New snow for Crescent Ridge

March 23, 2024

Emilie Phillips

The week we returned from skiing in Colorado, it rained, turned warm, and rained more. The pathetic New Hampshire winter was over. Everything below 2,000′ was brown. Rather than desperately scraping my skis on remnants of brown snow, I contented myself with having ended the season with the great skiing in Colorado.

And then, winter came back. Mostly in the upper elevations, but we got a series of late March and early April storms that each dumped multiple feet of snow in the mountains. Tyson was able to re-activate his AMC trip to Crescent Ridge. We had one participant sign up. We drove up in the middle of the storm. Tyson has a strategy for getting the best snow. You go during the storm when it is fresh, not the day after. It worked this time. The roads were slick, but not crowded. There were some people in the parking lot, but we readily found parking even at 10 AM. The downside of skiing during the storm is there are no views or bright sun. We didn’t get first tracks, but the tracks kept filling in so fast that you couldn’t tell. The temperature was just about perfect. No particular adventure stories from this trip. Isaac tired out after one and a half laps. Adrian and I took an extra lap. That morning, I hadn’t been able to find a map. Tyson said to skip it because we knew the area so well. Turns out I misremembered where the second run is. So Adrian and I had to backtrack a smidge. We found Tyson and Isaac at the meadow. Isaac lying motionless in the snow trying to see how much snow would accumulate on him before we got back. From the meadow, it’s always a quick zip out to the car.

The adventure came the next day. Sunday was a brilliant blue bird day. Everyone from Boston and Montreal headed for the mountains. We were supposed to meet up with Benoît and Ivana at Jay Peak. Instead, we slid into a gas station in St Johnsbury VT with the brake light on. We turned around and limped home being very ginger on the brakes and pulling over frequently to add brake fluid. From the traffic jam we saw headed north, and reports from friends, we got the better day of skiing.

That was our last ski day for the year. There were a few more snow storms, but we had other commitments. The most notable was my first concert as bassoonist with the community band.