The gondola terrain is the heart of Stowe's cruise country, with Gondolier and Perry Merrill being among the best cruisers in the East. They are wide, long, and with just enough pitch so that you can open your cruise throttle without feeling a loss of control.
I am not, unfortunately, the only person who knows of the pleasures of Gondolier and Perry Merrill. They get lots of skier traffic, so the best thing on busy days is to hit them early, when their snow is still groomed and soft. I usually gauge the quality of the cruising here by the length of the gondola line. As the gondola line begins forming i.e., the tail end of the line appears outside the entryway I work my way through the singles corral, usually eliminating several minutes lift-waiting time in the process. If the line gets much longer, I assume that the trails are crowded and that the snow on them has become a little scratchy. Time to move on.
But where to? If you want to hop the shuttle bus to Spruce, great cruising can be had on Main Street and Upper Smugglers from the Big Spruce chair. The ski area recently did some summer ledge-bashing on these trails, clearing a more even path for grooming and snowmaking.
For one reason or another, however, the Big Spruce chair hasn't been running in a couple of my recent Stowe visits, and I've been told by Stowe operations people that on any given day, there is a better than even chance the lift won't be running. So don't head over there unless it isn't; the intermediate runs from the Little Spruce chair are only ho-hum. And if the wind blows coldly from the north quarter (which is often where the cold winds come from), Big Spruce can make for a face-frosting lift ride.
There is also cruising to be had from the Mansfield chairs, but it tends to come in segments rather than in long shots, as you might find on Gondolier or Main Street. Perhaps the most important thing here is not so much trail selection as lift selection, at least on busy days. The quad, the longest and fastest of the chairs, also attracts the longest lines. Entering the singles line can result in a quick trip to the front of the line, but I don't find the singles-line advantage at the quad as significant as at the gondola. Instead, I check the line at the double and triple chairs. The triple chair line is invariably shortest, and though its vertical rise is considerably less than that of the other two chairs, it's a rise that covers the most cruisable skiing of the chair-area terrain.
When lines are short, though, the quad is the way to go. Nose Dive is steepest of the intermediate terrain from the quad, as well as the best in my opinion. Actually, the big turns near the top are black-rated and can be rough going, especially when the artificial snow surface gets slick. I've looked down from the top of these turns on a bad day only to think: If this were skiing, I'd quit the sport. But committed to the run, I'll grumpily pick my way around the turns, after which the trail straightens out, the pitch mellows out, my skis begin launching into big, carved turns, and my spirit and zest for the sport are instantly rejuvenated.
On the other side of the quad, you can mix and match trail segments from Hayride, Lord, North Slope, Gulch, Sunrise, and Standard. Hayride is the steepest; Standard the gentlest. Being able to ski these trails in different combos is great for the sake of variety. But numerous trail intersections on this part of the mountain can also lead to skier-traffic knots, the worst usually just below the double-chair summit. Keep alert to other skiers and be less than concerned about following trail signs. Just be sure to think about bearing left as you get lower on the mountain; going too far right can send you all the way to the Toll House base, definitely not something you want to do, while going right in general means a long flat, and even a short climb, to get back to the quad. My mix-and-match favorite: Sunrise (in the morning, for obvious reasons) to Middle Lord to Lower Hayride, but given the complexity of the trail layout, I'm not sure how I make the trail connections when I make that run; I just go with the flow on this part of the mountain, letting trail decisions determine themselves.
from Away.com
