| Skishark |
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Reply with quote | #1 |
I skied Black Mountain NH for the first time ever on MLK Monday. If you eliminate the top 1/4 of the mountain, it's a great, smaller mountain with surprisingly varied and interesting terrain. There are several old-fashioned, narrow early days of New England skiing style trails that meander thru the woods, but what I liked best are the wide open slopes (almost like steep farm fields) that are really what skiing Black is all about. Those "fields" were buried in 12" of new snow that came down on Sunday on top of a base that was icy in spots underneath the new snow. There were still some small branches sticking thru on some "field" runs, but that served to hold the snow in place and was not a detriment to strong intermediate skiers and above; especially if skiing the fall-line. Well over half of the mountain had been left ungroomed which was good because groomed runs were already getting hard-packed to icy in spots despite a foot of new snow just the day before.
Black has two chairlifts. One to the summit which is really just a "cone" that comprises the top of the mountain. The Summit double chair has unloading about 3/4 of the way up and is where I recommend you get off. The other, a triple chair, unloads at about the same elevation. Both lifts are old and antiquated (paint peeling on the Summit chair), but get the job done. The upper 1/4 of the mountain was not worth it; at least for me yesterday. The terrain up on the "cone" is awkward and narrow (maybe a couple of the roped-off runs from the top are good when there's more snow) and the trail segment I skied from the top was pretty much sheer ice and granular. Any new snow had blown into the woods during the storm or was pushed-off into the woods by skier traffic.
Stick to the lower 3/4 and you have a pretty cool little mountain. I plan to try it again; next time while snow is falling on a Powder Day. However, for me it's a little too rundown and rough around the edges to make it part of my regular ski circuit. For example, old disheveled barbed-wire fences between the slopes and condos!!
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