Shine's VT bach'fest

This is going to be a really hard one to quantify in any real meaningful way.  I am very proud to say that we have gotten so good at being our own particular brand of awesome that we have transcended the 'recap'.

Friday we started pre-first bell with some Cat skiing at Sugarbush and a guided mountain tour with John Egan.  If you get enough people together its very reasonable and I highly recommend checking it out.  Its a really unique experience for the east coast.  Having an entire mountain to yourself is weird and awesome and following around a seasoned pro is also somewhat weird/surreal and at times aggravating/frustrating.  I tend to think of myself as a fairly decent snow rider, above average for sure but John made stuff look annoyingly easy and effortless.  Hes a great guide though, very personable and peppers the day with anecdotes and tips and tricks here and there that made things interesting.

We also lucked out with some sweet local connections to the resort and got some of their media team to follow us around to take pics and video the entire day.  There will be some great pics to post soon and I will also hopefully be making a longer edit of their footage and some from my GoPro.

 

photo courtesy of John Atkinson @Sugarbush Resort

photo courtesy of John Atkinson @Sugarbush Resort

Saturday was a mellow day at Sugarbush with ok weather but good for recovery.  We then stopped in Waterbury for dinner at the Resevoir en route to Jay and a stay at Grandpa Grunts.  I really like Waterbury, seems like a great town the times I have stopped/passed through.  Great scene and close to good skiing and mtb.  We've had Grunts on the radar for years and never gotten around to booking it.  I would link it but they don't do the whole internet thing.  It's not for everyone but it is definitely for us...Its hard to explain, I'll wait for some of the other guys pics to tell the story.  We had a great night of partying in the middle of nowhere Northern VT.  Who knew Montgomery Center, VT had such a happening scene?

Unfortunately Sunday morning brought lots of rain, enough that no one really felt like forcing the issue to ride Jay.  Even more unfortunate is that rain turned into snow at 1:30pm and continued to be snow for quite some time ending with a 24hr snow total record for Jay of 32in and 42in by Tuesday morning.  C'est Le Vive.  Would have been very tough to snorkel through powder that deep with 2 days of riding and partying in the legs anyway.  We could have done it, but we would all have certainly died on the drive home.  I'll leave it at that for words and follow up with more pics and video soon.