Timeless

Even so the return to the quad looked like a couple of inches of slush, did they drag snow down from higher up the trail to cover this? They were not blowing on this area at all. I was leaving at 9. I had a great day at Jack Frost today, better snow, more trails, less people. It cost me 80 bucks when I have a valid season pass to CB and I dont care, what does that tell you. As Cheese-boy said I was (and still am) a CB person, but the recent efforts have been pretty poor by comparison to the other resorts.

Not true, with the same " 9 trails" the previous days (like christmas eve) you could go left or right from the top of the quad, giving you 4 routes down (cleos or marc anthony to honeymoon lane,tut's or birches to the meadows) it may not seem like much more but it was double the options and in reality it's the difference between one decent run and 2, they should only really have been claiming 5 trails (incuding the bunny hill). probably all he has the power to give, looks like a typical situation where a genuinely well meaning middle manager who atually seem like a nice guy is strangled by overbearing upper management and can't do the right thing.

So how bad is it over there, I'm planning on heading over tomorrow.

I have to add my 2 cents worth here, apart from having fallen foul of the stupid 46" rule myself over the previous season I had a rather poor experience at CB today. I'll start by just stating that I am a "loyal" CB regular and season pass holder along with my 2 kids. I like CB and enjoy riding there when mother nature is being kind and they can open most of the terrain. Today I was there for first lifts with the promise of 9 trails. Things looked bad from the off with groomers still pushing snow around on honeymoon lane, cleos etc, so that when they finally let us on the lift it was basically 2 trails (birches or tut's). I was one of, if not the first into the top section of tut's which was in fantastic condition, it really raised my hopes for the morning, but rounding the first bend it just turned to sh!t: ice, mud and scraped off rutted hardpack from there down to Meadows where it improved once you had crossed the frozen groomer tracks. 5 laps of this and I'd had enough, still no sign of the other trails opening, the bottom of honeymoon looked in such bad shape that it was hard to see how they could open these runs anyway, I decided to call it a day. On my way out an "ambassador" gave me a surprised "had enough already?", so I explained to her that I was dissappointed with only 2/3 trails and was amazed that they could charge full price for this. She smiled and explained that they sold 3,000 ticket yesterday and expected similar crowds today, they actually shut the ticket sales down yesterday and so "things cant be that bad". Then came the classic "what we need is a really big snowstorm so we can open all the trails" and she seemed confused when I suggested this probably wouldn't help as much as a few nights of very cold weather and a willingness to blow lots of snow. She said they were blowing as much as they can, but this morning it looked like a very small effort to get another lift open and spread the crowds out a little. I left feeling like they really didn't give a sh!t about the lack of terrain as long as they can still pack in as many people as possible and that they were really only blowing enough to keep the expected crowd size paying, maybe this is good business but it doesn't sit well with me. So tomorrow I'll be taking my kids back to JFBB where my son gets a free ticket and I am confident they will have some reasonable conditions. I dont even care that I wil have to pay $80 when we could ride for free on our CB passes. If it doesn't turn around (and it's not just the weather no matter what anyone says) I will not be calling CB my home mtn for long.

This wont load for me, I just get a blue screen with a "loading" window, my patience ran out after 5 minutes.

Stratton have some claims on their website that their system can bury three football fields in a foot of snow every hour, so assuming Sno has the power and will to do this (they have more guns than Stratton) 36 hours to cover a relatively small mountain seems reasonable. It would be cool to see this in action if it's true, it would also mean they could blow a decent base whenever they wanted / needed to during the season.

sorry about the typing / grammar on this, not enough coffee

have you previously riddent he T9 boards? Was this what you asked Santa for or were they just freebies? You seem to have been fairly burton-centric previously. I'm not sure that I like the design (aesthetically) on this years T9 bindings, the boards looks great though.

DH, what happened? Did you fall and break your sarcastic bone?

It saves money on lighting and allows them to claim to be "just like Killington...."

According to the conditions page they are only blowing (if at all) on the trails they had open last week, so the best we can hope for over the coming weekend and into the christmas break is the same trails as last weekend and (many) more people. That's going to get really tiresome, really quickly

Does montage really have top to bottom steeps? I thought the steep bits only ran half the mountain, from the lodge down? Given that CB F'd it up by not opening that first weekend when they would have had decent conditions but chose to wait to open this last weekend with much worse conditions, they really don't have choice but to try and repair the slopes they do have and try and get some more open before Christmas. Having only the runs they had this weekend, with the Christmas traffic would be a clusterf$%k.

Was anyone at CB today? How were the conditions? I'm heading up first thing tomorrow and just wanted to know how the snow was holding up. Coverage looks a little patchy of some of the website pictures.

I've been to Okemo a few times and it's a great mountain. There's not much really steep stuff, but enough to keep most people happy. The bits over on the far left as you face the hill from the bottom, and some over on Jackson Gore are the most challenging. They typically have a kick-ass jump line running the entire drop of the hill on nor-easter(?) (right in the middle) and although it's not my thing they typically seem to have a major park set-up with many lines, stairs, wall ride etc + a decent pipe. As someone else mentioned, the best part about it (IMO) is the way the groomers have such a rolling pitch, keeps it interesting. They also have some decent (not too dense) glades if ther's been enough snow. Have fun

I'll be there Friday if I can persuade my wife she doesn't need to go shopping. Else I'll be there on Sunday.

Are they giving Doug a free season pass?

Went to JF yesterday (Sunday) with my kids and had a great day. Snow was incredible, really nice conditions on all the trails (and off of some of them), the new snowmaking really seems to have paid off for them. They had a decent jump and 2 rails set up in the "ONE" park run, the other intro park trail was open as a run but no features (except for lots of trees). This was my first visit to JFBB, but with Camelbutt refusing to play ball it was one of three alternatives and I'm really pleased we chose to go there. My first impressions: Even though it was early season, the coverage was great, even allowing some ventures through the trees. The lifts are slow, but there were no lines at all They have a nice lodge, free ski check and free skiing for my 6 year old. The vertical is a little limited but the trails were nice and varied. It felt a little like Shawnee but with better trails and snowmaking. From my non-park perspective (which isn't worth much), the jumps and gap-to rails looked very nicely setup, very clean and well maintained, I guess this is easy with so little traffic. The best part was that due to the lack of traffic and the quality of the snowmaking, it never felt like it would get skied off like CB and Blue tend to. JF will become our "blackouts and saturdays" alternative, we were very impressed. Note to BigdaddyK, you definitely made the right choice to stick with JFBB for your season pass.

P'steeze , why aren't you at JFBB this evening?

explain, please

Who do you think will open with the most trails this weekend. Shawnee looks to be blowing a lot of snowm but the pic's might not be recent. Blue's website is crap, it's hrad to know what they're doing but they are usually the best at opening. CB will they open at all? Or will they wait a week to ensure "the best snowsport experience"....wankers JFBB seem to be making a play for the headlines.

From their website today, predictions for saturday: Challenge (black), Easy Rider (Blue but only half the hill), 3 short greens, "ONE" park / Tobyhanna ( not sure if this is what the trail was called before they made it a park, or if it's not opening as a park. These are basically the trails they are making snow on now, I wouldn't expect much more than this to be open. A good effort anyway, have Blue announced that they will open yet?

Lots of guns still blasting at CB this morning, I can't see any reason why they wont be able to open this coming weekend.

Quick(ish) trip report from VT this weekend. Left from work in NJ late friday PM, still 72 degrees, getting some very stange looks from other people at the office. Hit big T-storms around albany still near 70 degrees, getting very concerned by this point. Once past Albany the temps started to drop and in Killington it was in the low 40's when we arrived at 9.30pm. Went for beer, very worried that nowhere would be open in the morning. Checked out the slopes on the way, they are mostly to completely bare, no way they could open. Saturday morning went straight to Okemo, they are open with the same trail (claiming 4) as they've had all week, but $30 a ticket with a coupon for a $39 day ticket in the sping seems reasonable. They bus us to a lift which takes us to the summit lodge where you can pick up the open trails. The trail is basically one (mild) black diamond trail (Upper World Cup) with lots of slushy bumps and bits marked off with poles, then catch another lift back up and take a connecting green trail back to where you started. It's quite a fun trail and the conditions are suprisingly good, but more importantly IT"S SNOW and I'M RIDING AGAIN thank you Okemo. So we lap this set-up 15 times, the crowds don't get much worse but the snow in places is getting mighty rutted and thin, they are blowing on some other trails, but none on the ones they have open, go figure. We quit a little after lunchtime, saving some legs for Killington on Sunday. Spend the afternoon swimming, hot-tub, Sauna etc at friends condo complex. A great day. Sunday morning, Killington claiming 11 trails but this turns out to be very optimistic on their part. When we arrive for first lifts (we actually had the 4th or 5th gondola) it's basically just Great Northern into lower bunny-buster, with all the snow guns blazing, zero grooming (or close to it) and a fair amount of people. The cover is good but "variable" would be the best you could say about the surface and the guns are blasting straight across the trails making it impossible to see anything at some crucial points, there are lots of people on the floor. Also some very scary holes at the trail edges (drains?) with no poles to mark them off, very dangerous with the limited visibility. So we lap this until they open upper bunny with the triple, tried that once but the snow is too slow and soft for the pitch and it's very iffy when you cant see anything so we left that one alone. Eventually they open the northridge triple and we get a few great runs down reason and east fall which have big mounds of snow but are fast and not too busy. This lasts for 3 lift rides before the liftlines are 20 minutes and we bail from there back onto great northern which is carnage by this point (around 11.30) there are bodies everywhere, the snow is a mess, it's time to leave. We take one more run on the gondola (20 minutes) my friend (condo owner and Kiliington devotee) gets wiped out twice on the way down and pronounces "this is F-in' madness", so we quit a little after 12. It was great fun, a little dangerous but K's always a bit like that early season. I'll work out my vert and stuff later. Now it's back to work... Considering the conditions it was a very good first weekend

Sunday should be OK, they are going to blow solidly for 36Hrs. I'm still going up tonight (have free condo), will try Okemo tomorrow and then do K' on sunday.

Kiilington will NOT be open this Saturday (Dec 2nd) They will re-open Sunday morning. For those of you that were planning to go to VT this weekend (like me), Okemo will be the only place open with effectively 1 run plus whatever they can blow Friday night. They are offering $30 lift tickets though. See you there