Never thought that I would enjoy east coast skiing again. It had been 7 years since I last skied the East Coast. I took out a brief loan out to take a flight into Manchester NH. From here, we drove to Middlebury, where I enjoyed a nice midnight tour of the country’s 5th best liberal arts school. I slept in a bed with another man, it was excellent. We awoke on the birthday of Brian Christopher Gault at 5:45am and drove to Burlington to meet the Adler Bros. Stowe‘s first gondola treated us to about 12 inches of new snow. At this point, I had to learn how to deal with branches whacking me in the face. Its a tough science to manage your way through East Coast glades. Next, we hiked to the top of Mt Mansfield. It felt like 1000 vertical, but the wind at the top was almost the most monstorous wind conditions that I have experienced. We skied some chutes and skied back into the trees. It was a winter iceland, with a bit of snowder on top. The day was a magnificent display of the powers of Vermont weather. ECBC (East Coast Backcountry) was something that is completely different from the West Coast, but it has enough moments to offer some serious skiing.
The birthday continued back to Burlington. At this point the proprietors of the Skinny Pancake served us up an amazing dinner with Otter creek Oatmeal Stout. A brief shot at Nectar’s and it was to bed for me.
The day’s most exciting pictures:
Was that last weekend? Wicked winds all over the Northeast. I was up at Bretton Woods and actually headed NWS warnings to “not even attempts driving” over certain mountain passes in NH.
Way to get after it on Mt. Mansfield. We were up at Stowe back in December. I showed Katie where you hike up. One of these days…