Ski Trip Report - Saddleback - December 18, 2011

Well, the preseason is over for @MaineSkiFamily. Time for the regular season to begin with our first trip to Saddleback Maine for the year. For readers of this blog, you will see a lot of Saddleback trip reports this year. We consider Saddleback our home mountain and we all picked up our season passes today. A good day in our family!

The boys both made honor roll which saved us $400. Saddleback offers a $99 season pass to students from Maine that make the honor roll in the first marking period. Offer is extended to non-resident students at $149. Good job boys getting on the honor roll!

After we got our passes we suited up and clicked into our skis. It was cold! It was in the single-digits all day. The crowd was pretty light. I am thinking maybe the cold scared them away? Not sure but no lift lines made for good skiing.

For opening weekend, Saddleback has the great blue cruiser Gray Ghost open along with the Wheeler slope. Both offered very good skiing. The middle part of Gray Ghost was a little chunky on our first runs, but it loosened up with skier traffic. The Saddleback terrain park crew did a great job getting some features up to play with. It was a lot of fun for the boys.

Saddleback is blowing some major stink (our word for snowmaking) on Royal Tiger under the beginner quad and Green Weaver from the top of the Rangeley chair. As we drove up the access road the mountain was shrouded in a big snow making cloud. Go cold and maybe we can get lucky and get some snow before Christmas.

Be sure to check out my definitive guide on all 66 Saddleback trails.

Overall a great day and it was great to play on our home turf. Here are some more pics from the day.

Isaac on a box in the terrain park

Alec ripping Gray Ghost

Juley on her first run of the year!

COMMENTS

BLOGGER: 5

Chris FarmerDecember 18, 2011 at 8:55 PM
Great Pics Mike! Thanks for posting and sending them along- Chris
Michael SalisburyDecember 18, 2011 at 9:06 PM
Your welcome @Chris.
kPDecember 19, 2011 at 9:00 AM
Good stuff Mike
Maine Ski TripsSeptember 10, 2012 at 3:52 AM
I enjoy reading your blog and the different photos posted shows that you had a good time on your trip in Maine.
Kids ski vacationMay 29, 2013 at 8:01 PM
It is interesting that Saddleback does that. Kudos for them in leading the ways as it concerns education of our youth. More places need to do that. there are too many young people who are not seeing immediate benefits from working hard at their studies.

Yes, adults know that an education pays but when someone in their teens or younger links hard hours of study with the reward of a ski or snowboarding vacation, it affects their thinking positively.