This weekend was a blowout, wasn't it.  Rain everywhere from Long Island
Sound to the Saint Lawrence, including the gulf stream wa-a-ters.  This
land was wet for you and me.

Or was it?

It appears that we chanted the rain-rain-go-away tune with the proper
rhythm, or danced the proper no-rain dance (a rain dance, done with one's
fingers crossed), or just plain got lucky.  Whatever we did, we stayed dry
and snowy all weekend.

We, in this case, meant those of us at Dickerman Cabin who chose to ski. 
Saturday, we all opted for the Bretton Woods touring center, with some
skating (take a wild guess who), some classic touring, and intrepid Erna
Greene electing to skin up to the back door of the alpine area and telemark
down the front.  She's an inspiration to us all.  After a nice 30+ km
morning skate workout, Bonnie and your reporter traded in the skates for
the fat boards and headed across the street, accompanied by Erna.  It turns
out that a touring pass is good for a single ride up the quad at the alpine
area, and we wanted to make some turns before the day was out.  We quickly
discovered that no one pays any attention to tickets at this area, and
found ourselves on other lifts higher up the mountain (hey, the guy said we
could go to the "top," and quad doesn't go all the way up to the top).  

Not one drop of rain fell all day, North of Franconia and Crawford Notches.
We later learned that North Conway had local flooding, and Black Mountain
didn't even open, the rain was so heavy.  

The question for Sunday was:  could we pull another rabbit out of this hat?

Things looked bad at the cabin by first light.  A steady rain had fallen
all night, and it was slick and wet in the morning, with a light but
consistent rain as we closed up.  Everyone chose to either shop or just
head on home.  Everyone except the two nuts who had decided that, by golly,
they had come to ski, and ski they would, whether they liked it or not. 
Actually, it was one nut and his passenger, but let's not get picky.

Since Attitash has a points system (good for 24 months) and a one hour
trial period (come back within the hour and get a voucher good for another
day), we figured we had little to lose but our aridity.  It poured all the
way down 302, it persisted as we parked, and all we could see through the
thick fog was a handful of skiers clad in plastic trash bags lounging
around the base area.  This was not going to be fun, and we only planned on
getting our 10 turns in and quitting.  Just as we turned off the car, the
rain let up.

After three lovely runs at Bear Peak, we had decided that our luck had held
long enough, and we wanted to quit while we were ahead.  Now, what do you
suppose happened as soon as we entered the base lodge.  Yup, the rain began
again.

Not bad for a washout weekend.

David Merfeld
