Day 74 - back to my roots

Since I'm on holiday in Montreal, my friend and I decided to take a ride to Smugglers Notch, the mountain where we both learned how to snowboard. I brought all my gear with me, everything but my snowboard, so I rented a high-performance Burton Feelgood..... which worked out perfectly since I wanted to demo that board anyhow. We threw on our gear and headed up the lift in the sunny, 8 degree (F) weather.

We started on the "easy" mountain and took things slow. Last winter, Bonk crushed her ankle on her snowmobile so she wasn't sure how her snowboarding would fair. As we made our way down the Lower Morse Liftline, I couldn't help but feel nostalgic about our very first day on boards. That was eight years ago! Time flies.... and things have changed.

Bonk gave it a great effort but after three runs, her leg was in so much pain, she just couldn't continue. She drove me over to the Madonna/Sterling area so I could take a run down my old favorite Rumrunner.

All the chairs on Smuggs are two person non-detachable chairs. They seemed perfectly normal to me back in the day when I had no idea what a high speed quad was. Now they seemed dinosaur like and it felt like it took forever as I made my way up the Sterling Summit Lift.

Conditions were amazing for east coast skiing. A nice soft packed powder covered the runs with a few patches of ice but nothing horrible. Also, it looked like a good six inches of the fresh stuff fell overnight. Unlike Whistler, there were plenty of fresh tracks to be found at two in the afternoon.

As I made my way down Rumrunner, it was much like I remembered. I glanced over at the gladed run, something I never would have attempted when I held a seasons pass at Smuggs, and giggled to myself. This black diamond run would be equally rated with Marmot Trees at Whistler. Much like the blue line I was riding would have be rated a very easy green on Blackcomb.

Before I knew it, my vertical decent was completed and so was my trip back to memory lane. After riding WhistlerBlackcomb for the past two seasons, I am completely spoiled.... and screwed, in the sense that nothing else can or will compare. I explained it to my friend like this: it was much like going back to the house you grew up in. Everything seemed so big and scary when you were a kid but when you go back as an adult, you realize it's not as big as you perceived it and nothing about it was scary at all. Still it was a great experience. And that Burton Feelgood is on my list of boards to consider for next season!

At least Vermont has the Ben & Jerry's