Like, 7 hours in a car each way kind of far away. 

Keith and Olga picked me up on Friday around 4 and we shot up to his friend Alex’s place in some college town called Burlington, where everything is either really nice, upscale commercial district or really sketchy, what-the-fuck-are-we-doing-here, everything’s-covered-in-mud sketchy.  Alex lives in the latter part.

We got up there late, and stayed up until 2 AM, so of course we woke up late and got to the mountain (Smuggler’s Notch) at around 1 PM on Saturday.  We managed to get half day lift tickets/rental prices which were obviously cheaper than if we’d gotten there earlier, but the full day prices were still surprisingly cheaper than what I’ve paid before at other slopes.  And this place was huge and empty.  I’m used to waiting +10 minutes in a line to get onto a lift, but there was nothing like that at all. 

Olga didn’t want to snowboard and Alex didn’t have any money, so just Keith and I went.  Apparently Keith never actually learned how to properly snowboard (I assumed he had more training than he actually did), and I spent about 45 minutes trying to teach him to stand up and steer on the board before he got too hurt and frustrated and walked down.  To be fair, I took him all the way to the top of the lift, where the only way to get to a green circle (beginner slope), was through a blue square (intermediate slope).

I managed to get some good runs in after that, but because it gets too cold at night and because they don’t have lights installed on the slopes they shut everything down at 4 PM when the sun goes down past an adjacent mountain.  It didn’t feel like a full days-worth because of that, but I’m glad that I found out about that place and would love to go back maybe next winter.

After that we went back to Alex’s for a while and then left for Jersey in the middle of the night and I didn’t get home until 4 AM.