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Hey All, It’s almost another weekend, is anybody planning on skiing Blue mountain the true mountain this weekend. I’ll be there tomorrow morning and Saturday morning. Saturday night I have an Xmas party and if it’s raining Sunday morning or my head is foggy I’m sleeping in. Looks like a snowmaking miracle could make for decent skiing this weekend!!!

Couldn’t wait for Friday to have blue reopen, so spent the morning at Frost. 27° when I got there and 30 when I left about noon. Snowing fairly hard first thing in the morning, with about 2 inches of fresh powder. Did a run on Jane’s Lane, and then the rest of the morning on One Park. They had a half dozen features on one park. They were blowing snow on Dematte’s andappeared to be on Challenge also. Still a long way to go for both of those slopes. The new four person lift going over exhibition was pretty nice, although, of course pretty slow. Lifties were very friendly today. Probably about 30 people in the house. A car missed a turn on the road going out and was being towed. All in all, and nice morning. Exhibition One Park

tomorrow morning and evening and both days this weekend.

Saturday. Sunday if they open. Maybe tomorrow afternoon. Maybe.

skis need to be picked up so likely tomorrow evening. sat. sun if not rain.

Maybe tomorrow night, def Saturday morning. Sunday if it's not a monsoon. Looks like they have the guns pumping it out today https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0j30vzrX5V/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Saturday for sure. Maybe an evening session tomorrow. Sunday if it's not pouring.

Tomorrow am and planning on sat

Had my first alpine ski day of the season at Aspen. The logistics are definitely more of a pain then skiing Crested Butte. Have to drive to the commuter lot near Snowmass then take the free bus into town. Parking in Aspen is a huge pain in the ass. So by the time you gets to the base of the gondola from my house it’s probably between 1 hour 30 and 1 hour 45. Went in to get my fancy premier pass printed. Got to gondola and pass wouldn’t scan in my jacket, had to take it out. I will have to play with that next time. Didn’t have to scan it the rest of the day from mid mountain. We did get snow over the weekend but surprisingly it was scraped off and icy in spots. The bumps looked treacherous especially for day one. One side was a bit better conditions then the other. Don’t really know trail names yet. No lines, hardly any people, bright sunshine and warm. The last run down to the base was very icy. I remember now that when we did our bump class last Dec, they had us download each day. The reason being that December sun doesn’t hit the bottom half of the mountain and it gets pretty icy, especially on tired legs. Aspen girls gonna Aspen. Note the pink twins.

@saltyant will your first day at Blue be on the psychedelic slopes?

2” of rain in the forecast so keep Salty happy .

Yeah those 50yards are fantastic.

Nothing good but it's skiing so yolo

I’ve been shaking hands with a lot of people everyday..I counter act with those fruit cocktail cups I like the one that has a couple cherries. Apple and cranberry juice is good also..

If you wanna sneak in some pre work runs it’s easier to ski an hour and sneak into work at 930-10 then at 1030-11ish..I work at 6-730am some days before skiing.. Also an 8am opening way way less traffic then a 9am opening during the week A lot of years by ski season we are slowing down and not the case this season. The last four days have been ass at work. Good business and only had a few people yell at me.

Thanks for update. Think I will be heading back to Hunter tomorrow. Will hit JF once they have more open.

Remember 9am opening tomorrow.

based on what Paradise looked like from the quad last week, its gonna need more than 12 hrs of snowmaking. I would be pleasantly surprised if it opened, but not surprised at all if it doesnt go this weekend. Edit - just saw tonights temps are decent for making snow tonight, so better chance. i thought wednesday night was the only window.

Abandoned gondola in New Hampshire. 1300 feet of vert. Legit steeps. Gorgeous views north to the White Mtns. They never had any chairlifts, just the gondola to access the summit and three t-bars on the bottom mountain. The last owner ran an Italian restaurant in Conway, NH.

I'm just seeking insider information on the most Epic skiing within driving distance that is not in a shopping store.

Hope is what Obama brought us..it will be busy..I’m just happy to ski.

Wooooooo9oooooooooooooooooo

Easy out, vista, midway, lower Main Street, the shuttle, tuts lane, barbs way, valley school, burma road and maybe a few others. Plus tubing opens tomorrow..

Yeah I even asked office manager about it. I was at my printer earlier and two people in there were wearing masks…and anecdotally from what I’m seeing on FB a lot of people are sick.

Covid’s back , my mom’s nursing home is having a bunch of cases. Might want to test if you have some left over gubmint kits.

Correct

Def tomorrow morning, probably Saturday!

Grate for the snowmaking

Let’s hope so. Long range last year was a complete tease. It was like Charlie Brown going into kick the football and Lucy pulling that shit away every dang week

I wasn't joking, at least earlier I could see at the very top of the tubing cam the tell-tale cloud that meant they were making snow on Paradise and presumably Coming Soon. Really hoping they can add those to the terrain for this weekend to spread traffic around so the other two roots don't get so beat up

The more important cam, IMO

I admit it’s a little lame of me that I haven’t been downhill skiing yet. But today we woke up to about 6” of powdery snow. On my morning dog walk the neighborhood roads had not been plowed yet. So I immediately went home and got my new XC skis and skied from my front door all around my neighborhood on untracked snow. Some fun sustained “downhill”. Took it slow, still getting used to going downhill on XC skis. Husband had his own fun fooling around with the snowblower.

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.

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!!!!!

i saw that they opened castlerock.....no lift though. but still, for November thats pertty sweet.

The Rivah ! That's good wrod and the new Barker is a super fancy 8 pack. The fastest way to hate something you love is to do it for work, I say go nuts, ride for you and enjoy not being responsible for the general public.

I'm in Florida so it should be pretty good tomorrow for sure.

I skipped Saturday. Who is going to try the new Wood Fire Pizza!! 🍕

I just hope Saltys mom got him the right kind of pop tarts or he’ll be in a bad mood for hours.

Free car wash

I think Minya Konya is open and belt parkway..Salty let’s make this a day of kindness.

sun now looks like a wash, hopefully that changes

The optimistic answer is this…and gosh it’s getting late better check the blue webcam one more time. Something about seeing those snowmaking cannons blasting puts me at ease..salty tell your hot sister tubing opens on Friday.