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Arrived under sunny skies but winder and cold, far far less people were in the house and I only rode with Airhead and Atomics friend the Bush Agent. I might have seen C1er as he was getting on the quad but it could have been a look alike. Only the quad and new 6 running so I started quad, Razors had a Berlin wall like setup going so we went Nmdw which looked mint but had more of a firmness crunchy layer than sat-mon. Grip was still excellent but it definitely requires more angle and commitment. Challenge, Side, Coming Soon were all very good but exactly the same snow though it did look and feel like they blew in some rando spots mostly down low. Switch was good but I'm still pouring one out for my homey as without the middle air it's less interesting. Best run of the day was Raceway,mid, lower main. For unknown reasons that combo and upper main held snow without the harder layer and I ran those until I had to work. It's possible with some good solar radiation that the upper layer softens which would make it divine but hell if I know if or when that would happen. Thinking with a groom out tomorrow could be good as well.

Skied 8 runs this afternoon under sunny skies until my hip told me to quit. Shocked at the conditions and how great everything was. The snow was fantastic. ROTD for me was the Laziest Mile or Coming Soon. No lift lines either. Just a lovely day.

I shared @Johnny Laws disappointment with racers, it looked sweet on the ride up. Challenge was nice then I went to main st lift for less wind and of course I ended up on the chair that must’ve been in front of the gun. As I was grumbling I thought to myself that meant they had made some fresh. I’m thinking I know the chair wasn’t under Barneys but maybe? I got to the top of main st and Barneys had a new coat, so I grabbed first tracks . I saw the green/pink flash by I stayed on Barneys till 10 then back to work. Unfortunately my job near blue is done so I have to plan a little more for early morning sessions .

I vote that they let the lower lot can guy go official and let him clean up the hill. All cans will be gone by 730 Saturday morning.

signage scares people and i'm willing to bet a lot of people don't know there's a bin at the top. they just need something that says it's a loss of pass and there's a place just up ahead to throw trash. it'd probably handle 90% of it. everyone likes taking a shot at making it into the bin. tho i will say, at least on the true sixer, it's a little close to sidewinder. also kind of like graffiti, it multiplies. they need to clean up what's already there at least with some frequency.

And a gigantic sign overtop the entrance to the parking lots. Welcome to Blue Mountain, keep it clean or else!

Trash cans at the top and bottom, remove the funnel, instead throw signs up everywhere that say "please keep our mountain beautiful, do not litter" or "littering is subject to pass removal". Also Put "littering is subject to a fine and removal of pass" in big bold letters on tickets, trail maps, lift towers etc...everything basically so when someone gets caught patrol has every right to take their shit and kick them out. You get caught once you lose your pass. You get caught a second time you're subject to a lifetime ban from Blue mountain.

Son’s at again. Mars hiding behind the moon for a while.

Perhaps if Blue would have more than one trash can for the entire valley lot that's perpetually overflowing... It's obvious people are just too fucking lazy to walk their shit to the overflowing garbage can anyway anymore.

Maybe people should be respectful, and not throw their trash off the lift or in the lot. I’m not sure how you could fix or change that.

Someone in the comments even noted the empty 12 pack container of twisted tea, too.

Nice job by BMR setting up two courses, the brushes helped, those darn poles get in your head at first - Finally started feeling it at the end....Looking forward to next week

There can only be one. Dug my slalom skis out of the attic, sharpened and waxed them, and spent the morning on Razors in the race clinic. Nice setup by blue, a course of brushes and stubs to start off, then a couple dozen slalom gates. Been quite a while since Nastar was a thing on the east coast. But even without the course set up, razors would have been closed because there is a broken down groomer on the slope. They almost canceled the slalom clinic because of it. Supposedly nine days to get the drive motor repaired, hopefully they’ll tow it off somewhere before that.

He's always rooting in the overflowing Rodney can when I arrive in the morning. Said his truck failed inspection and needed new exhaust that what he made in aluminum cans paid for. He even helps pick up the wanton garbage people leave lying around in the lot w/out being paid by Blue.

people are slobs and just don't give a shit, I've seen others and have had words with people telling them to pick up their garbage in both the lift lines and parking lot

The current setup of the skeleton funnels for the dumpsters doesn’t make much sense. They need to attach the canvas that make up the funnels

Thanks for the info. I’m going with someone who rode strictly park for years. Now kinda aged out, and has skis with edges now. 😂

Day 21. Spent most of my time in the fog, but it made diving under the layer later much sweeter.

Said he collected enough before to buy himself a roto-tiller to replace one that crapped out on him too!

Damn dude, he told me years ago it pays for his wife's insulin but I always think he must be collecting from everywhere because alu is like 80 cents a lb. I want to throw him some loot but no way he'd take it.

Wildcat apparently still only has one route open down the mountain. It’s unbelievable, especially since it’s been cold for almost an entire month.

Sending people out to pick it up is great but that’s not the solution. They need to do whatever they can to prevent it from happening in the first place.

There were some employees picking up the trash under the new 6 pack today. Also there was some fast food trash in lower lot, I noticed. Not nearly as many trash cans in the lot as used to be. I get so annoyed with folks that leave their trash in the lot.

Makes me sad that Wildcat isn’t being given the attention it deserves. It’s a great mountain, with a ton of potential. I got a 3 day Epic NE local pass this year, mostly so I could ski with my son, who lives in Carlisle. Not many choices close to there that aren’t Epic. Otherwise, I wouldn’t get an Epic pass. I’m just not that impressed with them.

Toast I will say you always take good pictures…you can have one of my buddy passes if you want…Zonked has left me on read in her DMs lol

Right on…I’m gonna try my best to make opening..got my derrrn currrr berk ferm derrr sherp and da one tire low on air so gotta sterp off at Shertz for errr or Wawa for a smoke and a coke with BenMs Aunt Mary Pat and my THC level the same as @Metz the Jersey boy SAT score..triple digits

@eaf How has Mountain Creek been??

Wow grate stuff.

Saw him today rooting around in the cans in the lot. I hope he wears gloves, there’s gotta be all sorts of disgusting things in those cans.

Way to get after it…I’ll be up tomorrow for opening. Seems like days since I’ve skied.

I would go a step ahead and say that Vail has negatively impacted PA skiing as a whole. If you’re in the DC area or southern/central PA your options are Vail. If your out by Pittsburg, your options are vail (including the Ohio areas). I believe in competition in business, but what vail has done in PA should not have been allowed. They own so many ski areas in one state (8 to be exact) with those areas properly positioned to all but force people to buy an epic pass unless they want to go to blue knob or Boyce park, that all they have to do is the bare minimum to exist. That does not spur competition when all you have to do to be better than them is 1% more. I mean, what are you going to do if you live in central PA and don’t want to ski vail? Hoof it for hours to get to the poconos? Hope that blue knob hasn’t blown their miniscule snowmaking budget on that sweet Altoona meth? I think the poconos have it slightly better than the rest of the state as you can go to blue, camelback, or Shawnee which other than camelback the rest seem to have stepped up their operations a bit as they have to compete with each other.

Wildcat had a lot of pre-existing issues with their snowmaking system pre-Vail. This is hardly the first time they've struggled. However, Vail really doesn't seem to understand any of the east coast mountains they bought and have failed to make the necessary investments to get Wildcat back up to a state of good repair. At least management seems to be giving some more leeway to operations at JF this year. Challenge was allowed to go ungroomed to bump up which is nice. They have everything open except Floyd's which I expect to open any day now. Full opening by mid-January isn't bad and puts them about even with pre-Vail opening schedules. And that's with a reduced snowmaking regime and less snow guns. But then all of that is really just relearning what the old operations staff already knew. Vail came in, gutted the place, got years of complaints and now falling revenue and visitor counts, so they're kicking back some operations to the staff with any experience on local operations. It's like every dumbass corporate job you ever had where your MB business casual boss reinvents your job then gives up and eventually lets you do things the way you already knew they were supposed to be done. Like, it's a waste of time. Thanks for nothing, Vail. I hope their stock price is buried. They've ruined a bunch of good local ski hills. I would suggest the entire Poconos ski experience has been degraded by them. Multiple competitor hills have jumped on the suck bandwagon to try and squeeze blood from the stone that is Poconos skiing and now we've got multiple underinvested hills with aloof leadership looking at spreadsheets and planning their slide deck to talk MB buzzwords like an AI chatbot at their next business retreat in Palm Springs. What a load of crap. I hate Vail.

You're spot on. I guess what I don't understand is why is it just here (Blue, Camelback etc.) this is a non issue at every other ski area that I've been to outside of NEPA. It's really not an issue and Elk or even Frost. My theory is that it's happening mostly at night with school groups etc.

Suggestions “ Your Mom doesn’t ski here clean up your trash.” ( Not applicable to @momskeeztoo) Throw trash loose pass” If they had bins up top and at the bottom probably half the dirtbags would oblige.

I would think the lack of snowmaking willpower, outdated lifts, lack of open terrain might be more of a factor…

Tried uploading to YouTube.

That is great they’re doing that!

If you’re concerned about muddy boots, don’t wear them in the lot.

That would be rad. I 'member when everyone was up in arms about Blue being sold to KSL. And look at things now. This is probably the best season at Blue ever. The only thing they should do is pave the parking lot so my ski boots don't get muddy.

Like a dealer giving out the first bump for free...

FYI School groups coming up during the day the next 3 days. I'll be up on Thursday morning to check on @Boo Bearand her chaperone skills with the middle school kids. Kudos to Blue to give the kids a free rental, lesson, and day pass. Some of them would probably never have the opportunity to try skiing or snowboarding otherwise. That being said, I hope they stay on the learning hill.

There used to be a ton of old school portable snowmaking equipment at frost. Vail probably auctioned it off with the old chairs. BB had a ton of portable fan guns that i think would make their way over to frost at some point, but peak was way more aggressive with snowmaking at frost. For years i skied there, i feel like east was open around jan 1st more years than not. keep in mind, peak sold season passes and day passes. Getting the mountain open asap increased day pass sales. Vail sells season passes, and thats pretty much all they care about. I said it earlier this year. They drag their feet making snow. Passes have already been purchased. Aggressive snowmaking at either resort doesn't make their wallets any fatter.

Is big Boulder 100%? Even bear creek has over 20 runs open.

Huge whales on Rivershot. Looks like they want that open by New Years. Not sure how the next week of rain and warm temps is going to impact things though. JF is only about 50% open. Was just thinking about this today, but Vail has a serious handicap operating JF as the main hill in the snowmaking dept. The old management made the snowmaking investments at Big Boulder, not JF. Most trails at JF do not have permanent snowmaking systems installed and require dragging portable guns into place. But they don't have enough portable guns to cover the whole mountain at once, so that means making snow on one or two trails at a time, opening those, then moving to the next trail. But when the weather turns it means you either delay more trail openings and resurface already open terrain, or you let conditions deteriorate and push for trail count. BB didn't have a problem with this since they installed more snowmaking capacity to build the terrain parks 10-20 years ago. So either Vail spends to put in a modern snowmaking system at JF or they keep playing catch up while under-utilizing the snowmaking system at BB.

At Blue now, but for trivia night at the Last Run. Just had the music round. Hate that round

Was at Mt Snow end of last week both sets of grandkids. Spent most of the time on the magic carpet and the bunny slope. Surprisingly little amount of the trails open, but the worst part was very few lifts were running at opening, with long lift lines on the one or two open. Only one lift other than the bunny slope lift until late morning most days. It was windy, but the winds hadn’t died down when they finally opened a second lift to the top.

Seems like Fail is operating snowmaking at a snails pace at most resorts. granted some of these resorts dont have snowmaking on 100%, but this seems like some pretty low numbers to me. And Hunter is 47/71