Crotched Mountain, New Hampshire

Friday, February 2, 2018

MUCH colder than I'd expected: 7º by 7 pm and blasting wind (no lift closures, though). I've skied colder days this year, but none seemed as brutal. Crotched is still making snow like crazy, the guns going all night. Took one run down Pluto's Plunge that was absolutely delicious. The snow everywhere on the mountain was hard but exquisitely edgeable, and on Pluto's Plunge, hard snow was interspersed with great pillowy whales of manmade. You could make a turn or two across the hard snow and then turn deep into the pillow of manmade. I'd have stayed there all night, but my goggles were sheeted in ice at the bottom.

Really, conditions were great. We'd had two little snows over the past week — just an inch or two — but they bound up the manmade nicely. Slalom skis all night, skied alone. J was at home preparing for an Iowa trip.