Big Jay/Jay Peak - March 8 & 9, 2014

Thanks to Ryan and Jocelyn for putting together an awesome trip to North Troy the weekend of March 8 and 9.  They picked up Scott and we met at the blessed Concord Trailways on Friday night like usual.  It was a tight squeeze with groceries, ski stuff, and their dog.  But we all piled in and then headed up to Jay.  Fun trip up, for sure.

On Saturday morning we dropped the dog off at doggy day care and then headed to the mountain.  The place we rented offered discounted lift tickets which was awesome.  So we all skied together the first half of the day before Scott and I ventured off to Big Jay by traversing the ridge from the summit of Jay.  Conditions at the resort were good.  Plenty of coverage for the most part, but the snow was not all that fresh. 

The traverse over to Big Jay was pretty simple, especially because there hadn't been any fresh snow in a week or so.  The path was easy to follow.  We went buy the first to areas where you can drop down the side of Big Jay and went all the way to the jail bird chute - the illegally cut glade that more or less comes down off the summit of Big Jay.   Obviously, we don't condone illegal cutting.  But man was that glade sweet.  Lots of untracked deep snow.  Quite a contrast to the resort.  Some sections were tight, others opened up and allowed you to string several turns together.  And endless opportunities to jump off of rocks, stumps, etc.  It is hard to believe what it would have been like over there this weekend after Jay picked up 40 inches a few days after we left.




After the run bottomed out (around 2,500/2,600 ft), we pushed hard right towards Rte 242, following ski tracks.  But the tracks were apparently heading somewhere else, perhaps down to a village well beyond where we intended to be picked up on the side of Rte 242.  Fortunately, we ran into some other folks who had a better sense of where we needed to go, and after a 10-15 minute bush whack, we popped out on a more defined trail that lead us out to the road. 

Great adventure overall.  And we picked up some intel on the best way to skin up to the top of Big Jay in the future in case we want to avoid buying a lift ticket. 

On Sunday, we pounded out runs through the bumps and trees till our legs gave out and then we headed home.  Bright sunny skies on Sunday, a special occurrence at Jay, I don't know if I've ever seen the summit there before, the contours of the mountain are really pretty unique.

Enjoy the video!