While many Vermonters take to the woods and their hunting camps after their Thanksgiving meals, the rest of us hit the slopes for opening weekend.

After approximately six months of waiting, the day is finally here. The past six months have been filled with continuous anticipation buildup, and online video/gear searches.

Across the country ski resorts are opening up for the season. As usual, Jay Peak Resort aimed to open for Thanksgiving weekend despite the recent unseasonably warm temps.

Following Thanksgiving on Friday, Nov. 27 the resort held their opening day. Temperatures were hovering around the 40 degree mark early in the day, only to approach the mid 50’s around the midday point. Taking the temperature along with the partly sunny skies into consideration, I knew it was going to be a good day to ease back into that winter state of mind.

The main downside to this year’s opening weekend was that only The Jet Triple chairlift was spinning, allowing access to only The Jet Trail. Even though there happened to be one trail, we were not going to let it drag down our spirits. After all, we were about to start our ski and ride season, and every year this is always something special.

If some fellow skiers and riders might recall, opening weekends across Vermont for the 2014/15 ski and ride season left resorts with an abundance of powder and terrain options.

My friends and I planned on trying to get to the resort fairly early to catch some of the first sets of chairs that were going to be loaded. As we expected and witnessed, many other people had the same plan. While approaching the chair we were greeted by a small line of energized individuals.
Considering that it was a holiday weekend many families made the trip to the resort for a mini vacation. The downside of this is that there was only the one trail for everyone to enjoy.

The rope for the chair dropped at 9:00 a.m. Once we hit the top, our stomachs were all filled with those adrenaline packed butterflies, we quickly strapped in and started our decent. Due to the warm temps, it was as if we were skiing and riding in late season spring conditions. The man-made snow was fairly soft and wet, making it as if we were picking up where we left off at closing day last season.

I ended up taking out my new board for this season with its fresh factory sharp edges, anticipating semi-icy conditions by the afternoon due to everyone scrapping down the same trail.

Even though the trail was relatively crowded, the vibe of the day was still awesome. People were hooting and hollering from the chair, encouraging everyone that was going down the trail at the time to send it even harder.

There were several side hits, and bump lines under the chair for people like me who like to try and get some freestyle action into their runs. However, everyone had to be alert and ready to dodge the occasional unexperienced skier or rider taking a break or sliding out of control in the middle of the trail.

I’m always amazed year after year with how you can be away from something for a substantial amount of time, and yet when you finally reunite with it, everything is pretty much just as it was where you left off. It is easily the true love for certain passions that makes these reuniting moments so easy and pleasurable.

We ended up getting 15 or so runs in, carving and jumping whatever we could each and every run. Once 2:00pm rolled around, our leg muscles were beat up from our first day of getting after it, and the majority of the trail was becoming a sheet of ice. Mother Nature also ended up giving us a few sprinkles of rain around 1:00pm, but altogether we were pleased with our first day out skiing and riding on the mountain.

In the end, we all agreed that it was good to be back experiencing and sharing time with each other while doing what we all loved to do, shredding each and every run to our full 100 percent capability until we are all too tired to keep going strong.