Snow? boarding

The following account recaps our journey to Loon "Mountain" ski resort last weekend. Marilee won free lift tickets in a radio contest, so we decided to go check out the East Coast version of snowboarding.

This picture is what we first saw when we pulled up to the ski "mountain." Where's the snow, and what's with the train, you may ask? Apparently the train was for transporting people between lodges, and the snow part will be explained later.

This is what greeted us as we went up the chairlift. Once again, the lack of snow was concerning. I probably wouldn't even have gone up the lift at all, except we had seen some glimpses of snow on runs off to the side.

Ahhh, that's the stuff. There was actually "snow" on the runs after all! Apparently the way it works over here is that they have huge water pipelines running up the sides of the runs, and they mist everything with water vapor when it freezes at night. So the effect is that there is a 6-12 inch layer of ice, covered with about 1 inch of ice shavings and slush. It actually didn't make for bad riding, except when you fell. This picture is Marilee, who was turning both directions and doing extremely well! But she was REALLY sore for the next few days, and had bruises all over from falling on the ice. I don't think it would have been worth $69 each for lift tickets, but we had fun going for free!