We had a nice siesta featuring hotel waffles (my favorite vacation delicacy) after our hike of Rumford White Cap and then took the long, grueling, 10 minute drive to Black Mountain of Maine! The parking area was quite full so we landed in the frozen-rutted overflow lot (I’m sounding dramatic, it was fine). We redeemed our Indy Passes with no problem. In honor of our personal ski instructor Emma, we arrived around lunch time, and the lodge was FULL. We landed booting up outside, which truly was fine - it was now in the upper 20s, which basically felt like summer after our morning!
Mountain Report
February 18, 2024 6:00am
Elvis might have left the building but the weekend fun rolls on! Your corduroy carpet is waiting & tickets are just $55! We're skiing & riding on 29 trails with packed powder & variable conditions. Temperatures are forecasted to be in the mid 20's with partly sunny skies. Note: ungroomed trails have some accumulated snow on top of a firm layer of crust.
The Lower Allagash is open once again after great efforts by our snowmakers. School break is on! Look for extended hours & a Winter Carnival like never before. Hit the slopes all week from 9am-4pm for just $55 or hit the tubing park from 12pm-4pm for $20! Catch live music, outdoor games plus free sleigh ridges. It's a week jam packed with unforgettable fun. Plus, a full day of free winter fun from 9am-9pm on Feb 22nd sponsored by L.L.Bean.! Let's make this school break one for the books.
Once we were suited up we headed over to the Novice Lift, an old, adorable double, where we would do somewhere around 10 laps over the course of a couple hours. We started with just following Ellis (the run under the lift), then we went a bit wider on Lower Sunday, then Magalloway (which became our “fun run” since we could/needed to get some speed), then Aroostook and The Bean too. We really hit all these runs in all the different permutations. Eventually, we landed in a groove of “skill runs” and “fun runs.” Skill runs involved practicing our parallel turns, specifically using our knees/fronts of our feets (apparently I’ve been heel-reliant). The fun runs were usually over on Magalloway and were geared for no-brain just ski, which was lovely. We did this for just under two hours before we got hungry. I had the itch to go higher up the mountain, but Gen made a good point that tomorrow will be another big day at Saddleback, and then we can come back to Black on Tuesday for our final runs.
Note: there were at least two additional runs before my watch started tracking, one on Ellis, one one Aldro-Ellis.
Run 1: Lower Sunday - The Bean
0.23 miles, 1:52, 1745 feet, 16.6 mph max, 7.2 mph avg.
Run 2: Androscoggin - Ellis
0.19 miles, 1:47, 180 feet, 18.4 mph max, 6.4 mph avg.
Run 3: Androscoggin - Ellis
0.24 miles, 2:29, 164 feet, 16.9 mph max, 5.7 mph avg.
Run 4: Lower Sunday - The Bean
0.29 miles, 2:48, 171 feet, 16.9 mph max, 6.3 mph avg.
Run 5: Magalloway (Uphill Entrance)
0.28 miles, 1:11, 177 feet, 25.2 mph max, 14.1 mph avg.
Run 6: Androscoggin - Ellis
0.29 miles, 3:25, 174 feet, 12.7 mph max, 5.0 mph avg.
Run 7: Magalloway (Uphill Entrance)
0.25 miles, 1:24, 171 feet, 25.6 mph max, 10.9 mph avg.
Run 8: Lower Sunday - The Bean
0.19 miles, 1:27, 174 feet, 17.3 mph max, 7.8 mph avg.
Run 9: Magalloway (Downhill Entrance)
0.27 miles, 1:17, 194 feet, 25.6 mph max, 12.5 mph avg.
Our goals for Saddleback are to apply our skill runs to the longer greens that they have there, I want to conquer the steep section on Hudson Highway, and we want to hit some of the easier blues, which involve taking the Rangeley Quad to The Pass, which will be a whole adventure. I’m excited! For Black, we’re going to hit the green “glades” and the novice “park” as a bit, and then want to get up to the top of that mountain, too. Lots of goals over the next couple of days!
Our day ended with getting the last two stools up at the Last Run Pub where there was a lovely duo playing live music. We didn’t realize they didn’t have food at the pub, so instead of eating cafeteria-style food we just had mac and cheese bites at the mountain and then got McDonalds/ate our leftovers for dinner, followed by a long siesta/early bedtime.
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