Ski Resorts

This Blog & First Turns

Over the past seven days or so the blog has really started to pick up
in terms of attention and readership. That’s great news, and I’m happy
to welcome everyone stopping by. But it also made me realize something
pretty funny: I’ve got nothing on most other blogs when it comes to the
terrain discussed on a daily basis.

Most of the readers and links coming to this blog are from serious riders in serious locales;
places with real mountains. These are places I get to hit maybe twice a
year. The rest of the time I’m in Ontario, hitting hills that are
comparatively tiny. Woohoo! 700 foot, 45 second run. And all of a
sudden… you’re back in line at the lift again. So this report has
nothing on real locales…

First Turns at Moonstone

The recent dump
of snow in Ontario prompted a couple of local resorts to open on a
limited basis. So far as I could tell, the ones close to Toronto that
decided to open this weekend were Horseshoe Resort and Mount St. Louis Moonstone.
On the first day (Friday) both appeared to have one run and one lift
open. Yesterday, they opened more. At Moonstone, they said two chairs
and four lifts would be open. Having spent a lot of time at Moonstone
last year, a convinced a couple of buddies that the one-hour drive
would be worth it.

When we got there, the parking lot was virtually empty. We hopped
inside to get our discounted lift tickets (they were only 25 bucks),
strapped in, and away we went.

The snow itself wasn’t great. It was typical Ontario resort snow: hard,
icy, machine-groomed powder. Moonstone said its base varied between 15
and 35 centimetres, and everything was pretty well-covered. There was
no danger of rocks, mud or the like. Temperatures appeared to warm up
during the day, so there were actually some nice soft spots.

There was virtually no-one at the resort, which meant no line-ups of
any type and a reduced risk of running into morons making gigantic
s-shaped turns across the entire hill
(a common hazard in Ontario). From what we could tell, three lifts were
actually servicing two runs as opposed to four; a couple of blue and
black runs right beneath the lifts. To me, it was still great, as I was
happy to be snowboarding at all. Our entourage seemed to feel the same
way.

At around noon, the park opened, likely because everyone was starting
to fashion jumps out of anything they could on the main runs. It seemed
like about half the people that showed up headed into the park, where a
couple of jumps and a pipe were waiting. This created even more space.

The end result of all of this was that I got some great practice in for
Whistler next week. My first run was tentative, but after that I
started pushing my speeds more and more. With no-one on the slopes, you
could basically ride as straight and fast as you liked. This is also a
rarity in Ontario. I would imagine that freedom, plus a ton of real
powder, is what backcountry riding is like.

© 2005 HighlyObsessed.com | The Snowboarding and Cycling Blog