I made it up to Sunday River today - found a different bus company that seems to be pretty well run and quite cheap at $69 (
https://brstransportation.com/).
My impressions for a first visit: I really like the beauty and layout of the mountain and the fact that the different trails are actually different trails and not the same trail divided by three trees or a pointless elbow. The snow conditions were good, but not uniformly. There was plenty of very firm wind buffed and skied off. I take it that they had a lot of wind which affected snow retention. There were nice glades and trails with soft bumps, as well as those with bumps and thin cover between (surprising how much snow fell last weeks). I didn't spend that much time seeking out softer snow-partly because I don't like skiing glades alone and partly because I was on Monster 88s and didn't really like the feel in bumps. If the resort is known for grooming I didn't really see the kind of plush corduroy that usually entails. I don't know enough about grooming to evaluate whether it wasn't done well, was skied out by the time I got on the hill after 10am.
Picture below is of the sun sinking down over Whitecap peak. The trail is White Heat which they describe as "the longest, steepest, widest lift-serviced expert trail in the East". The (I assume) groomed center was classic east coast scratch with some windblown powder on top. Most people were skidding tuns with various levels of finesse, (which just made it worse) but it was nice to see a few skiing it cleanly here and there (myself not included). To the left you can see where they left bumps which did a much better job of holding snow.
