Jay Wins!

Jonny Jay reports, posted by SBR:

Having not posted a blog since my early season epistle, I thought it time to provide an update. How was the skiing this past weekend at the end of February? In a word – awesome!

We went down Thursday evening since Pudd had informed me that there was some 24-30” of new snow being reported on the Jay website. Always torn between wanting to believe and the possibility of disappointing reality, we hoped for the best. Upon arrival in Montgomery Centre we were greeted by a muddy driveway and about 6” of compressed wet snow – could this be what’s left of the two feet plus of new snow? But the next morning at the mountain revealed the truth – there really was that much new snow. It had compressed and was quite thick in the glades on Friday but skiing was fabulous no matter what. Then a good 6-8” topcoat on Friday night made the Saturday snow amazingly good – it was western skiing at Jay – beautiful packed and tracked snow on the “groomers” and highly skiable fresh snow over the heavy underlayer in the glades and the less groomed trails. Awesome!

Even got Suse Q doing bumps on Liftline (a first time for her and it was so good she wanted to do it again – and we did). Timbuktu, Powerline, the upper Kwai was the best I’ve seen it in years, etc. Sunday was another epic day as we practised bumps on lower UN, Exhibition and ventured into lower Everglade for Suse Q’s first real glade experience (we even found the ditch where Gollum got stuck the last time they were down). And then, to prove how amazing the snow was, she jumped from Everglade to North Glade. Some trepidation of course at the start but with the beautiful snow conditions, mild temperatures and no wind, how could you not enjoy it? No falls and by the end she was hooked. I had to bring her down a bit because I know the conditions won’t always be so forgiving and I didn’t want her to think she could just saunter into any old glade and expect the snow to be like that – soft with some resistance so you could commit.

Some Kudos to the Mountain for keeping things in such good shape this winter and I was very impressed to see they had the flag of Georgia flying on the towers in recognition of the luger who died pursuing his dream at the Olympic Games. A nice touch. On a funny note, I was reading the conditions report as I was waiting and noticed a big bold statement about a record snowfall of over 500”. I assumed they were talking about this year, which seemed very unlikely since I remember many more snowy years, so I mentioned it to a regular at Stateside who was also surprised. Of course when you put your glasses on you see that this year’s snowfall is only about half that but the bold print of the record sure stands out without any year reference – an amusing senior moment!

So it looks like we’ll have some snow for a while – see you there soon.

JJ