C1erArt

Be there Sat morning, with the family though. It was nice today until about 11:30 when it finally started raining. Sun was out for a while. Forgot about the bumps starting building up on the right side of the first headwall on Challenge. Bounce, bounce, bounce.

Saturday is 'Ski for the Cure' breast cancer day. A portion of all lift tickets are donated to charity.

Pretty sure it's skier's left of Floyds- its off the right side of the last Rivershot headwall. If you stop at the bottom of Floyds, just past the turn on to the run-out, its to your left. Of course if you stop there you will have to skate back to the lift. Its great with fresh snow on it, suicide (for me at least) with it iced over. I've seen a couple people go down the trees right of Floyds with a lot of snow, but you have to fight the rhododendrons.

They were pretty much straight lining it. But it was their early morning warm up and the trail was completely empty when they came down. Only at JF have I skied a completely empty trail on a Saturday (of course by 9:00 it starts to crowd up a little, but if you get staggered between the groups it you can have the headwall to yourself until about 10:30 when the rentals start hitting east mountain and the pincushions start straight lining Rivershot).

And if it is raspberry bushes like it seems to be, you would need to cut it every couple of weeks unless you use a herbicide.

a Could be, if so it was iced in pretty well, I saw it on the trip back up, it was only about the size of a quarter. Just spent the past half hour diamond stoning my edges, they were pretty torn up, but no ptex damage. , hit it right at my boot on my uphill edge of my uphill ski in a carving turn and it nearly kicked the skis out from under me. Missed the snow pile at east mountain. I might have the first two weeks in March off between projects, so I hope they keep the slopes covered. Also, I'm the gaper practicing switch skiing at the top of tbolt and challenge - its nice getting old, you don't care what people think any more. Made my wife laugh when I ran into a tree backwards on Friday.

Light snow all day, a couple of inches made things nice and soft. Hit East Mountain for a couple of runs and then had to head back and switch to a wider ski. Lots of patrollers practicing on east mountain in the morning, but all the slopes were great. Challenge glade was nice and soft. Did Challenge and Tbolt, and went back to East after lunch, but the top of Floyds was getting skied off, so I called it a day. Enjoy the slopes now, cause it looks like things are getting a little thin - brown spots coming off the lifts, tower bases showing, and a rock was showing in the trail just before the runout turns into the East Mountain lift. Also a small rock in the middle of the trail to the downhill left of the towers 2/3s the way down Exhibition. Just a knuckles worth, but my skis found it. Usually they stockpile some snow at the east mountain lift, but apparently not this year. Might have to switch over to Boulder in March, or get the kayaks out.

Missed the radar trap on pre-PASR day, so I decided to benchmark myself with my GPS Sportrak. Friday the conditions were very cold, but the slopes were not frozen. Everything was groomed cord, a little soft. It was windy over on Challenge and Tbolt with a crosswind, but Floyds was pretty protected. Put the GPS on my back to get better reception (11 satellites with a WEP satellite), max sampling (10 points on the Floyds headwall), GS11 171 freshly waxed skis, race boots, normal coat and helmet. Downloaded the tracks and all the points looked valid (except for where I dropped it off the lift above Rivershot). I ran 35 to 40 on Challenge and Tbolt (standing up, carving long turns, no skidding), about 45 on Floyds and the lower headwall of Rivershot Tucking the Solitude headwall and Floyds on the right side I hit 54. The Solitude head wall seemed a little slow. Tucking the right side of the Rivershot headwall (not the last one, but the first one above the Floyds intersection) and then staying in a tuck down Floyds (just a little pre-jump at the lip of Floyds) I hit 58. At the bottom I don't which was going faster, my skis or my heart rate. That's about as fast as I want to go on those skis. Don't think longer skis would have give me much more speed just a little more stability. Didn't have my skis completely flat, had just a little pressure on the inside edges. Had to really crank the edges to make the turn onto the runout at the bottom. Slopes were completely empty when I was tucking, and the race kids were tucking Floyds today in the morning.

Nice meeting philly core and ridge racer. Great conditions, but they had a hard time keeping the east mountain lift running. Got two running later which helped.

Should be on east mountain around 8. Was in great shape today. Wearing blue/purple coat, yellow and black poles. Stop and say hi if you see me.

Got on the slopes today at JF at 8, parked first row, did Thunderbolt and had to wait at the bottom until they started loading the lift. Fresh snow on all the trails. Skied Thunderbolt once, fresh snow blown down and groomed nicely. Challenge (once also) was weird, they had new snow also, but groomed the top quarter, then left the second quarter ungroomed, groomed the third quarter and left the bottom headwall ungroomed. Nice skiing all the way down but hard to get a rhythm. And they set up gates for the racekids in the morning. They groomed the first headwall of river shot (one run down), and left the lower two headwalls with ungroomed blown snow. It saw a lot of traffic - a lot of people on it seemed to like it, but not my cup of tea. Floyds (and the headwall just above it) was in unbelievable shape - flat, groomed side to side, new snow. Lapped it until after 11, about 20 runs worth, when it started to get crowded and piles of sugar snow started building up. Up til then I skied onto the chair just about every time. On the way back to the lodge the quad and triple chairs had lines, but only 4 or 5 chairs worth. Was flagged down for skiing too fast on Exhibition - first time that happened at JF, but the slope was pretty crowded. Headed for home and picked up some flowers for the DW. It was a Boston and Richie Blackmore day.

Floyds was 'ungroomed' on Friday - It had bumps, but one major shortcoming of JF is they don't seed the bumps. They let them develop 'naturally' and with snowboarders and different length skis, snow plow skiers and boarders, they never have any rhythm to them. The bumps on the downhill left of Exhibition (if you happened to see them) are usually what happens at JF

Some pics from today from the East Mountain chair, pretty quiet first thing in the morning - surprised my phone camera batteries still worked.

Oops, missed you guys, thought it was at 9. Probably passed you though - lapped Floyds and Rivershot all morning - purplish blue coat. yellow poles with new silver helmet with tune-ups. Richie Blackmore day. Did think to myself a couple of times on the lift that there were a lot of hot skiers bombing down the runs until about 11:30 when the rental skiers started showing up. Be there next Saturday though.

Went for a couple quick runs with my DW on Friday afternoon. Didn't know it was WNMR day. What a zoo. Never seen it so crowded, even on a Saturday. Turned out really be a couple of runs, but not quick. Saturday morning was a whole lot nicer. Couldn't believe how well they repaired the slopes - Friday afternoon they were all torn up. Especially Floyds from wannabe snowboarders sliding down it on their butt.

Ouch, the chairs were slippery this weekend. Never could convince my race kid to put the safety bar down unless I was with him.

Great conditions, East Mountain was foggy on top, but cleared up at the top of the first headwall, soft packed powder conditions. Thunderbolt from the Challenge Lift - Had to wait until there were people on the slope to take pictures of.

I'm running cleansnipe in Firefox, and added an addon called 'Reload Every' to refresh it every 5 minutes. I also have a freeware program called 'Always on Top Maker' to keep it on top of other windows.

I had some Swix purple wax left over from Saturday, and it was a little sticky in the warmer conditions on Sunday - needed some red wax on.

Thanks for the info, but I'm shufflin off to Buffalo tomorrow - Weekend Warrior these days.

Hate to say it, but although I live 15 miles from the Brodhead, I've never been on it, so if you catch it running, drop me a line.

Actually I used to have a handle of xC1er, I'm afraid I've descended from the pinnacle of paddling to being merely a lowly kayaker. Mostly on the Lehigh and Tohickon. My web page is a www.balajthy.com I was scanning in some old war photos of my Dad's, and had a bunch of B-24 pics from Italy in the same directory that I put today's pics in. The plane is the Ferp Finesco, lost over Ploesti. If you look closely there is some nose art on it. The wide trail is the first headwall of Thunderbolt. What I like about JF is the top to bottom wide trails and great grooming.

Got to the top of Challenge at 8am and were the second tracks down. Thunderbolt was groomed to perfection, but they must have put the B team on Challenge. A couple of chunks out and ruts from the Cat, and half was freshly groomed and the right half was soft. Everyone was on Thunderbolt, so I did laps for a couple of hours and then hit the showers. Some phone cam pics of the top of Challenge and the Thunderbolt headwall from the chair. One of looking back up at the top East Mountain-Challenge connector. That's me lining up to take off down Challenge

JF was unbelievable for first day after all the rain we had Thursday. Got there at 8 and did laps on Challenge until 10:30 - about 30 runs. Perfect grooming - groomed it and blew snow on it last night and had about an inch os soft stuff on top. They had the right half of Exhibition open, but the guns were going down the whole slope. So who has the H3 and Spanish Fly on their racks today? Don't you know boating season is over?

It looked like just some race kids with their dads running some drills. I didn't see any of the instructors or Jim D there. About 1/2 dozen kids in all, I think. With basically only one slope open, it wouldn't be practical to have the whole team there. Jon is off to college, so I'm on my own this year.