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Hey All, I’m back from day 1 of the 2023-24 ski season at Blue mountain the true mountain. I arrived at the lower lot around 720am and PARidge was already in the house. Also in attendance were Dirtwolf, Mute, Mixilplix, TP4, Antman, Bethlehem Ford guy, Harold, Dime, Kumar, Slim, Indiggio, West Chester crew, Voltmer and many more. On arrival it was mostly cloudy with the temperature in the mid to upper 30s on the upper mountain and around 30 at the base…mad inversion yo…arriving at the super summit safari six pack there were about 25 people waiting at the gates. Opening was on time and I was on maybe the sixth chair with the west Chester peeps who were later interviewed by the WNEP station. First run was easy out to vista to midway to lower Main Street to shuttle to lower park which was pretty good some smallish pebbles but nothing crazy..coverage is excellent midway is a little narrow but deep base. The next few runs lower main stated good, easy out to vista was butter and midway the cookies got churned up but they softened a bit after a few runs turning into small Moe Ghouls. We took the quad once just for a different few and paradise doesn’t look quite ready. I skied burma once and it was better than a lot of times mid season..the corners were surprisingly grippy on my untuned skis. Crowds were light..a few bottlenecks mainly on midway..some needle weaving..one I can’t believe I didn’t bump foots or brush shoulders. Most importantly my boots felt good..my skiing felt solid and I just love that feeling on the drive up on opening day…I rocked out to Redmans”The Goodness” a little extra hard Fun parking lot, I had two beers and chatted with a few people and got some stories from the security guard and peaced out maybe 1145. All in a better than average and earlier than average opening day…PARidge took a lot of pictures This is all I have Ski everybody tomorrow..should be interesting how crowded the runs get with the lift capacity and terrain options..I heard 2,000 tickets were sold for Saturday JAODIP

Fun day today. In the house were Dirtwolf, GSS, Mute, Dime, mixelplix and others. Conditions were your standard opening day day fare. Not at all crowded for an opening day. Just glad to be skiing for the first time in 8 months or whatever it's been. Cheers to the new season! Good to be back in the snow

saw you on the facegram!

I'm going to have to ride in the rain due to work must be the most stoked to ever ride in the rain.

Definitely not a bad opening day. Upper mountain snow was far better than lower due to the inversion. Midway by 11:30 was showing signs of major thinness as rocks and grass were poking through in the middle. Both sides of Midway bumped up for some early season fun. Right side of Vista outside the grooming berm was the ROTD as only a few daring souls went in there to get the goods. You had to dodge a couple of drainage ditches, but the snow there was worth it. Checked out Coming Soon and it had a fair amount of snow up top. Unfortunately lower Paradise is way too thin to open.

Got delayed by traffic by Parlkand High school and learned some wisdom from graffiti . I parked up top and made the rope drop, only hitch was leaving my extra goggles at home . Spent most of the morning skiing with @indiggio and the bump crew. Bailed when the rain started. All in all great first day. Big thanks to Blue!

Dude! I didn't think you were gonna post the tr so I created it. Sorry! Mods can you merge?

they need to @Schift the valley cam a few degrees to the right so you can see the line up at the new lift, have fun!

Rolling out the cookie dough right now...

Fun opening day today! Just got home. Nice riding the chair with @mute1080, @Dirtwolf and @GrilledSteezeSandwich on my first ride up for the season! Got about 20 runs in between safety meetings and my quads are now toast 🤣. Be back out Sunday morning if the rain holds off.

Yes but wasn’t by choice. I ran into more traffic than expected by Parkland high school. Timed my P break and walked up to the rope. All the boarders doing the bunny hop and I skated by into the lead lol. Someone said that they posted a video? Blue guy with the Loaf stickers on my helmet.

Oh, heeey, I’m there too, standing like a loser.

My guess on that one would have been Highmount next door to Belleayre. I’d really like to make it to Bell this year. I haven’t been in over 10 years and haven’t experienced any of the improvements ORDA has done, including the ski bridge and gondola. I don’t know about build out, but I know they acquired the old Highmount ski area years ago, and this approved plan does show that it is part of the future plans. It would be rather large and add another base area to split up the crowds if they ever completed it. ORDA has had a quantifiable impact. Since 2015/2016 to 2022/2023 skier visits have gone from 72k to 237k.

Surprised they are running the quad instead of the OG6 with Paradise off the menu. Riding the quad means having to ride down Tuts, accross connector to Vista to get to open terrain.

#RFIanxietyisreal

people are already there waiting lol

This is so fucking true....I was one of the first SB instructors at Doe Mt...We basically got a season pass for wearing a jacket and screwin off..You taught like three or four lessons all year cause nobody snowboarded in the early 90's...Then the muther effin X games came along and it was a swift kick in the bean bag...Every kid wanted to snowboard..You would be havin fun dickin around ..then get call for a lesson with somebodies crotch goblin and you'd be like FUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!

Do you drive a Honda? Heard a guy getting on the lift yell to the liftie that he found keys and turned them in

Got back up there at 630 with Boo and BeckyBoo. Dirtwolf, Edge, JLaw, Pops, and Enjo were in the house. Thought the rain would scare people away but there was a good amount of the under 18 crowd. Snow was hero soft. Saw plenty of rocks in the trails and Midway was spicy with the bumps. All was fun. Missed the first run because the kid’s pass didn’t work. Waiting in line like the picture above and got it fixed. If anyone got the kid $50 pass, it won’t work unless you go to the counter first. They wanted a picture and proof of birthdate, both of which I didn’t have and still gave it to me. Overhead a manager talking with the employees about someone that complained “all the way up the chain to KSL.” Something about a season pass that wouldn’t work and thought the employee said she can’t fix it so he bought a day pass. She swears she didn’t say it but the manager wasn’t happy KSL found out. Back at it tomorrow ⛷️

I forgot to add. I lost my keys forgetting to zip my pocket somewere along my first 3 runs. Super stoke stomper but fortunately a good samaritan found them and handed them in the the front desk!

Would be a good deal to take the boys to a mountain other than Blue. But have to figure out a weekday to take them that isn't blacked out

Restricted pass that’s why I was rooting for Friday opener.

Thanks mods…was crazy I couldn’t even post the report when I first got to work…had to do tasks…you know like taking out the papers and the trash yakkety yak…report took me six minutes to type lol and some errors. I’m rusty lol

I like that Eaf ended up in two random pictures, C1ers picture and Airheads from opposite ends of the “resort”…

They literally said while we were waiting at the rope that usually with cold comes the wind, and it's the wind that got in the way of Paradise this time.

I don’t think so on Freefall to paradise as lower paradise doesn’t have a ton of coverage. Maybe cause they went so hard on tubing. Last season they opened with just homestretch and this year they put out a ton of coverage on both homestretch and lower park.

Hopefully you didn’t catch me landing on my face.

that is one sexy roller.

I’m sure somebody could sleuth it if they want, but I can’t even take a guess at the last time I wrote a trip report. Maybe 2019? It’s a little weird not patrolling this year. For the first time in 15 years I bought a season pass for my home mountain, Sugarbush, which happens to be an Ikon Pass. I am up in northern NH (near the shuttered Balsams) visiting family for the holiday, so I decided to use one of my days on the Ikon Pass today for my first day of the season. Since it snowed most of the night last night here, but not SR, and was a weekday, I decided to go over for an afternoon session so the roads could clear up a bit. I left about 10:50 and rolled in about 12:30. Temp was 24. The roads were clear in the tire tracks and I never saw anyone on my side of the road. Sunday River is replacing the Barker Quad this season, which along with the Locke Triple, is their early season terrain. Subsequently, they decided on a very unique opening plan this year. Last year they replaced the Jordan Quad with New England’s only 8 person bubble chairlift, so they decided to open t2b in Jordan. It’s an interesting play because services are limited, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and the trails are long and wide, so they require a lot of snow. After they opened in Jordan, they went back to the Locke Triple, and opened Upper Sunday Punch to Cascades, making sure to avoid going under the Barker lift during construction. Since connecting those two trail pods would require going underneath the Barker Six Pack, they are operating as islands and you can’t ski/ride between the two. They have started expanding from Jordan towards South Ridge, and have some terrain open in Aurora, but they still have a long way to go. Since I was getting there late, and wanted to maximize my runs/enjoyment, I decided to go to Jordan and lap the high speed 8. The parking lot had about 50 cars in it when I got there, and there were still an equal amount of people arriving and leaving at 12:30. I had to do some work in the car, and by the time I booted up and got on the snow it was 1 PM. I went down to the base of the lift and was immediately impressed with size and scope of the terminal. It is massive and entirely enclosed. They even had a temporary customer service area for lift ticket issues inside to the left of the terminal. I scanned through the RFID without incident, and noticed the lift used a conveyor belt system. Since I first used one at Okemo 20 years ago, they have become more prevalent. We’ve got one now at Sugarbush, so I leaned up against the gate and loaded without incident. For a standard chairlift, the chair is luxurious to say the least. All the seats are designated with dividers, there’s molded padding for each seat, and the safety bar locks and automatically lifts at the top. The bubble is heated, but despite the colder temperatures, they had the bubbles locked open and not in use. The lift ride is probably about 5 minutes and was very smooth. They even have an automated PA system that updates you when the lift unexpectedly stops. There were four runs open off the top. Lollapalooza, Excalibur, and Rogue Angel are all separate t2b runs with no crossovers. The final trail was Kansas (connector to the rest of the mountain and very flat) to Northern Lights, to Firestar. Firestar hasn’t been groomed yet this year, and it was under snowmaking, so I opted to skip the bumps for the first day of the year. I hit Lollapalooza 5 times, Rogue Angel 3 times, and Excalibur 3 times. Lolla was by far the run of the day. It’s a couple miles long, has a nice steady pitch, and due to the pitch, wasn’t scraped off. It held a great edge all day. It is a wide trail, but since the snow guns are on skiers left, only about 60% of the trail width was covered and groomed. The snow was stellar. Rogue and Excal are steeper and straighter down to the lift. The top parts of both trails are the steep parts, so they were a little scraped off, but once it flattened out, snow conditions were very similar to Lollapalooza. Those trails were basically groomed wall to wall because they are generally less wide than Lolla. There were so few people that I never had to dodge anyone and only had to pass a single person on all 11 runs. Since the parking lot isn’t at the base of the Jordan Bowl, the last run of the day has to be Lollapalooza so that you can take the side trail over to the parking lot and avoid hiking uphill. The only food at the Jordan Hotel is the Northern Lights Cafe (assuming it hasn’t been renamed since I worked there), so to avoid getting swamped, there were a couple food trucks they brought in just outside the hotel to feed the early season crowds, and I was told from someone on the lift (9 of my lift rides were solo), that this weekend was a madhouse. Apparently there were a lot of upset patrons because the hotel isn’t setup as a lodge, so they weren’t allowing people to boot up inside. Doesn’t affect me since I always boot up in the parking lot, but I can see the downside to starting the season in Jordan. However, I can say that the early season offering there was absolutely stellar. I don’t think I could have had much better of a first day. When I got back to the parking lot at 3 PM, there were only 6 or 7 cars left. My legs were tired and I was getting cold. I warmed up in the car and headed back towards the in-laws. The roads were clear until the last 15 minutes. Overall, I logged 11 runs in 2 hours. That’s about 11 minutes a run round trip. Each run was about 1,250 feet of nice consistent vertical. The drive was easy and the snow was incredible. Well worth using one of my 5 Sunday River Ikon Pass days for the year. It was good to finally get out.

Good stuff. Thanks!

Am getting some free rain right now

There were GIFTS?? All we got up top were fist bumps and high fives, lol.

I pushed up for second chair too just to get the gift and nada.

Missed the rope drop at 8. Waiting to get my pass working

You ski down Paradise off of Heaven’s Gate and before the trail turns to the right, there’s a sign and a path that leads to the left and puts you on the Long Trail. If you’re on a snowboard, you’re hiking 90% of it. If you are on skis and adept at duck walking or whatever skiers call it, uphill, then you can keep the skis on, as there are a decent amount of downhill sections. There isn’t any type of trail between North Lynx, and the elevation change is much more drastic. When the lift isn’t open, we don’t run a fixed patrol station at Castlerock, so patrollers rotate every hour or two, and therefore, I know the hike rather well.

It was fake news

The cookie dough is separated and the chocolate chips are coming through but still a fun day. Got here a bit later than I wanted to but made the 8 am rope drop and calling first one down the mountain 🤟

since 530... -- ask ridge

Haha

Whoo-hoo! Go grab your coffee, @saltyant

With your pecker out!!!

What year was this season? I am still using the 40th season pass

Ugh, let the anxiety begin. I've just used the same pass for the past 5 years or so and it always works. Do I need to do something different this year? I stress out about the pass not working more than I should.

BC layin some carpet...

Some nice pre season colors at BC