01/31-02/01/09 Tugg Hill

When:

Sat, 01/31/2009 - Sun, 02/01/2009

Tugg Hill was epic conditions and for some of us it was the best snow session ever had!

Read about the day on the forum and see other pics

First, credit to my girlfriend (Rooney) & Kevin for taking the pictures with their DSLRs.

Alright here is my report,

Rooney, her dog, and I headed out around 2 on Friday. Drive was smooth, in and out of small snow storms most of the way up... until we got about 10miles from the spot and suddenly it's like we were transported to Siberia. 25mph winds with snow falling like I've never seen it before. The last 10miles took us about 45min.The driveway was a mess, so after confirming that it was indeed the place, I smashed the rental car into the 10" of fresh powder - big mistake. I spent the next 45min digging it out... which is a lot harder when the snow is stuck all under the car.

The farmhouse was sweet, tons of room, felt very homelike... if you have a lot of dead stuffed animals in your house

At least bagel had a friend!

Everyone else showed up around 2am, except our MD friends who got stuck about 4 miles down the road in the ford fusion. Trevor, Pete and I loaded up in Trevor's truck and basically carried the little Ford out of the snow:

Saturday morning was fairly calm, but beautiful with 12"+ of fresh pow pow! My girlfriend and I borrowed Trevor's show shoes to explore the yard. Here is the farm house in the background:

Gotta throw this one in there... no, this is not a train, it's a freaking plow coming down our road:

We got to the site around mid day. It was windier than we had thought. The 12ms were doing a great job pulling us through the powder. (Did I mention that this is like Utah caliber dry powder?!). The site was setup nicely for the wind direction pulling us up a large hill

The only trick is you had to get by the 'dead zone' - as seen in one of JohnnyD's pictures above.

The wind held out for a few hours giving most of us our fill but slowly tricked down leaving a hand full of kiters with a 30min walk a head of them.

Now is a good time to metion that the event it's self was amazing. They setup a heated tent right next to the launch - if that wasn't enough, about 100 yard away was a house we were able to use, warm food, cold drinks and free beer (you might have to talk your way into that last one). Great work to all that organized it.

Saturday night Christian and his wife cooked up an amazing fondue treat.

Most of the house then headed out to represent MassKitting at the party, although I stayed back. (wind was in the forecast!)

The next day Rooney, Kevin and I got up early to catch the first runs. When we're about 75% setup Zeb arrives and basically parks his car, tosses his kite up in the parking lot - while it's about to catch he is putting his skis on and before we know it he is laying down the first tracks of the day. Rooney and Kevin were next out. I brought Rooney down to the valley to catch some calmer, but gustier, winds where she got her first rides on a 4 line kite (7m) she did really well, next time she'll be crusin right next to us!

Later I followed Zeb up to some fresh powder. Jan (the even coordinator) was there taking pictures. We both threw down for awhile, hopefully Jan will post those pictures there eventually.

The rest of the day was basically everyone having a blast and throwing down without consequence in the powder! I'll just throw a few pictures up here:

Kevin getting some air: