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Saturday, sugarbush. Sometime in the middle of the night @Johnny Law showed up. He headed to the resort a little earlier than us, as we were thinking 10:30 to let some stuff soften up. Firm-ish conditions up top, with softer stuff towards the bottom. The sun started doing its thing and softening stuff up that was in the sun, shady stuff was just a little pokey, but getting there. 1 pm we met up with jeffs buddy nick for some nice laps at castlerock. Terrain at CR was a little limited, selective at times, but still went. Big fun bumps with a good collection of rocks mixed in. Finished off the day with a few runs off heavens gate, ran till just after 3pm or so. sugarbush rocks, sugarbush skied well, and has real nice coverage. That was a pretty energetic day, as even @NMSKI said he was pretty much drained.

My weekend turned into a bit of a landmine that blew up in my face so I could only ride with the crew on Saturday but it was just perfect. It started firm af but as the sun came out the super soft started coming through. We went in search of the steep bumps and the bush delivered with super soft blasters. NM put the pedal to 150 and was channeling his inner plake at ludicrous speed. Under sunny skies and warm temps we ran castle Rock, heavens gate and north links until they closed. Celebrations for such a day were in order and Lawsons Castlerock and headys went down easy, for at least a moment I'd wager there was no better place to be.

Sunday, a little Magic. Still love this place, but really want to hit it with more open. above freezing overnight, so, some firm stuff with a little Blue Mountain type cookies, which softened up pretty fast. Very similar to last year as to what was open. A few groomed runs, and some fun spicy snow, grass, rocks with a few drainage pipe crossings mixed in. Got warm real quick, and that made the run outs real slow, and pretty grabby by 1 pm. Got to ride the black lift. Had a nice burger at the BLT. On the road now.

Lacking in the trip report for sure. Friday, killington. Very firm to start. Cloudy. No crowds. Ski on every lift like skiitoolive. We ended up on some trail, which should have been called “certain death” as it was the slickest, and most un-skiable trail i have been on in a while. People were eating shit on it hard and ending up in the grass. Skiing the frozen junky bumps on the side was better than doing the power slide in the grass. sun poked out just enough to soften some stuff up. Not entire runs, but parts of runs. Killington has good coverage.

Hey All, I’m back from another spring session at Blue mountain the true mountain. I arrived at the lower lot around 820am and it was in the upper 30s with moderate winds. It felt darn chilly initially. In the house were Mixilplix, PARidge, MBike Mike, Slim, Airhead, Indiggio, Tarpenhead, Schifdawg, Nancy, Wally, Harold, Kumar, Bethlehem ford guy, Jimmy and many others. Razors was a little firm initially but pretty smooth and I got several nice runs in it without many people, one run in nightmare dreamweaver which has excellent coverage after pushing out the jumps. I did one run on Burma mid session and decent and the last corner, I pushed a little hard with my poles and one of my poles snapped…they don’t owe me anything as they’re over 10 years old. Riding the quad I was looking for the best pole to grab for the rest of the session and found a similar length atomic pile on the ground next to the race shack. The rest of the session I skied only razors and it got progressively softer and very pleasant. I skied until 1120, I didn’t hang around for any beer…I didn’t sleep much last night and sweat a lot today and more in the mood for water and Gatorade. A few rumors are circulating that Blue is going to reopen Friday and Saturday again. I don’t know about that with rain and warmish weather in the forecast but you never know. All in all fun skiing and definitely bonus skiing. Last picture showing they’re open this Friday 12-8 but might not have edited it from yesterday.

Those of us with IKON passes drove up just past Elk mountain and skied Stratton today. Cloudy, kinda foggy, actually really foggy at times, but no dampness. Some very sticky snow in spots, otherwise if you stayed on the traveled path pretty nice soft spring like snow. 1 photo. killington tomorrow.

Awesome trip with a great crew, and it went by way too fast. I’ll remember the day we had at the bush for a long time. I love spring skiing just as much as about anything and we sure skied our asses off! Agree with Law that there was no place better to be than with a good group of guys post skiing stoke, drinking a heady topper while the sun is about to set over the mountain. pics of various places:

You really need to charge your phone lol

And the clock strikes 5…guess that’s it for PA… I’m still pumped over the black atomic ski pole..and the one run on Raisins ledge I skied with one pole felt weird. With early bird season passes still for sale at Blue for a few more days, this was a heck of a move for Blue to sell more season passes and also get some of the camelback people to see the light…what’s this light all y’all are talking about..the light is Blue….

Ski Day 3 - sunshine ☀️ - Tuesday @Schif and I skied with each other for most of day 1 and 2. So by day 3, we tried to do a group ski for a bit. here is the ski day 3 video recap. The sun was shining! You could actually see the mountains. It was so refreshing to not be in a snow globe. you could see a ton of fresh slides across the mountain too. We tried to go to Val Thorens with the group but mostly stayed in Meribel-Mottaret. There were powder stashes just off piste and it was lovely. The groomed parts eventually became quite scrappy in Meribel-Mottaret, so we broke off into a smaller group and went to Val Thorens. These are the runs we * think * we did. 1. Tougnete 1 2. Combes 3. ROC de tougne 4. ROC de Tougne 5. Chatelet x 2 6. Mont Vallon 7. Combes 1 8. ROC de tougne The group wanted to stop for hot chocolate and meet up with the full group. We wanted to keep skiing. So we stopped briefly and then broke away from the group but took Amy with us. We headed over to Val Thorens and it was lovely. We wish we could have gotten there earlier. I think we did these lifts while at VT. 1. Granges 2. Roc 1 3. Brueyeres 1 4. VT3 plein sud 5. VT15 6. VT4 7. Plan des mains 8. Pas du lac 1 to 2 to folie douche We went to Folie Douche around 4pm for the final hour and it was amazing. note: after I posted this I noticed the shirtless guy and the couple making out. It’s basically the Jersey Shore. 😂 Again - crushed a pitcher with Mike, had champagne sprayed on us, danced on tables, people were shirtless or bra only, and you know - typical Sweet Madness stuff. Since Folie closes at 5pm, we skied to Rond Point. But since it was a sunny gorgeous day - there was quite the line. We listened to the music and wish we had some backpack beers to jam out. It was S’s birthday so we all went out to dinner at La Galette (restaurant-lagalette-meribel.com). We ate fondue and raclette. It was delicious. we went to another bar for 1 drink and were up quite late. We check out of the Airbnb the next day - so we had a bunch of bags to pack. We skiied 1 more day and switched to a hotel the next day

Travel day yesterday was grueling. Park n Ride off 33 at 3am. 1st flight 630am, landed in Dallas barely had a layover. 2nd flight from Dallas to Missoula around 1230. On to the bus, quick stop for groceries, liquor store and place that won’t be named on a public forum. Got to the resort at dark, got all our stuff in. I got 5 tickets, we’re here for 6 days, so we decided to take today. Just checking out the resort and taking bus into Whitefish.

Nice reports so far… @Dirtwolf the first time I heard a Grateful Dead song was at sugarbush at the base of Heavens gate when I was in 11th grade in 1996, it was Touch of Gray and I heard a lot more Grateful Dead in college. Y’all got to ride the heavens gate triple for its final weekend after a 30+ year run. I also always had the fraggle rock theme song in my head when I rode castle rock..that’s where warren miller superstars Dan and John Egan got their start…

In December, @Schif and I were at a friend’s house and got invited to a planned ski trip. There were 8 people total (including us) on this trip. The dates, airbnb, and the bulk of the trip were already planned so we really just went with the flow for the most part. This was our first time traveling with so many people - we had to fold into what the majority of the group was doing. We had a great time (with a few blips). But if we were to do it again - we would do 5-6 ski days and ski longer. It was awesome. THE SIZE OF THE 3 VALLEES The 3 Vallees claims to be larger than the top 5 largest resorts in North America — combined. The mountain’s main resorts are Meribel, Val Thorens, and Corchevelle. There are something like 151 ski lifts and 364 trails. It was bonkers. There were so many different types of gondolas and chairs. SKIING IN THE FRENCH ALPS SOUNDS BOUGIE. WAS IT EXPENSIVE? I’ve seen some videos about how skiing in Europe is cheaper, so I’ll drop our major expenses below in case anyone else is considering. All prices are per person. 4 ski days at 3 Valleys: $142 Flight from EWR with 1 checked bag: $760 Shared car rental in France: $93 Airbnb with the group, in town (5 days/4 nights): $308 / $77 per person per night Brides-les-Bain Hotel for 1 night: $52 I left off things like airport parking and food because they would vary by person and exist whether you fly to Jackson Hole or France. Generally, I thought the on-mountain drinks were cheaper than in the US. Shots, champagne, and pitchers of beer did seem cheaper in France though. A pitcher of beer was about $20-35 depending on the bar. I remember paying $16-20 for a beer in the back bowl of Vail. So yes - ski tickets, lodging, and booze were cheaper but the transportation costs made it about on par with skiing in the US. Optional expense. More on this later…. • Emergency medical visit for a broken wrist. It included x-ray, custom cast, opium, and anti-inflammatory: approx $350

Lol , just found some on eBay

Renewed my pass. I can't see them opening next weekend. Been a good run, like @Doug said tho, i need closure. Anyone have pics of these epic pants? Also I'm not so sure the elk sale is a done deal, could be wrong tho. Old curmudgeon might have had an issue with lighting.

Came up on my feed as well

Looooooking mighty fine in them there pants son! Ain’t no way I could fit in my pants from that era! Funniest thing was I rode the lift with a rando who was very interested and asked if I was skiing with and knew the guy in the retro Descente pants 😬 great ski day skiing tele in the am then swapped out the heels to run some bumps but outta synch with everyone so kinda weird ending to the season, did some grillage with the bfg crew and peaced out, later gator!

Super good time this morning..First few runs down either trail you could really let it go...Great weather....Started to get pretty rowdy a lil before noon...A worthy end of season morning...

Today is the only day this season I stopped mid run, to say wazup to the bumpers and wait for Nancy and Schif.

Bumps were firm early so a bunch of high speed runs on razors was nice. The wind tamed down considerably from yesterday. Things softened up and the bumps got deeper than I liked . Upper razors bumps were oddly spaced and pretty icy. The crew was working on a second line when I had to bail around noon. Such a nice day and I wish I could have stayed till the end. I went with my Retro attire today, 42 year old Descante pants and CB powder shirt. Got some compliments from the “old guys “ lol.

Razors got really nice after it softened up a little.

If it's over (which I think it is) today was an absolutely incredible way to end the season. Full speed laps on a flat NMDW and Razors with great coverage and decent snow. All things considered Blue worked magic the latter half of March when things were looking dire. Mad props to blue

Traded a day at Blue for this

Lapped razors bumps with the dude this afternoon

Day 56. More fresh snow, but heavier than it has been. Dense fog on one trail had me choosing the trees in self defense. It's been a few years since I did that.

Day 55. Some fresh snow, but overcast and foggy.

Oooh. I wanna know. We should make this fun. Maybe we can do a PASR pool? Whoever guesses correctly gets featured in PASR the Magazine. My guess is a real estate conglomerate of some sort.

Day 2 - Cloudy with a chance of Apres - Monday Here's a quick video recap of ski day 2 in The 3 Vallees. It was still raining when @Schifand I woke up. The clouds were thick and visibility was low in the morning. The day started with breakfast of eggs and sausage with the gang at the chalet. Given Schif's wrist and the weather, we got on the chair around 10am instead of 9am — hoping the clouds would pass. But it didn’t. The visibility was crazy low. I’ve never skied in worse conditions. Since we could only see about 10 feet in front of us, the slower wet snow, and the wrist, we weren't going very fast on Monday. Our goal was to go to Val Thorens and get up high where there would be snow. We found snow but couldn’t go off-piste much because of the visibility. The videos and pictures I took were during some of best moments of visibility. When we could go slightly off trail, the snow was wonnnnnderful. To start, we took these 7 lifts 1. Tougnete 1, gondola 2. Granges 3. Bruyères 1, gondola 4. Bruyères 1, gondola 5. VT27 6. VT35 7. VT33 - Cime Caron, tram We skied over to Cime Caron and found a tram that took us to one of the highest points at 3200 meters (about 10,400 feet). It's the purple star that I marked on the map below. For comparison, the BASE of Loveland Ski Resort is at 10,500 feet. So for the most part, elevation sickness really wasn't a problem during the trip since the french alps are quite lower (in comparison to the US west). BUT - Being at the top of the tram with full-on white-out conditions, it was a bit trippy in a vertigo sense. At the top of Cime Caron, it looked like hamster tunnel. We couldn’t see a damn thing. On a clear day, you can see into Italy and Mount Blanc - I suppose. We skied down and holy cow. It was a group effort. Wind was howling. Visibility was awful. No more than 5-6 feet. Everyone was in it together and the cluster of random people helped each other. People stayed in small pods. A solo skier asked if she could ski with us. It was quite the experience but we made it down. It wasn’t that steep or challenging, just truly couldn’t see anything. The run was either a red or black. Here is a video of Mike heading towards Cime Caron after that wild run. The line of snow / mountain / ski was just all white especially at the top. We took VT31 (a small gondola) and then we took Plein Sud ... only to find Folie Douce - Val Thorens. Since Mike didn’t party yesterday, we stopped for some fist pumping. Bonus: mike was instructed to elevate his arm. Fist pumping is essentially elevating it.. right? Folie Douce is a bit of a chain. I believe there are 7 across Europe. https://www.lafoliedouce.com/en/ After the pitcher of beer, we headed back to Meribel to apres with the gang. But the gang went in early because of the awful weather. One thing about 3 Valleys is there’s a ton of variations in lifts and gondolas. We took VT4 which is a double cable gondola that runs 3 gondolas together. It's in the video above (^^) We could probably write an entire post about the lifts we experienced. On the way back we took: 8. VT4 thé three gondola 9. Plan des mains 10. Pas du lac 1 to 2 We stopped at Round Point which was so fun. They have a giant umbrella that goes up and down, which was super helpful with the weather. They had a live British band. We danced to the hits of Queen with a ton of brits. Crushed a pitcher of beer - again. And had a great time despite the conditions and injury. Mike was holding off on getting the Rx but by this point - he was in pain and the swelling was getting worse. So we stopped at Le Pharmacie for meds. Note: Turns out the green cross in France is the pharmacy and not @GrilledSteezeSandwich favorite establishment. We had dinner with the gang in the chalet. I think it was some rice and chicken combo that A made. And B made a homemade carrot cake that was banging for dessert. We ended the night playing a tortilla slap game and spent the rest of the night bullshitting with each other.

I suppose I can chime in on this TR for a bit. Travel for those interested was on SAS (Scandanavian Air). Newark> Stockholm> Geneva. Then we booked a "mini bus" that would take us to the mountains. Turns out it was a full sized and completely full motor coach. Lots of traffic, but not terrible, pretty comfy ride. The only issue was that there was a transfer in the town of Moutiers. It's pretty much just a train/bus station town and we had an hour to kill since the traffic meant we missed the connection. Tried to eat at a restaurant, but in a small French town service is 100% on their schedule so we bailed after 10 minutes of trying to get a waiter to actually want to wait on us. At this point I wandered the town in search of a grocery store I found on the map. Slightly harder to find in person and I ended up running around like a mad man grabbing beer, wine, champagne, snacks, apples, and a huge hunk of cheese. A mad dash back to the transit station ensued with a backpack full of booze and a case of glass bottles and a bag of apples in my hands. Made the connection by the skin of our teeth. Bus dropped us off in the middle of Meribel, and it was a short walk to the Chalet. We were on the "3rd floor" which really meant going up a steep driveway from a hilly road, then up 2 flights of steps to the main entry, then another flight, then there was an elevator to get you to our floor, and when you opened the door you were faced with an interior flight of stairs which brought you up to the main floor of our 2 floor penthouse. This was obviously fun with bags and gear. Gorgeous place though and the views were sweet. After a long day of travel, the group popped a few bottles of wine and we made our way to L'igloo for some pizza and more wine. L ' IGLOO (2) (meribel-restaurants.com, and turned in ready to get up and get the first ski day in.

Day 1 - Afternoon Session - Part 2 “This is about to get good …” - @GrilledSteezeSandwich But seriously anything would have been better than the mishaps of the morning of day 1. @Schif goes to the airbnb to rest his broken wrist and I went to try to find the group. I take the Saulire gondola up and ski the main front face of Meribel trying to locate the group. I took the Adret lift about 3-5 times because I only kind of had phone service, so it was a bit challenging to coordinate. After a few runs, I found them at Monche Bar (https://www.meribel.net/en/apidae/le-monchu-meribel/). They stopped for shots, espresso martinis, and champagne - so I joined them for a shot and champagne. We took one lift together then we heard the sounds of Folie Douche in Meribel so we made our way over around 4pm. At Folie, we had apérol spritz and pitchers of beer. We danced on tables and sang our hearts out for about an hour. In the gang was Amy who I brought to Jeff's preseason party maybe 2 (?) years ago, B&S who lives in London, L&D who lives in Philly near us (maybe we'll bring them to blue sometime), and S who lives in Atlanta. It was a fun group. Folie Douche closes at 5pm so we shut it down. Then skiied over to Round Point which was wild. There was a line to get in so instead, we headed back to the house. Just as we got in, it started to rain and continued throughout the night. We were reading that it was snowing at higher elevations, so fingers crossed. We ate tacos with the gang at the house. Played some games. And went to bed hoping tomorrow would be even better.

Ski Day 1 - @Schif and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day 7:15am: Woke up! Grabbed some fruit and granola bars and strolled to the lifts. 8:30am: We scan the QR code and grabbed our ski passes 9:00am: We're in the first 5 gondola cabins heading up to the mountain. We took the Saulire 1+2 gondola up. The rest of the group was slooooow moving so it was just @Schif and I. So we talked about meeting up later for apres. While at the top, we dipped towards Corchevelle. The runs were looooong and the grooming was beautiful. It was mostly cloudy with the sun peaking out occasionally. I think we took Creux or Marmottes down to Roc Mugnier. At the top of Roc Mugnier lift, we decided to do that area again because it was so fun. The trails were for the most part empty. I got one of the Insta360 camera. I'm not sharing to show off my sick medoicre skiing ability but really posting the video to show how empty the trails were. This all sounds amazing. Why is this such a negative nancy title? [dunnnn dunnnnn dunnnn] Mike caught an edge and fell hard. He sat there for a moment then slowly got up. As he was just starting to move going hella slow, a small 8-year-old French girl hit his snowboard from behind and brought him to his knees. I was behind him so I skied down to the chaos. Side Note: I'm not sure how he manages to avoid the PA ski resort chaos, but somehow in the French alps with 4 other people on a ski trail - there was a collison. @Schif had crazy pain in his wrist. So we tried to find some sort of ski patrol. We went up the Roc Mugnier lift again and then skied to the bottom hoping to find a medic center. We didn’t find it. Instead, we luckily shared a gondola with an Italian doctor. Mike was just going to push through it but the Italian doctor suggested it might be fractured. I speak French - kind of - so we stopped at patrol near the top of Signal and they told us where the medic center is. We ended up taking about 5 lifts to to get back to Meribel and skiied down the front. But wait - THERES MORE We skied down Mauduit and it was lovely at the top. The trail got more slushly as our eleivation decreased though. Then all of the sudden - it got very thin. Like east coast thin. Like closing day at Bleu thin. Then it became a dirt trail and we had to take off our skis. There was not a single sign closing the trail. We watched a few people do the same thing. I took off my atomic skis and started to stroll down. I stumble a bit. My ski goes flying. I butt-slide through mud and slush trying to dig in my heels to stop. Mike fortunately watched my ski as if it was a golf ball going the distance. Mike’s wrist is starting to swell very large. His fingers were swelling and there was a ping pong size ball on his wrist -- so he’s going slower. We retrieve my ski. Laugh it off and head to the medic center inside the Parc d'Olympic at the base. Mike gets an xray and a cast. Turns out it’s fractured. He was advised to not snowboard and gets a prescription for some medicine. We’re exhausted by all the hoopla so we get on the bus hoping it takes us back to the airbnb. But WAIT THERES MORE the bus goes the wrong way and stops at a bus depot. So we end up back to where we found my ski and trudge through the snow. Bad things happen in a series of 3, right? We say F it. Let’s get food at the base. It was quite the first 4 hours... Mike goes back to the Airbnb to rest and told me to go find the gang…..

The Commute to France Friday: 2:30pm ET we drove from Philly to Newark. The flight took off around 7pm. Saturday: Arrived at the airbnb around 6pm france time (about 1pm ET). The group stopped at a grocery store and bought an absurd amount of food. We also spotted this vending machine of cheese in Moutiers, France. We hit lots of traffic so we had to take some side roads to avoid the traffic. We later learned that there's a ton of Saturday traffic because more rentals go from Sat-Sat. Thought the humor of PASR might like this destination sign. The Airbnb The house was lovely but had European quirks. • Pro: It was the penthouse with a gorg view, walking distance to the town & slopes, and also on a bus route • Con: a weird bathtub/shower situation, slopped roofs that made some of the rooms feel small We went to dinner for pizza and wine. We headed to bed with the goal to be on the snow as early as possible.

Blue skies at the top

Trip report slacker here. Yesterday was awesome, snowed most of day. When it got foggy up top, we moved lower. Snow was lovely untouched powder. Today was sunny for most part. Did one of the bowls, some bump runs. Last bump run, ended up on Thousand Turns, then to the bottom . I know what they mean when they say fog! Literally couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces at the bottom. Returned to North Side and Hellroaring Basin rest of the day.