A Super (Bowl) Weekend!!! Feb 6th

By Phil Caracci
There are so many great trips but the Super Bowl Weekend Trip is quickly becoming a “must do” event. Even if you don’t care a bit about football, that game has a huge impact on this trip.

Here’s how:
A. We watch the game in the lodge on Sunday night which means this “weekend trip” returns on Monday.
B. The extra day is a non-holiday Monday which means fewer people are skiing.
C. On Sunday, many people leave around noon to go to their Super Bowl parties and therefore, fewer people are skiing.
D. The extra day follows all the Super Bowl parties which means fewer people are able to get up and ski! 🍺🍷🍸
E. It’s 3 days on the slopes vs 2. Who wouldn’t want that?
F. The extra “middle” day allows us to ski Stowe as an option.
G. You can enter the Super Bowl Box and win real cash! Enough to cover a third of a single-day lift ticket at Stowe!! 😁
H. The extra day gives our guests more time to get to know the members and really feel connected to this club.

It’s no wonder with all of these things going for it that the trip was completely SOLD OUT weeks in advance. I registered 2 months in advance and suggest you do that next year.

Lots of positives listed above but there was one little negative. It was cold. How cold? Too cold!

On Saturday we woke up to temperatures below 0°F. That was at the lodge. On the mountain it was colder… with wind. The “real feel” was probably around -35°F!

As we like to say… “put on every bit of clothing you have”… and go out and enjoy the day. This brutally cold day did limit the number of crazies on the chairlifts at Sugarbush while every bit of indoor space was packed to capacity. Hot Chocolate was the preferred Drink of the Day!

Sunday at Stowe was even colder but thankfully the wind was less of a factor making it more manageable. I added an extra layer to my upper body and glove liners which allowed me to handle this high dose of winter quite well. Stowe has long been a favorite of mine and I’m sad that the industry has made us choose between EPIC and IKON. Our lodge is nearest an IKON mountain so the choice is obvious. But Stowe is epic in any sense of that word.

The Big Game on Sunday dominated the evening but there was still time to celebrate 3 birthdays, one of them mine. I must say, we have some great voices in the club. The Happy Birthday song never sounded this good!

Our bonus day at Killington was actually above 0° and felt relatively balmy. The gorgeous sunshine from start to finish really made it feel so much better. As predicted, no lift lines at all on a Monday. It was sweet.

We don’t all ski/ride together basically because the skill level varies from beginner to expert. Some like bumps. Some like the trees. Some like a waiter-served lunch with a linen tablecloth. For the record, I’m not in any of those groups!

That said, I heard of a few stories that sounded intriguing. One group which included a first-time guest entered the Slide Brook Wilderness at Sugarbush which is essentially an off-piste tree-skiing run that drops you out on a road where a shuttle bus can be flagged down to return you to base. She loved it and the entire group did it a second time!

Then there was another guest that likes to pile up his daily stats skiing to the very last minute. Unfortunately the lift operators weren’t of the same mindset and shut down the lift he needed earlier than scheduled and he was stranded at Killington far from our bus, Luckily another stranded skier called his wife who picked them both up and he got a ride back delaying our departure by just a few minutes.

The bus ride home was loud! Everybody was so excited about this trip. Painkillers and Maple Margaritas got us home with smiles that still haven’t faded. Oh, if you’re wondering who won the game, I’d say we did 😊