Phil

It looks like I am a day late and a dollar short for this conversation, since the Tuesday sessions are now finished for the season, but please allow me to add my $0.02 anyway. I make no claims about my freestyle ability, I am just an old fart who has been around the industry a long time. First, some history: Bear Creek hired me to be the Freestyle Coach in December of 2006. At that time, there wasn

The preseason hours are for picking up your season pass. The mountain is open regular riding hours on Thursday - 9:00am - 10:00pm.

You are not hearing because there is nothing to hear. Nobody knows yet. It is just too early to tell how much snow will be lost and how much can be made in the coming weather. The website says: Stay tuned for updates on opening day! When they know, you will know.

I asked the same question of BC management today and got a definitive "NO".

For the record: I approached the Snowsports School Tech. Dir. today and mentioned what was said on this thread. He assured me that this was NOT a snowsports school clinic Tuesday night. I saw the clinic in question Tuesday night and I also saw the other two clinics on the hill. One was for snowboard instructors, the other was for ski instructors. Neither of those two were the clinic that you are speaking of. Just thought that I would set the record straight... Also, K2 rider, the person in the black fleece was not the Tech. Dir. He was giving the other clinic to the ski instructors. Again, the ski instructors group was not the group in question. Neutral - I'm not trying to play good cop, bad cop either, but anyone downhill from you has the right to ride/ski however they want, wherever they want as long as they 1. do not hit someone below them and 2. yield if they merge onto another trail. What you may see as irratic behavior or taking up 80 percent of the trail is actually perfectly acceptable. It may very well be annoying to you and maybe others on the mountain, but it is their right and anyone coming down the hill behind them still has the responsibility to not hit them. The same thing happens with racers/carvers - they have the ability to change direction on a dime and be all the way to the other side of the hill in a split second. I have seen people try to pass them and fail miserably. It was still the fault of the person trying to pass even though the racer/carver was extremely unpredictable and changed sides of the trail in the blink of an eye. At least the beginners/people in lessons are going slow.

I know. The first paragraph was referring to your post. The second was referring to Neutral's post.

You guys are talking about two different things. I went looking for the Tech. Dir. of the snowsports school today to show him this thread. HouseMusik's point was well taken and I was going to make sure that if things went down like this, they would not again. OTOH, saying that you got cut off by and instructor and their students sounds more like you were the one uphill and they were making turns in front of you. If that is the case, it is your responsibility to avoid them because they are in front of you. I see people all of the time who lack the skills to turn and fly straight down the hill and get pissed because people are making turns and turn in front of them. The people downhill actually have the right to turn however they want so they are NOT cutting anybody off. I see this the most on Drifter, Lower Polar Bear and Lower Kodiak. Instructors and their groups are making nice (albeit painfully slow) turns and people come screaming through their group. I also hear people complaining at the bottom about these people cutting them off. If you want to go straight and feel that people making turns below you are cutting you off, there is always tubing. My $0.02

Good call. Once you get the rocket, think of adding a BS shifty and grabbing with the back hand: Of course, the crail was originally done in the pipe and is more natural there, but we don't have a pipe to try it on.

A crail is when the rear hand reaches toward the nose on the toeside. It was made famous by Jeff Brushie. A freestyle coach straightened me out. The grab is a "nuclear" - rear hand close to the nose on the heelside. More accurately, it is probably somewhere between a "nuclear" and a "sail" grab. More on www.trickthat.com

I hope you guys don't mind me stealing a clip from the vid, but what is this grab? It's sweet and I'm jealous. I think that I am too old and inflexible to pull it off. When I was younger and more flexible, I used to do "Swiss Cheese" airs - this is similar, but not between the legs and it looks harder.

What ever happened to base bevel? You can have the best of both worlds without detuning your edges. Beveling your base edge 2 or 3 degrees will give you all of the forgiveness you need on rails while still giving you sharp edges to bite into the ice wherever you need. I would never detune my edges, but that is just me. I run a 1 degree base bevel on all of my boards. I used to run a combination bevel on my jib boards - I would run 2 degrees from the tip to the front of the front binding, 3 from there to the back of the back binding, and 2 degrees from there to the tail. It worked really well. I could still take the boards anywhere and do anything and never had to worry about them catching an edge on the rails. In the end, I decided to go back to the 1 degree because it suits my needs better. If all I did was rails, I would go back to that setup. As far as multiple boards, I keep a quiver of four boards on hand at all times (with many more in my basement). I rarely change mid-day, though. I usually decide what I want in the morning and stick to it. After all, any board can do anything, as long as it is within the ability of the rider. I know a former WC racer that can throw 1080's on his 190 race board and hard boots. By the same token, I have two different friends who are freestyle coaches that can beat most amateur racers in a course on their noodliest park boards. Hope this helps.

I want to congratulate you guys on organizing a monumental gaper day today. I cannot believe the turnout you got for this event. It wasn't just the costumes, these people were very convincing - standing all over the parks, pretending to forget to unload the lifts at the top, getting knocked over by the lift at the bottom - and so much more. Great event guys. Keep up the good work. I am assuming that you are holding your next gaper day on Presidents' day, right?

I'm not sure if I've ever seen a better Black Bear park. Seriously. my $0.02

Can you expand on that?

Here is a link to the Freestyle Coaching page. There is info on both the Tuesday night (intermediate) program and the Saturday (beginner) program.

You may want to look into having him do one of the Saturday park clinics: Page 13 of the brochure. Maybe with some strong fundamentals he would be better equipped to move on. Fear comes from uncertainty. Once someone learns the fundamentals, riding the park becomes a lot easier for them and it takes some of the uncertainty out of it.

This is a little off topic, but Mt. Snow has had a hike park open for about a week. I have been there the last few days and there has been a decent turnout. In fact, they are hoping to open a lift tomorrow (OK, then it won't be a hike park ) . This is my earliest ticket ever: Now I am home and hoping for the earliest BC opening possible. Never underestimate BC's willingness to try something new.

As long as the scanners are working well, this is a very small inconvenience. Hold your pass out each time and it will take one to two seconds to scan. Four to Eight seconds per chair should not slow things down at all. This is done at so many mountains all over the place and the only time I have ever seen it slow anyone down is when the scanners are not working well.

Thanks for the update. I am glad to hear that having a halfpipe is not out of the question.

Here is some stuff straight from Doppelmayr/CTEC: "Detachable Chairlifts...carriers for two, four, six or eight passengers...transport capacities for up to 4,000 pph...can be operated at line speeds of up to 5 m/s." "Fixed Grip chairlifts...double, quad or six-seater...rope speeds up to 3 m/s. Transport capacity can reach 3200 persons per hour." My math: 4000 pph/8 seats = 500 pph/seat for detachable 3200 pph/6 seats = 533 pph/seat for fixed grip Granted, this is not comparing one quad to another per se, but one brand's greatest capacity on a fixed vs. detachable. Hope this helps. (I would deduce that the two capacities are essentially the same.)

That stuff is pretty cool, but I would not use it to ride on. I would imagine that you would still need a solid surface underneath to edge on. You used to be able to get it at toy stores. It was called "Yuck". http://www.buckets-o-fun.com/yuck.html It was sold as the bigger granules and I still have a container of it. If you want to test it out and see what it is like (for not much money) find someone who has a baby and ask for a few diapers. Break them open and empty the stuff out then add water. Yuck was a good name for it. If you try the diaper thing, you will find out why.

It is great that you thank everyone else, Andy. You and your crew deserve all of the thanks. Great job this year. I look forward to seeing what you have in store for next year.

Sorry it took me so long to get back... All respect given. If you had said in your original post that you had your MBA I certainly would not added the parenthetical part of the response. Please realize that highly embellished claims to education are made on forums everywhere without anything to back them up. Saying "I have an MBA" is pretty straight forward. Saying I have a graduate degree in business sounds like someone trying to make a BS claim. Maybe it is just me. That is absolutely true. In my mind, though, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, there were several other resorts in the Mid Atlantic that had pulled their hoses two weeks before BC. Generally, the last few weeks of service are weeks of grooming and pushing snow around - not blowing snow. There are some exceptions, but that is the general rule. As some have already mentioned in this thread, the snow that would have been blown may have actually made conditions feel worse. In fact, with weather swings like we saw the last days of BC's operations, the best snow conditions are made through grooming after the thaw/freeze cycle. Because of this, people in the know may have been discouraged by news that snow was blown before a day of high temps. At the other end of the spectrum are the noobs who would not even know to check to see if snow was blown. They will come either way. The only people who would have been persuaded by new snow would be a small minority who don't go enough to know what makes truly good end of the season conditions. These folks are most likely too uninformed or too inexperienced to know any better. They are, however, serious enough to know that they want to go one more time at the end of the season. At that point, they MAY look around to see who has made fresh snow thinking that would make a difference on their last day. As far as operations go, it is important to get the hoses in, dried out, and stored appropriately before the winter staff leaves. Many places use their snowmaking staff to take care of this so that when the season is over, they can release their seasonal staff immediately to reduce overhead. Snowmaking and maintenance staff are best used this way throughout March when the snow should already be stockpiled and no more blowing is necessary. Having said all of this, I will also say that I am NOT speaking for BC. I have no idea what their strategies are or how and why they handle things the way that they do. I have, however, been in the industry long enough to have an idea of how these things go. I have been involved at other mountains who use the strategies referenced above. Perhaps this is all true. OTOH, I got 73 days in at BC this year and I was very pleased with the conditions overall and I do not really feel that they slacked off anywhere. From what I saw, they had as much snow as the comparable areas and maybe even more. Their closing date was also comparable, but they had a higher percentage of their terrain open than many others on closing day. Furthermore, their end of the season crowds were in line with what was seen elsewhere. My opinion is that BC did a great job overall this year. I have not heard anyone else who was upset that they did not make snow the last few nights. That said, you are certainly entitled to your opinion.

Now, take your graduate degree in business (that sounds open to interpretation) and go work for a ski area for a "number of years". When you are done, you can come back and tell us your opinion about whether they should have blown snow or not. This is not a snide reply, but rather a serious suggestion. I never respond to the silly gripes on this board because I figure kids don't know any better. It is part of their learning process to bitch and moan and then realize later that there was a reason for everything that went down. You, on the other hand, seem to be qualifying yourself to make this gripe. I cannot imagine that you would have come to this board if you were truly looking for an explanation. A PM to BC Mark would have been the way to go if you truly wanted to learn something. The modern ski industry is approaching one hundred years old. The mid atlantic ski industry is much younger but has around fifty years of experience. The people making the decisions are making them with the wisdom of this experience under their belt. Your cost/benefit analysis is quite skewed because you are not truly understanding the costs and grossly overestimating the benefits. Please don't take any of this personally. I have listened to people complain about ski areas' decisions for years and try to "out think" those in the know with business arguments. The problem is that most of the time, these people are just having separation anxiety at the end of the season, so they try to rationalize their feelings. Believe me, I understand. I wish we could go all year. Unfortunately, there are areas all over the country that close with plenty of snow because it is not worth staying open. BC is trying something new with their hike park. I tip my hat to them for doing so. Conventional wisdom would say that it is not profitable. I hope that they find out otherwise. Blowing snow, on the other hand, goes against conventional wisdom and WOULD prove NOT to be profitable. On a side note: BC had already pulled the snowmaking hoses well before this thread was started. From my experience, they made snow later than a lot of M.A. resorts do.

Regardless of how you feel about the pipe, it looks like it is supposed to be ready on Thursday. That's the best news I've heard in a while!