Skiing Ragged Mountain
Sunday, January 26th, 2025
Runs: 15
Distance: 15.07 miles
Elevation: 15,489 feet
Max Speed: 33.7 mph
Avg. Speed: 15.0 mph
Moving Time: 1 hour, 1 minute, 10 seconds
Total Time: 5 hours, 1 minute, 46 seconds
Back to skiing! Sarah and I planned to either hike Carter Dome, hike Isolation, or ski somewhere on the Indy Pass. The forecast for the high peaks looked absolutely miserable, so skiing it was! Sarah proposed Ragged, which I was thrilled to revisit now that it was more open. This would also be the first time she would meet my new car! I scooped her up at 6:00am, and we made it to the mountain just after 8:00am. We got loaded hash browns from Hooksett which were DELIGHTFUL - we ended up saving our Hooksett breakfast sandwiches for later. We got our Indy tickets loaded into our RFID cards and set up camp in the back corner of the lodge to get ready. Just after the lifts started spinning at 8:30am, we were off!
Mountain Report
We are now skiing and riding on 33 trails and 163 acres of terrain. Current snow surfaces are primarily Machine Groomed with secondary Packed Poweder. Our Uphill Route is now OPEN to the summit.
Runs 1-6
Run 1: Summit Six Express - Upper Exhibition - Lower Exhibition
[0.89 mi; 3:40; 1,178 ft; 25.0 mph max; 14.5 mph avg]
Run 2: Summit Six Express - Blueberry Patch - Lower Ridge - Pines
[1.19 mi; 4:34; 1,158; 27.4 mph max; 15.7 mph avg]
Run 3: Summit Six Express - Blueberry Patch - Lower Ridge
[1.19 mi; 3:48; 1,106 ft; 32.8 mph max; 18.8 mph avg]
Run 4: Summit Six Express - Upper Ridge - New Found Ridge - Main Street
[0.89 mi; 3:26: 1,086 ft; 31.5 mph max; 15.6 mph avg]
Run 5: Summit Six Express - Upper Ridge - Headwall - Raggedy Andy - Main Street
[1.00 mi; 4:05; 1,138 ft; 33.7 mph max; 14.7 mph avg]
Run 6: Summit Six Express - Upper Ridge - Headwall - Raggedy Andy - Lower Chute - Village Green - Main Street
[1.04 mi; 4:39; 1,102 ft; 30.0 mph max; 13.5 mph avg]
Our first batch of runs were off of the Summit Six Express and let me tell you, they were delightful. I was glad to be skiing with Sarah again because 1) last time we skied together was the first day of the season for the both of us at Waterville Valley and conditions were ROUGH, 2) I missed her!, and 3) she is better than me and I am able to learn a lot from watching her! Partly her confidence in her skiing, but also how she makes turns and the works. For example, I would have NEVER chosen the lift line for the first run of the day, but with her off we went! It skied really nicely with just a few scratchy patches. It was a more intense run than I'm used to for my first run of the day, but it was also a great way to rip off the band-aid! It was also snowing!
Our next two runs followed Blueberry Patch to Lower Ridge. Run #2 followed Pines and Run #3 followed Lower Ridge all the way down - both required some speed to get back up to the lift area. These were LOVELY runs, easier than Exhibition, and there were no humans out this way yet. My only qualm was that a skate was required to get back to the lift line.
Now the lift line was starting to fill up, but we never waited more than 5 minutes at this point in the day, and they started the day with a lifty ushering people onto full chairs, which I appreciated. Run #4 followed the Upper Ridge to New Found Ridge and Main Street which was another lovely route. All of these trails were wide and at a nice level of steepness for my comfort level.
I remembered to get the obligatory ski-poles photo at the top of one of these runs - Emma is still better at it, but I'm starting to get the hang!
Runs #5 and #6 included the Headwall trail - which was an approrpiately named super short and steep Headwall. This headwall is about where my comfort limit is with steeps, and it is nice because I can clearly see the end of it. I still get spooked by long steep sections of trail. We maneuvered our way down both runs trying to ski all of the open trails on this side of the mountain (we were MOSTLY successful) before heading inside for a hot chocolate, breakfast sandwich, and warming break.
Runs 7-9
Run 7: Spear Mountain Express - Showboat - Showoff
[0.81 mi; 3:22; 991 ft; 27.0 mph max; 14.4 mph avg]
Run 8: Spear Mountain Express - Cardigan - Turnpike
[1.21 mi; 4:49; 1,056 ft; 28.2 mph max; 15.1 mph avg]
Run 9: Spear Mountain Express - Flying Yankee
[1.24 mi; 6:53: 1,027 ft; 28.4 mph max; 10.2 mph avg]
We had a nice 40-ish minute break inside and came out to see just how many people were now on the mountain - yikes! The line for the six-pack was now past the ropes, so we decided it would be a lovely time to check out the trails off the Spear Mountain Express. The lines for this quad were MUCH shorter, which we were delighted about. Run #7 had the only actual black run (I don't count Headwall) I'd follow for the day - Showboat, which was also the lift line. It was overall manageable, and if there were less ice, I think I'd actually ski it well. I had a moment of "oh" on the steepest section where I realized it would simply be easier to go faster and ski like I know how to ski, versus shifting from hockey stop to hockey stop. What a silly activity!
Run #8 was down the long green run - Cardigan and Turnpike - which was lovely! Definitely congested near the bottom. It had a nice headwall section that could be bypassed, too. Someone learning could definitely spend good time on this run methodically working their way down - I was a big fan! Run #9 was my favorite off of Spear Mountain - the Flying Yankee. Just a nice cruiser blue run.
Unfortunately, we both had to pee badly at this point since we were post-hot chocoalte, so we did a QUICK break inside before getting some more laps in. I was starting to feel a bit tired and longing for a larger mountain like Jay to keep my interest piqued, but again, skiing with Sarah was so fun and she quickly got me back into it when my brain was getting tired!
Runs 10-12
Run 10: Spear Mountain Express - Showboat - Showoff
[0.85 mi; 3:09; 1,106 ft; 29.3 mph max; 16.2 mph avg]
Run 11: Spear Mountain Express - Cardigan - Jug Handle - Turnpike
[1.27 mi; 4:34; 1,066 ft; 26.9 mph max; 16.6 mph avg]
Run 12: Summit Six Express - Upper Ridge - Headwall - Upper Chute - Raggedy Andy - Main Street
[1.00 mi; 3:26; 1,096 ft; 28.3 mph max; 17.5 mph avg]
We planned to hit the six-pack again, but the line was brutal at this point, so back to the quad! We hit the Showboat/Showoff run again after a lovely chair ride with a ski instructor and young girl (no older than 5) - the kid was working on "no pizza," but to work on it you had to chant: "CAPITAL N. CAPITAL O. NO PIZZA" followed by 63 exclamation points.
The wind was picking up at this point and Flying Yankee was closed for race training practice, which was a bummer. We followed Caridgan and Turnpike again for the next run, but also hit the "Jug Handle" spur, which was a gentler bypass to the headwall on Cardigan. We also realized that the white mountain we could see from the top was not Moosilauke, but Mt. Cardigan!
Sarah wanted to try to hit the "thin cover - ungroomed" Sweepsteakes run. I said "go for it!" not wanting to take any unnecessary risks after the brutal January I've had. I wiggled my way down the blues and met her at the bottom, where we decided we'd start the process of wrapping up for the day.
Runs 13-15
Run 13: Summit Six Express - Upper Ridge - New Found Ridge - Main Street
[0.94 mi; 3:23; 1,145 ft; 28.5 mph max; 16.7 mph avg]
Run 14: Spear Mountain Express - Cardigan - Turnpike - Wanna Be Wild
[1.20 mi; 3:53; 1,014 ft; 30.2 mph max; 18.5 mph avg]
Run 15: Barnyard Triple - Barnyard
[0.35 mi; 3:04; 220 ft; 21.6 mph max; 6.8 mph avg]
We decided we'd work our way across the three chair lifts to wrap up our day, ending with a nice easy run off the triple. For Run #13 we headed up the six-pack and followed Upper Ridge, New Found Ridge, and Main Street down, and then we got in the almost non-existent line for the quad (the line for the six-pack was still dreadful - and by dreadful, Sarah timed it, a 12 minute wait, which truly isn't that horrible). We followed Cardigan and Turnpike again for Run #14, and then cut through the Wanna Be Wild park, which was just a series of three pseudo-jumps, but lovely. The truly wild thig about Run #14 was the absolute and utter carnage of the lower Turnpike. Imagine a scene in a disaster movie where Tom Cruise is sprinting away from whatever "the doom" is, and everything around him is blowing up - that was the lower Turnpike. People were flying over bumps, wiping out by doing nothing. The trail was littered with yard sales and snowboarders who popped a squat mid-trail, it was WILD.
Our final run for the day, our "two more skip the last," was a DELIGHTFUL run down Barnyard, which included a brief stint through the actual barn! I don't know if it simply wasn't there on my last visit or if I had missed it, but it was a DELIGHT. We followed the run over to the Meadows Carpet, which brought us back up to the base area where we packed up and went upstairs to the Stone Hearth (upstairs in the back room of the Elmwood Lodge) for some delicious pizzas. We had an easy, albeit long-feeling Sunday-evening drive back home. This was a LOVELY day!
Oh, and a quick note about layers because I'm trying to be more mindful of what works in what conditions! I wore the mid-cushion Darn Tough ski socks, two pairs of the Costco leggins cut below the knee, Backcountry GoreTex pants (new!), midweight merino wool baselayer from Backcountry, Trail Mix microgrid fleece from Outdoor Research, Patagonia Nano Puff (for the first 6 runs), Helly Hansen shell, and a lightweight merino wool Buff, and I felt good! Toes got cold before the sun came out. Conditions didn't get above freezing until the end of the day. My body felt good, though! I could feel coldness on my thighs as these new pants are thinner, but they never felt cold, if that makes sense. It got windy at the end of the day, but I didn't need to put my puff back on.
No comments:
Post a Comment