Cardigan 2-11-15

[capecodtele]

Kept looking at the weather and the road conditions and decided Wednesday was the day. Made the trek from Cape Cod to Cardigan and it was definitely worth it. Hit the trailhead at 9:00 with blue skies and temps in the low single digits to start and headed up to ski the Alexandria via the Holt to the Holt-ClarkCutoff. Skintrack was set the previous day and was perfect. Got to PJ Ledge and transitioned for the ski down the Alexandria. Conditions were about perfect. Only one or two other tracks on the trail since the snow event over the weekend. Lots of fresh light powder all over the place. Got to the bottom and headed over to the Kimball Ski Trail. Only one other person had been down that as well and there were untracked lines all over the place in and out of the trees. Ended up on the Nature Trail and transitioned back to skins and headed up the Duke Ski Trail. The steep wide end of the trail had a lot of sun-baked crust that was tough to navigate both up and down. Skinned about 2/3 of the way up the trail and turned around and skied down. The only track on the Dukes was a snowboard that came down earlier that morning, the rest was untracked powder ranging in depth from 6 to 12 inches. Wiped out in the crust on the bottom but got enough speed to make it down the trail back to the parking lot. In the car and headed home by 1:30. Should be good for some time through the weekend with the cold temps and snow showers forcasted. Saw a total of three other people the whole day.

[Brenda]

Sweet! Thanks for the report!

[capecodtele]

Went back to Cardigan on Sunday 3-8-15 with my son. Got there at 9 am, a few people around but not too many. We skinned up the Duke all the way up to the top and then kept going up into the snow fields to a level area below the Firescrew summit. Snow conditions on the way up were a mix of nice powder and sun crust depending on the trail exposure, but there is lots of snow. The snow fields had similar variable conditions between powder, sun crust, and wind buffed. On the way down, the snow fields skied nice and you could go anywhere you wanted..no rocks showing and only a few spots where there was blue ice on some of the drops. The Duke skied better that expected as the sun crust really wasn't a factor. There is so much snow out there...my son wiped out into a brook crossing and when trying to get out of there here was up to his chest in spots (about 3-4 feet deep). As the weather warms up and things start to corn up, there should be a long spring season for turns on the upper mountain for a while.

[recedinghairline]

A late last gasp
2" fell overnight
Moist, heavy.. fun.


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