Possibilities….as I lay in bed that’s what started running through my head. The possibility of making those first turns. The possibility that Jerry would send that email with pictures showing that it was ridable. The possibility that I would have had all my shit together and just not gotten out of bed.
So after a few more presses of the snooze button I was dressed and out of the house at 5:15. See the problem is there is no weather reporting right at Stowe. The airport is at lower elevation, so checking the web is no better than looking out the window here in Waterbury. Also, you need to start hiking in the dark, because you need to drop on the first snow right at the break of day. Once the warmth of the day hits the snow at the bottom then you’re walking out; the moisture count just is so high that the snow starts clumping…the last two sentences mean you can’t look at webcams to help make your decision. Basically, you can’t wait, you need to commit, you need to believe in the possibility.
It was snowing pretty good as I crossed from Waterbury into Stowe. This was a good sign.
Then the bad signs started setting in. The snow didn’t increase at the high school. Again…it didn’t increase at the touring center. The other bad sign at the touring center was that it was calm. For it to be it’s shreddable best, you need the wind to be blowing and swirling at the mountain. This will deposit more snow on certain trails which makes those trails rideable when others aren’t. Generally with a weather change like this, you can count on the wind.
Finally i got up to the mountain and I could still see some green in the lawn near the lodge. If you don’t have full coverage there then you know your returns have diminished significantly. So maybe 1-2 inches at the Midway. (So probably the same amount as in the pics from October 3rd that Dumont posted, except those were at the top and the Midway is at the gondola base.)
Watching the radar last night it does look like there were shredable amounts over in the Adirondacks, but obviously it wasn’t quite cold enough at altitude here.
Sometimes I think that if I hadn’t taken the chance…that it would have been there (a kind of Murphy’s law).
Then again, better to try and not succeed, then lie in bed and wonder about the possibilities.
(Sorry for the lack of pics, but as I said, it was still dark; I’ll link to or add some pics for Stowe’s site later today)