Our flight from Newark to Burlington was more interesting than most, in that we had a tour
of downtown New York just after take-off. Which is to say that we
flew right alongside Manhattan as we ascended, so most of the taller buildings
were just at eye level. Arriving in Burlington, we drove to Montpelier
where we spent the night. Naturally, we had to detour the next morning
long enough to take a picture or two of the capitol building of Vermont.
We arrived at Jay Peak around noon, and surprisingly, our condo (pictured here, the one
on the left) was already ready. It was quite spacious, amply stocked
with firewood and had more closet room than we could possibly need.
After lunch (which did involve poutine) we bought a half-day lift pass
(our 3-day pass didn't begin until the following day) and tested out the
slopes.
Jay Peak was stunningly uncrowded, particularly on Thursday and Friday. There
were no lift lines anywhere as you can see from this picture (empty chairs)
and you could easily come all the way down the mountain without seeing
another skier. In this picture you can see Jay Peak's signature gondola
on the left and in the distance. The gondola is the only way to get
to the very top of the mountain, which we determined was far too cold and
windy to be worth it.
Another picture from the chair lift to show just how empty the runs were. We spent
quite a bit of time at this particular convergence of trails as it was
just above our favorite glade (for the first two days anyway). This
is also about the only time it was not snowing. The rest of the weekend
it snowed constantly, which wasn't much of a problem as we only left the
mountain once. That one time was to go to the Inn at Trout River
nearby which we shall plug shamelessly here as not only being a dreadfully
cute B and B, but also quite possibly the best place to eat in northern
Vermont.
As the weekend progressed, we became bolder. Here is David (on the right) on the
mogul run known as Kitzbuehl. This run turned out to be a more difficult
than we had hoped. Considerable resting was required after this.
Unfortunately we did not have a hot tub this time, but a fireplace and
a bottle of wine works just as well.
Jay Peak was our first experience with glade skiing. As it turns out we should've
tried it earlier. By the fourth day of skiing we were spending all
of our time in glades. The glade shown here (with Melanie posing)
is considered intermediate in grade, but with the constant snowfall during
the weekend it was overall very gentle.
Here is David,a bit further on in the same glade. Amazingly he managed to avoid
hitting trees the entire weekend (well, on skis at least). In case
you are wondering, there are two ways to distinguish David from Melanie
in these pictures. The first is that Melanie's coat is large enough
for at least one more Melanie to hide in. The second is David's gloves
sport fluorescent orange stripes. Melanie believes these are invaluable
for finding David buried in snowdrifts. That would be a third way
to distinguish them, except thankfully we don't have any pictures of David
buried in snowdrifts.
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