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New skis delivered today. Can’t wait to get them mounted and try them out!

FINALLY somebody paid for elite parking.

in hopes that i can prevent anyone from jumping off of a bridge, the Blue Mountain Snowmaking machine has been fired back up.

Guys. One of the best carving days I’ve ever had in PA. So pissed I had to leave at 1130. First runs were sublime, groomers actually got their act together and made things groomed without ice balls (well, 90%). Snow was proper fast, felt like early AM groomers out west. Skis hooked up great. A few icy spots started to show up on Lazy, Main Street was only getting better as the sun came up. Rest of the mountain was good though (minus Freefall, because “shut down for racing”… that’s a whole separate topic). Started blowing more snow right as I left, my guess is this afternoon will be pretty good with some fresh stuff on top, as long as it doesn’t get slid out.

Just got back from a late afternoon sesh at Blue The True! Guns were blazing top to bottom on Nightmare and Dreamweaver. Come around has been pushed out and Widowmaker looks ready to be pushed and open. Snow was good with a couple scraped spots. Guns blazing on Lazy, Vista and Midway was still nice and light snow reconditioning all day long. Looks like we will have a plethora of new terrain by the weekend. All and all JADIP.

Made it up this afternoon for an hour. Light crowds and good snow but they were blowing on Lazy and Midway which was insta freeze on the goggles. Tried to avoid that and stuck to CS and Pdis since they were good. Upper Main was closed and they were blowing on NMDW. Only blowing on the upper head wall on Rzrs so guessing they’re just letting the rest of the trail dry out for the weekend. Saw @MattEDGEwas in the house but didn’t get to talk to him.

Here is a crazy idea... Maybe they could turn the lights off after close to save a few pennies.

Firm and fast edgeable most places but some scraped down areas. Coming soon is open and the ditch is back.

I might switch from snowboarding to tubing.

and this is where the really weird shit goes on.

I just knew it would have creepy dolls, its a nice house and all that but I wonder midweek what the demand is.

disregard. Could go down the wormhole on that one, but this is a family friendly site.

No sugar but plenty of scrap spots and the good snow was all rollers. I would have been happy with it being bumped up but I guess we didn’t get enough snow. Blowing on Chute and Widowmaker was noticeably new to me while still hitting the same trails they had going this morning

Late afternoon tour to a nice sunset.....

I had to actually go to work today so super nice to hear they are blowing nmdw

There’s a ton of snow on Raisins , getting a little close to the quad .

I'll start daily trip reports for tubing. Thank you.

We had someone show up at work before Christmas saying we needed to switch off of PECO, and i never really got who they were with. the first time they showed up they talked to the receptionist, who is just the nicest person in the world, but if someone walks in here and tells her "they can save us all sorts of money" she will run over a bus load of nuns to help them get to the right person so that we can save $2. Shes not the only one, though, some other people here fall for the "im gonna save you so much money" thing i usually am the one wasting my time with them only to find out we wont save anything going with what ever snake oil they are selling. Tire salesman are the worst. i have guys in here trying to sell me tires all the time. Problem is, we dont look at just prices, its a package thing.....service/scrap/availability/ etc. Oh, and most homeowners are stupid, so they fall into the category where they dont understand there are 2 pieces to the price of their electric puzzle, but when they are being sold a new supplier, they are only told the one price, so it makes them feel like its almost half of what they are paying now. Then they jump on FB and show the world exactly how stupid they are by saying they saved $.07 kwh by switching to Bobs Electric Wind Power as a supplier.

Impressive amount of snow over at tubing. time to get their galactic on.

The grid at total must be balanced, Palmerton isn't alone, all of ec up into Canada is all the same grid. In an overall sense it's kwh in vs out that 31 agencies in six regional entities mange. For us the regional agency is Reliability First for NERC, basically after the big nyc blackout in the 80s the connected everything in the EC and appointed load balancers so it couldn't happen again. Everyone here is also PJM so it's probably a mix of rates and capacity. Basically they could produce more juice but nobody wants to pay x per kwh so they don't produce. So during the fracking run up basically all the drilling companies had to be producing and finding new plays at all times due to their high use of credit. This meant no matter the price they kept pumping out NG, the price got so low Limerick power station could barely compete on price in PJM and bam 1000mw is offline. The other big one is retirement of something like 6gw in the MISO district which is the Midwest. Again we all have to be balanced out so overall for 2022 we had a 17.6gw shortfall which is huge. Nerc says since 2021 winter the reserve margin has fallen by 6 or 7% although installed capacity is 3x the reserve requirement. What does that all mean ? Basically the Midwest is low on output so particularly when load is high we send them juice, up to 13k GW. Additonally because they cant generate enough they purchased interconnect agreements which also limits the total number out there across all districts. Now we can produce mad electricity, plenty for everyone but and this is key not at the prices PJM wants to role at so instead they take the big loads offline until nighttime when the load generally drops. Lastly a shit ton of plants aren't winterized, there a mad plants were the boiler, turbine generator enclosures are exposed to the weather. Additionally a lot of valves, gages, instruments that are necessary for running the until aren't protected at all. The big recommendation is for enclosures and wind breaks. If you want more info read this, particularly pages 9, 12 and 24 - https://www.rfirst.org/resource-center/2023-01-23-winter-and-long-term-reliability-assessment-presentation/

A bit of marketing advice for JD, spamming only has a negative effect. I’d rather sleep in my car now than stay at Nancy’s treasured farmhouse. No offense

yea kinda weird the new snow compacted into washboard pumps everywhere and coming soon was ....closed for racing. was gonna call it after 3 runs but then found some decent snow left side of main and did 3 last runs until they shut down the OG6 and the lines got too long

So much of what blue does is a mystery. That's part of the fun I guess

It's Blue Mountain, what don't you get?

Keeps everyone else happy too since it’ll move the race team off of everything else. I no longer pull for Blue to make snow on razors for me to ski it, more so to move BMR to their private island and away from the rest of the mountain.

No.

Second Jrwit’s assessment. Good day. About 10 degrees with no wind. Started with a run on Paradise to get the knee juice flowing, and then up to freefall, just as they were closing it - caught the rope across my throat as they raised it, but they let me through. Pretty slick, but nice - then it was closed for adult gate practice. Headed over to the Summit lift. Upper Main Street was closed because it was half groomed. Ran lazy Mile, which was nice but even then getting pretty crowded with people coming down from the challenge lift as well as the summit lift. Spent the rest of the morning doing Vista Midway and lower Main. They were all in great shape and surprisingly, about 10 lower was pretty empty. No lift lines. The adaptive coach jacket/lime jacket people were in the house and had a whisker run set up near the upper lodge. Apparently the guns were shut down because of a power alert in the township. They started up again about 11, and were blowing on upper main, Curzi’s, Razors, as well as other high traffic areas. Ran the Falls a couple of times and tried to avoid the lower terrain park because it got pretty crowded. Didn’t really see anyone except the Beth Ford crew.

i cant wait until they are done working on Raisins, and Widowmaker, so they can get started on some other trails we will be able to ski.

Yeah, just posted about it. Was fantastic

I have people call my work weekly trying to get us to switch our electric supplier. They always start out by saying,”grab your electric bill” and I say if you’re calling from PPL you should have it. The last one the decrease was like a half cent per kilowatt hour. I said that’s gonna save us a couple dollars a month not worth it. My bills are between like $70 and $120 so no need for solar panels.

@mbike-ski Coverage wasn't bad..Couple of spots I could feel somethin rubbin the base...but overall it was good....Cold and snow Friday should sweetin things up....

Thanks @EdBacon!!

And the irony is.......it was someone that was going tubing. Go figure.

Need to get people into that paid parking so they can feed the snowmaking meter.

I agree he hasn’t post a single report…it’s like the people who’s first ever post is trying to sell something. I think the rule should be at least 100 posts before you can sell plus reference and background checks.

Is that a banjo propped up in there?

Blowing at JF and Montage as well, but just because they are, doesnt mean it isnt a PPL thing. it could be a Palmerton grid thing, or just a straight up Palmerton thing. If the grid around Blue is overloaded with Palmerainians charging up their Teslas, and electric heat, they will shut down or fav mountain. Who knows, maybe electricity has trouble getting over the mountain when its cold.

I mean it's close but if it's between me skiing switchback and NMDW vs people staying warm in single digit temps, I guess I can make an exception.

Why they don't try to open Widowmaker early for BMR is a mystery...

It was prob real icy and sugar piles?? I’m never a fan of later in the day on pow days…get in get out. Leave the sloppy seconds and thirds to the TDH’s

The double dip this evening was…. Interesting. Nothing like the morning session. We ended up getting a drink mid way through the runs. 🥴

I would hope they're pushing at their capacity to make snow this week. What a waste if they're not.

Rode from 9:30-2:30. Very fun riding natural snow. Like Jlaw said, being in the ambience of natural snow is great. Said hi to toast on the way out. Drive took much longer than usual as lots of traffic on 30 bypass and northeast extension. Roads were surprisingly bad in chester county, surprisingly good in Montgomery county, and ok in Lehigh valley. Luckily the focus is a beast in the snow

Today was amazing. That’s all I’m saying.

I don’t care about stats right now. I’m focused on making sure my car, body and business don’t fall apart. Leafy green vegetables and no booze tonight maybe a little spaghetti yay

Great ski day. Low lines, mini pow day. Main Street still had its ice softballs and crud, made carving a pain. Freefall was excellent, no popping off the lip of falls, but the snow was overall good and everyone in a good mood

I currently see at least 5 separate threads on this. That's smart advertising. Maybe JD Wentworth will make a new thread daily, or maybe stand in the Blue Mountain lower lot with a sign like those mattress places with 51 percent off sales.

He's workin' hard for the money. So hard for it honey. He's workin' hard for the money so you better treat him right.