Pretty/Scary

We made it to the hotel last night around 11:00 PM. Pat said he could have finished the drive but I'm glad we did not.

We relied on the GPS for directions today, I printed directions to get up to the other mountain. We changed our plans last minute and I figured that the directions I printed were no good (they were, the mountains were 15 minutes apart). This was a mistake. Everything was great as we drove through lots of little towns. They were so nice, not that we stopped we were on a mission.

We started going up and Pat figured we were in the valley we needed to be, though he was a little worried we did not yet see Sugarbush. The ride was beautiful. If we hadn't figured out how big of a mistake we made I likely would have great photo's. Instead, as we were going up higher in elevation and the roads became more slippery we realized we went the wrong way. We were going OVER the mountain we were about to ski. Lucky for us it was good weather and the only snow was the stuff already on the roads. It was slippery and we had a few minor heart attacks as the car could not go over 1mph for the last mile or two of the ascent. I even saw a truck slip a little on the way down. My traction control automatically kicked on but scared pat as a flashing light (neither of us knew at the time it was the traction control kicking on, actually we are still just guessing since it flashed so quickly). He was not sure my car could handle the climb. My car showed him UP!

Less stressful but just as disturbing, I learned my car not only reads negative temperatures (it was -3 when we got up) It can read them into double digits. It was -13 at the summit. It made for a very cold day of skiing. I was grateful as the snow is 'natural' at Mad River Glenn. This means no grooming. Grooming breaks up the surface and softens it. This prevents ice from forming. It was an icy day at the mountain. I spent quite a bit of time warming up at the lodge.