Burke Mountains 31st Annual Pond Skim
- Details
- Created on Wednesday, 27 March 2019 00:07
- Written by Nick Anastasi
EAST BURKE- It was all smiles here at Burke Mountain. Bluebird skies, good music, good food and good skiing. All combining for a perfect day for the 31st annual pond skim. This years theme was "Surfs Up" Over two hundred attendees were reported to have attended, and parking stretched about a half a mile down Mountain Road about to where the Burke Mountain Academy begins.
Competetors took to the slopes around noon time, decked out in their surfs up swag, hoping to win a Burke Mountain season pass for next year. Anticipation grew as the line was drawn up at the top, marking where the competetors would begin from. Each round the line gradually neared the pond, moving closer each time. This decreases the amount of room that the participation has to gain speed, making it challenging to cross the ninety foot pond. Its sink or skim here, with those who don't make it across eliminated from the competition.
Michael Riley, a participant in this years pond skim said, "The farthest I've made it is three rounds, so I made it two today.'' Riley said that the conditions today were, "getting a little sticky," and that isn't just an excuse for not making it either. The resort recently saw one of it's largest recorded twenty-four hour snowfall totals from the late March Nor-Easter. The region was pummeled with a couple of feet of snow, the resort reporting thirty-one inches.
This sounds like a skiers dream and it is for the resort too, except for one fact. The pond skim was scheduled for Saturday, and snowy conditions don't make for a great pond skim day. Thanks to quick thinking mid-week when word of the storm surfaced, Burke decided to push the pond skim back a day.
Taylor Peyton, the Events Coordinator at Burke Mountain, said that all of the snow while great for the trails, "Made it a little difficult to do a "surfs up" themed pond skim." Peyton added that, "Fourty degrees and sunny sounded way better than twenty and windy. So we made the choice and pulled the trigger on it and it worked out."
