Sugarbush Resort on Tuesday, February 23, 2016

		Sugarbush Resort Tuesday, February 23, 2016
		Submitted on February 23, 2016 by rocket21 (1408)
	Session	Full Day
	Ticket Type	Discount from Third Party
	Lift Lines	0 minutes
	Trail Conditions	50% open; Loose Granular, Packed Powder
	Glades	On Lincoln/Gadd/Mt. Ellen, there was coverage, but it looked firm with objects sticking up. Castlerock was closed to all use (lift or backcountry). Woods on Gate House side had only patchy cover visible.
	Moguls	Some on both peaks, but appeared to be bulletproof with bare troughs in places and thus didn't see anyone on them.
	Terrain Park(s)
	Run of the Day	Rim Run
	Food and Beverage	About $13 for chicken tenders, fries, and small hot chocolate at south base lodge.
	Comments	Started the day at Mt. Ellen, as GMX was the 8AM lift. Not much to ski off this lift today, as there were I think two groomed routes off it, Realized pretty quickly that Sugarbush South has a much better design for snowboarding, as the flats/uphills near the Glen House and then below the bottom of the North Ridge were tough for the snowboarder in our group. Three groomed intermediate was down once the North Ridge opened (and upper Rim Run was groomed from the summit). Did not venture over to Inverness, the main slope was closed for racing and possibly Brambles too. Ventured off groomed terrain once and found it to be bulletproof. Groomed terrain on Mt. Ellen was a nice packed powder. Natural trails have bare spots and ice. Man made trails don't appear to have a tremendous base. After about an hour or so, we drove over to Sugarbush South (Slidebrook is closed due to lack of snow; almost didn't go to Sugarbush because of this). Amazed to see how much different the conditions were here; no packed powder to be found; all granular. Castlerock was closed and no backcountry access to it allowed. Birch Run was the only groomed trail off Lynx, and was generally good loose granular with a few frozen granular scraped areas on the steeps. Did not venture onto Sunrise, as it wasn't groomed and had visible bare spots. Trails to skiers left of the Gate House Quad had a thin layer of granular and were pretty scratchy. The lift line and Sleeper were pretty good though. Not a tremendous base on these trails. Jester and Ripcord were groomed off the summit. Ripcord skied decently before lunch, but was getting scraped. Upper Organgrinder had not been groomed overnight and looked scratchy, but had coverage. Jester had good granular conditions, but Downspout was getting scraped. Lower Organgrinder I think had been groomed, but didn't have much loose granular move around. Groomed intermediate trails in that vicinity skied decently. Murphy's was marked as groomed in the report, but I dont think it was. From the looks of it on the lift, it was an absolute disaster - ice boilerplate with very little granular to push around; the few who ventured onto it tended to fall and try to plot a way out. Valley House Quad was not running and wasn't needed. It was generally a 2 minute wait to get onto Super Bravo - not because of crowds, but because how slow the ticket scanning process is. People would be bunched up at the start of the queue, waiting to be scanned, while the line was empty and empty chairs were going up. Pretty annoying; amazing how much faster it was when they took down the queue and stopped scanning for the last hour. Stein's was groomed and held up amazingly well. Though there's boilerplate lurking underneath, they managed to till up a lot of corn sized granular, which made it skiable even at 3:30. Spring Fling was also like this. Snowball was okay in the morning, but a bit more scratchy. Stein's, Spring Fling, Jester (except the chute near Allyn's) all appear do have good man made base depths for spring. Though it would have been nice to have more terrain open/groomed, it was still a good day on the slopes. We managed to tally almost 35K vertical without pushing too hard. The forecasted rain could do some damage, though.
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	Report Rating	7