Skiing the big March snow at Titcomb and Saddleback

For any of you that follow my Facebook page you could tell by my the constant weather posts we were pretty pumped up for this most recent snowstorm. The accumulation maps for the Maine mountains kept getting bigger with each forecast run. It is safe to say that the mountains in the Route 2 corridor northward did real well with 12" to 24" being reported!

@AlecPhoto ripping it up at Titcomb Mountain

We wanted to get away after school and work on Thursday to partake in the harvest. We thought about Shawnee, but it looked like they got a period of rain in the middle of the storm. We thought about Mt. Abram, but they stopped their Thursday night skiing for the year. So we made a dash to Titcomb Mountain in Farmington. They reported 14" or so. Titcomb is an area I have not been to in a very long time. When I was a student at the University of Maine at Farmington I spent some time skiing there. It is a small hill (350 vertical feet) serviced by a couple of T-Bars, but it is a great community recreation resource. It is a great learn to ski area with some steep sections to some of the trails to keep it interesting. The T-Bar's are awesome although a bit of a challenge to load. They are run by diesel engines and they have a throttle to control the t-bar speed. We decided any lift with a throttle is cool in our book.

For this evening, they had one of two T-Bar's running. The snow was good but it was a bit heavy. If you stuck to the trails that had been skied up with traffic, the skiing was fun. We hiked over to the other side of the mountain once and while the snow was deep, it was very tough to turn due to the dense quality of the snow. So we stuck to the main section and the boys practiced landing 360's off a kicker. We are very glad we went and experienced a "new" area in some good conditions.

Lots of cover at Saddleback!

On Saturday, we made the day trip to our home mountain Saddleback Maine and we had a very good day. Once again we found the snow to be a bit on the heavy side and it took us a few runs to get our ski legs on. Our last powder experience had been in Utah, and of course that snow was extremely light and fluffy so for this snowstorm it was a bit of an adjustment for us.

Overall it was a very good day. We were able to ski trails we have not been able to ski all year. Black Beauty, Casablanca #4, Upper Jane Craig, Intimidator Glades, Governor all skied very well. (Check out my blog post that describes all the ski trails at Saddleback.) Once again if we stuck to areas that had some skier traffic, the snow held up and skied well. We like to find the untracked snow but again it was tough to move around. So it wasn't quite the 'epic' day we were hoping for, but it was one of our better Maine ski days we have had this year. Saddleback had a nice crowd on the hill so hopefully they had a good revenue day as I say a lot of day lift tickets hanging from jackets.

It is mid-March and we are coming down the home stretch for the ski season in Maine. I would love to see another dump for the mountains of Maine... but they have a pretty decent snow pack to support some spring turns. Nothing like skiing and having sun soaked burgers and suds on the deck at Saddleback or any ski area in Maine!