Prospect officially opened on Friday after getting about a 10" dump on
Thursday, so I drove up Saturday for about 3.5 hours of classic skiing in
pretty good early-season conditions. Most of the trails were packed but
there were no machine-made tracks, which didn't seem to matter that much
(perhaps lots of classic rollerskiing makes one less dependent on
tracks?). Temps were in the 20's all day, not much wind, all the tree
branches were totally snow covered, and it snowed lightly most of the
day. Most of the rocks were well covered up, the lone exception I saw were
a few on the left (easy) side of Chickadee, which wasn't groomed at all but
was still very skiable. I didn't go up Mt Trail, but some people I saw
reported it to be very skiable with all the rocks sufficiently
covered. The trails that were skateable seem to be in pretty good shape,
but the skateable terrain was definitely more limited than normal --- I'd
guess about a third of those there Saturday were skating and they seemed to
be doing quite well.

Six hours of driving for 3.5 hours of skiing, but it was still very well
worth the trip.

Let it snow,
Jim

========================================
Jim Grau
Schlumberger-Doll Research
36 Old Quarry Road
Ridgefield, CT 06877
Office: 203-431-5303
Fax: 203-438-3819