When It Rains ...

The past ten days have been remarkable. We had two very large snow storms – one in the heart of Presidents Week – which dumped some incredibly light, dry snow on our mountain. The second storm, which hit us hard for the entire day on Sunday, February 22nd and into the early morning hours of the 23rd, made for the best single day of skiing I’ve had in the Eastern U.S. in a very, very long time. Seriously. Last Monday was definitely “pinch me” time, and I was fortunate to be able to spend the day teaming up with some great instructors to ski with a family that are some of my favorite guests. We giggled like school kids all day, had some great crashes in deep powder up to our knees, skied the double diamond woods and bumps in good form, and got to see some terrific children make a lot of progress while grinning from ear to ear.

That was last weekend. This weekend was a different story.

On Thursday, the weather warmed to above freezing. On Friday, the heavens opened and it poured rain on us. Late Friday night, everything froze solid. On Saturday, I’m fairly certain that Okemo set a world record for the largest vertical drop of any ice skating rink in the world. It was scary out there, as in granite countertops scary. Overnight Saturday and into this morning, Sunday, our snowmaking and grooming crews showed why they are the best on the planet, and today our guests had reasonably good conditions on a pretty nice day, all things considered.

Naturally, there’s another big storm on the way tomorrow. There’s nothing like “dust on crust” to keep us honest on the hill. What will come our way after that is anyone’s guess, but it is Vermont and March tends to be our snowiest month, so we’ll just have to take it one day at a time. After all, when it rains, it freezes.