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I think their book looks like this 1. Make sure BMR is catered to 2. Is the paid parking ok? 3. Hows the magic carpet on frontier alley, is it ready yet? 4. Check on the lifts at the bottom, they're probably fine tho. 5. Profit

No idea, they have us who come from the SW in a bind but its more to shadows point that nobody will put up with endless shenanigans. I would take up coin collecting before camel

Up again to JF, started snowing just as I turned in about 9. Pretty steady snow until about 11:30 when it started sleeting. Challenge and Dematte’s in great shape, nicely buttered with freshies. They opened up thunderbolt for about an hour as the ski patrol was putting padding and sticks defining the edges, closed it about 11 for some reason. Exhibition still not anywhere near close to being ready. Maybe about 50 or 60 people in the house.

I have to admit that when they do get trashed on socials, questionnaires, here?, they do seem to listen. As the mention of trash got them to get their act together pretty quickly, at least for a moment. Someone did finally get a clue to get the OG 6 fired up on Sunday, albeit way late, but they eventually did. Will they learn for next time? Who knows? Only time will tell. I think by NOT speaking out, they just go about their business in their offices, fat, dumb and happy with the money they're raking in. When they do get railed, well, it's far easier to tarnish a good reputation than it is to create one. Thus it's definitely in their best interests to do what they can to rectify the issues that people point out rather than ignore them and definitely drive away customers. After all, they're not mind readers and probably don't really get out to see what's actually going on out on the hill.

KSl/Alterra is literally a property company, they exist to make loot off of the property they own but lots and lots of that property only has value because of skiing. DV has lots of nice shit but no way everyone is driving all the way up there past 9000 other places if there is no skiing or it really sucks hairy ball sack. You can sell $30 lobster rolls because one they are fucking delicious and two because their groomers which their clientele is after are fucking immaculate and even more importantly the entire experience from the time they show up to they leave is generally quite good. I've skied at blue for like a decade now in the winter it's more my home than my home but if everytime I show up it's a zoo I'd ski elsewhere.

is this a mistake?

I assume this is industry standard now but very cool nonetheless. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C147XB6OoJQ/?igsh=dDQ1N3FjajZncTh4

No doubt. I dont think there was one resort that wasnt basically over crowded. But Blue pretty much took the cake for as far as i am concerned, with their lift ops, and that ridiculous move to close free fall. I totally get that it was crowded. overcrowded would be an understatement. They certainly found their weakness, and its their lift ops, and ultimately, management. The OG 6 should have been plan B, ready to go at any time for a while now, and they showed it was barely on their radar. I dont know what ancient indian burial ground the lifts at Blue are built on, but we all know they are cursed. they have lift issues all the time, and i get that shit breaks, but they were not prepared, and it happened at the worst time, although the quad was probably preventable if they had someone there before like 7:30 am to turn it on. @benm aint making shit up.......they were more concerned about the paid parking than the lift situation. Its like showing up to Dunkin Donuts on Valentines day for the heart shaped donuts, only to find out they didnt make them. "you had one job to do."

Bouy pop! Like Wednesday next week. Wax up the big boards for "stoke"!

My hopes aren't high going forward but im willing to give the benefit of the doubt for this past weekend. EVERYWHERE was a sh*t show this past weekend. Elk, Bear, Blue, Camel and JF

That's one small thing that KSL strives for.

Running a business is running a business. Make customers happy. they come back. its really pretty fucking simple dude.

Hopefully you remembered your wife’s name lol

its actually way more impressive than i thought.

If only they did a good job with those groomers…more and slower passes…

everywhere was gonna be a shitshow. thats what anyone would expect when there's snow forecasted. the issue i have is that, seeing there would be this shitshow, having one of three lifts (the quad was advertised as 'open' in both the preliminary conditions report and the actual conditions report) it mind boggling. it doesn't matter if there's ice or shit or whatever. get a crew there early and make sure its operational. i'd have been way more content waiting in a 20 min line as opposed to a 60 min line. now throw in chairs being sent up with singles. then not having the VIP line - tbh - whether or not it'd have actually helped things i have no idea. my guess is that it wouldn't have been worthwhile unless someone was grouping chairs. you'd be fighting 7 other gates. one thing i'm not hearing much about is the parking, which is surprising anyway crowds - expected piss poor management when one knows that big crowds are coming - sadly, at blue... expected.

I’m thinking about the next real powder day. Hopefully weekday. Also the mindset of all the people who saw what happened and were stuck in line.Will they show up again? Volume wise I think that Blue will be able to deal with the crowd at the lift but that means more people on the hill. Once they get more terrain opened up it will be just the usual bottom bottle neck. Looks like Tuesday storm?

Seeing on FB all of the members of the "all season tire club" are having meetings on 534.

Yeah not really any decent alternatives and pretty nice that we all almost always have people to ski with at Blue.

"(Eldred Township's) largest village is Kunkletown which is named for Joseph Kunkle, one of the earliest businessmen and hotel owners in Eldred Township. Abraham Smith erected a grist mill in 1762 along Prince’s Run (Princess Run). In 1812, Phillip Hess ran a gun factory for the U.S. Army. The gun factory closed in 1830, and Samuel Berger and Abraham Blecker began a tannery on the old gun factory property until the tannery closed in 1877. Thomas Snyder opened a store in 1832, and the Kunkletown post office wasn’t opened until 1864, with Joseph Johnson serving as the first postmaster."

Lotta resort owners in this thread

Keep those fingers crossed. this would be like 4-5 days straight of spraying snow if it holds. Accuweather kind of agrees. maybe just a touch warmer, but still, these would be the best temps we have seen.

And Shadows we’re all hoping you get better soon.

We just need 7 snow storms so they’ll all use their Ikon passes and then it can go back to normal. Easy.

I actually saw that guy several times when starting the day from the upper lot. He likes to chat with the waiting crowd before the rope drop.

here's the problem. they learn about it in the short term. the next day jd was on the radio asking about all kinds of shit (like getting challenge prepped in case of crowds, asking time and time again about the VIP lines, etc). but it takes months, sometimes YEARS for snow like that to come around again. by then, anything they'd learned has been forgotten

Its like Groundhog day everyday at Blue. They start the lift 45 mins before opening, and just cross their fingers. Hopefully they will learn from this. Run them all night if they have to. Pay someone handsomely to stay there at night. what ever up charge that is in electric, or wage, i am sure is way better than the tongue lashing they are getting now.

They really should have found a way to keep at least one of the fixed-grip doubles. They could have used the other for spare parts. The detachables are notorious for having issues with snow/ice. The huge storm a number of years ago we all went to the valley and both the OG 6 and quad were down because of snow/ice. We ended up driving up to the summit and lapping the doubles until they got the detachables running. It's just like they don't think about winter operations at all and think everything's gonna work just fine, when it's really gonna take time to get them running on a snow day. For them to allow BMR to take over CS on a snow day is just plain stupid. They know people are going to be clamoring for that run and now you're removing already limited terrain, duh!

Holy shit. If you zoom in and look closer you can see it pop to 67 n-m/sq in @11.25 W.C. Big, if true.

go back and look at about 11:34 am. it was like 63 n-m/sq in @ 10" W.C. Big.

Haven't seen a full pop yet but definitely a bounce going on. Might have missed it on my camera so I'll tune in again later.

That will never be an alternative

"The name comes from Tripoli in Libya, in commemoration of the fighting in the Barbary Wars. The pronunciation of New Tripoli is with the stress on "PO", as many non-natives make the mistake of stressing the first syllable which will often be corrected by natives." v busy at work today

You still got some nice runs in.

Noaa says 19 low for Palmerton on Sunday, production is so much better the colder and colder it gets so sharpen your harpoons could be whaling season.

But they did keep Jim on staff and supposedly promoted him, so he should have a clue on how to run the mountain (hopefully by now!). However, he may be being met with resistance on how it *should* be run. Who knows?

I did mention in my survey the amount of out of control skiers and boarders this year.

Was at Bear Creek for about an hour an a half this evening...They have surprisingly good coverage on what they have open....Snow was kinda of like light granular.... Some small piles...and lots of little boosters....Overall a fun time....Only one lift spinnin and lots of middle school kids ...Long lift lines but the banter and antics of the kids passed the time...One kid next to me was just doin dumb stuff on his skis...falls and his skis go right across mine...He was very apologetic but I just laughed.....They eventually had someone direct traffic...He took no quarter and that made the line move a little quicker....It was crowded but still a fun night at BC...

Today was somewhat extreme… Snow - 10/10, Viz - 0/10. When we woke up, it was already snowing for a while, and the forecast was promising a full day of snowfall. All lifts were opening on schedule (except for the stupid Zermatt link, as usual), so we followed the chain of three lifts to get as high on the Italian side as possible, in hope of perhaps getting over clouds, but nope. It was snowing all over the place, and the place itself was completely unrecognizable. Completely blinded by the surrounding whiteness, with not even a hint of shadows, we cautiously made our way down, and the already familiar way skied soooo much differently this time. We were probably among the first on the slopes with no other people in sight, and 3” of virgin fresh light snow under our skis. Where we used to cruise, we now had to push. Where we used to fly, we were now floating. We really could only make our way out by watching the trail markers, as everything around was just solid white. Even later during the day, after the snow turned rough, we really couldn’t see the waves, only feel them, and often at the very last moment. Quite a few falls ‘cause we could barely estimate the incoming trail pitch, forget about skiing around bad spots. Anyway, after a couple of top to bottom runs we retreated to some moderate terrain at Plan Maison where it was ok to ski even in the blind. Hardly any people, some funny conversations. A woman was skiing with a local guide and was clearly upset with the weather. She had no days left, was going to taxi to Geneva the next day (3.5 hours) to fly to London, then another 3 hour drive home, then fly to NYC in a day, followed by Miami and LA. What a life! Some kid was hoping for a break later in the day because “it would be so cool to ski this powder”. The break never came. It was a spectacular winter day. Not much chance to zoom around the mountain, had to be super cautious due to the viz, but still tons of fun! If you don’t see much in some pictures, that’s because we didn’t either, lol. Was going to ski tomorrow as well, but managed to stretch something in the back of my knee in the stupid parking lot, so if ice doesn’t help, will just drive to Milan and then ride to Venice to limp around.

RIP PAPASTEEZE always remembered never forgotten…the flame wars between him and Ski999 were legendary.

Love this song!

Duh. I can't ski. Just sit on my ass all day. Barely even working

well said.

Why is new tripoli pronounced the way it is and not like every other version of tripoli ?

Today was definitely better than yesterday. When they finally got Challenge running, it really improved lift lines. But it was the busiest week day I’ve ever skied there. Snow was nice and TCS was ROTD. I didn’t try Razors, bumps the size of a buffalo did not seem like fun.. Lots of folks poaching everywhere. I miss the days when you could pretty much just ski on to the lift. 😕

Nice work if you can get it.

Looks like up north (VT, ADKs, NH, Maine) might see a net positive of base-builder from this. About the only silver lining.

No lift issues or lines. Just open trails and some previous tracks. Nice morning at Lehigh's Goodman Campus getting out on the XC skis for the first time in a few years. Gotta get it in before tomorrow's monsoon.

Hehe, another 5 inches overnight. The driveway and the winding narrow road to the lift are all white, and you can’t see the mountains because of low clouds and snow still falling. The good news is that the forecast calls for clear skies in two hours. The bad news is that the Zermatt link is still red, and there’s even a notice now that they’re gonna close it for maintenance starting next week and until April. Just WTF?? Plenty of cars on the way to the lift trying to fight gravity, snow and ice. Some are spinning wheels polishing the black mirror, some chose to stop on the side (and block part of the already narrow road) to put the chains on. We march uphill with the skis on the shoulders, and I swear, I’m gonna get a heart attack on one of these marches one day. The cashiers again have no idea about what’s gonna be open and what not. Zermatt link is yellow, next update is in two hours. We choose to buy international tickets and hope for the best. And surely after the first gondola up we stare at the status board where the entire freaking mountain is in red, and the only way from here is the way down. Some people camp in the snow waiting for status update, we decide to go down once, since the line at the base wasn’t that long. And it would all work out great if we didn’t take the wrong turn and didn’t end up on the other side of town where there’s just one six pack chair up, and that chair is in start-n-stop mode, and the line is insaaaaane. Anyway, we made it. First up that chair lift, then down to the gondola, then higher and higher, and maybe 3/4 of the way up realized that our gamble will likely not work out today, as the wind is actually quite strong. It comes out of nowhere when you’re in the middle of the third lift, and hits you in the back draining all the heat and sending snow up the slopes. Initially even the Italian side of the resort was cut in half because the crossover was not reachable, but they opened it around noon. It was fun skiing. Lots of new snow in the lower part of the mountain, lots of off piste opportunities, softly packed groomers quickly turning rough as most people chose to stay there due to the cold and wind up top. And the temps really varied a lot. It was around freezing at the base and -12C on top plus the wind chill factor. So, if you go all the way from top to bottom, you start all chilled and with the mask on, and by the time you reach the line at the base you’re sweating bullets and opening all zippers. Even better skiing on upper part today than yesterday, despite it either not getting or not retaining much of the new snow. Bye-bye international add-on, but even on the Italian side we lost track of time and barely made it back to the Cervinia area before lift closure. Gonna snow all day tomorrow, I wonder how the viz and wind game will play out.

Well, turns out the forecasts are not to be trusted here. No significant snowfall yet, and the biggest issue was maneuvering the car on steep icy driveway and in the most tiniest garage, but hey, we made it after all! But the night was brutal, lol. Turns out that they turn off heating in the entire town between 23:00 and 6:00, somehow we were not communicated this, and spent part of the night kicking the radiators and reading thermostat manual. Going to the lift now!