mykng: January 2009

Ready for the slopes?

Madness at Xbos‎

My Plug for Smugglers' Notch

This was our second visit to Smugglers' Notch in Vermont. The entire Nguyen-clan, as I dubbed us, went. The group included my parents, Mary, Long their three kids, Megan, Paige and myself. We had such a positive experience our first time that we decided to make it a yearly event.

This year turned out even better, albeit much colder. Since the entire 8+ hour drive was a little too much for the kids, we tried to find an overnight stop mid-way up. Last year we drove by The Great Escape Lodge just near Glens Falls, NY and we instantly knew it would be a fine place to stay. Our instincts served us well. The indoor water park was a lot of fun for both adults and kids and we celebrated Alexander's birthday there. He came away with enough toys to play with for the rest of the trip.

Not that he needed them we got to Vermont. He, along with his sister Kaitlyn, were busy with ski school. This year, my sister's money and effort in getting them to go really paid off. This two were carving speedy, well-controlled S's down the slopes. The first time I tried to spot them, I almost missed them, because they skied by me so fast.

Paige went to ski school too. However, she was not quite ready for the experience. She just kind of went straight down without any turning or stopping. She didn't show any inclination to try either. We only kept her in ski school for the first two days, but vowed to try again next year. Smugglers' Notch recommended that kids start at age three anyway, and as my sister was fond of saying, she's a very young three (by about four months.) This didn't seem to take away from Paige's positive attitude toward skiing. She excitedly recreated for us her experience of going fast and falling and then getting up and going fast again.

Smugglers' Notch was good from the adult perspective too. The appeal was mostly woods and trails that I liked to call "New England narrow," meaning steep trails that were so narrow, there was little room to turn. I ended up bouncing down those slopes faster than I felt comfortable.

One of my favorite spots was a set of glades called Doc Dempsey's, perfect pitch and perfectly-spaced trees for me to make some nice turns. Being woods they held onto their powder really well. However, you wouldn't know it from the entrance where both the steepness and the exposed rock made the trail very intimidating. One time I took Long through there where he failed to turn on some exposed rock and yard-sale'd for about 20 yards. He narrowly missed a tree doing it. The fall was so horrifying that I wanted to look away, but i was too morbidly fascinated to do so. He came away without a scratch (thank goodness!) and the worse we had to do was climb back for his stuff.

Unfortunately, the weather was extremely cold with a daytime temperature of -1º Fahrenheit on our last day. My sister had a bit of fog on the inside of her goggles and when she took them off to wipe them, all the moisture on the inside of her goggles instantly iced over. She had to ski one run without them, and for that run each blink felt sticky from her tears freezing on her eyes. As for myself, I got a bit of frostbite on my left (forward) cheek.

The cold required me to put on extra layers for each outing and I became annoyed at how bulky I felt under my jacket. That's when my sister successfully recommended a vest for me, all the advantages of a warm fleece layer without restricting my arm motion. Needless to say, when I purchased one, I made sure it said "Smugglers' Notch" on it.

We'll be returning next year.

Mary carving some turns.