Ski2Live Live2Ski

Could have hung around for the hot cookies at 3. No pass required.

Not looking promising this week. Hope the turn to wet and warm doesnt interfere with my hope of taking girls to start their Skison on Sat at Shawnee.

Real nice day at Hunter. Made it door to door in 2:35 (Blue takes at least 1:40). Lines were close to non existent so I got in 15 runs in 3hrs and 45 min. No bare or icy spots. Belt Parkway stayed firm but carveable all day. Hellgate was a little softer and pretty ideal. Minya had some soft natural bumps at the top and left felt like spring skiing by 11 as it gets the most early sub. Overlookbwas less fun with big hard cookies and turns out ESDrive was not open despite being reported as open. Probably the best day of November skiing I have had. No pix - y'all know what Hunter looks like.

En route

Looks like rain only til 10 or 11 tomorrow - actually should keep crowds down more than anything.

Joy and I did this as part of our recent Stevie Nicks tribute show. Stevie relates that the song was written on a Winter trip to the Colorado Rockies. Landslide.mp4

Note that in my initial post I was intentionally not comparing it to Blue who are also doing a great job with the amount of terrain they are opening in November - compared to one green trail (Pennsylvania at Shawnee) in the rest of the Mid Atlantic region.

I said I wouldn't drive that far based on price savings give travel cost and time. I will do it for 5 runs I'd enjoy skiing with 1500 vertical instead of largely lapping Freefall to Paradise all day.

And to you - and a happy Skison opening to all

Expect I will start my Skison this Sat 11/26 at Hunter. They have Belt Parkway, Hellgate, Minya Konka and East Side Drive open - 4 distinct 1500 vertical runs off the top - and it sounds like they may add Overlook before the weekend.

Looking that I realize connector traverse will be part of any Burma run til new chair is up. Since it nonetheless will be one of the 2.5 runs available, I will want to ski it - so figure if I hit Blue this weekend I will use top lot, start with a Burma, and then lap Paradise & FreeFall til doing the connector traverse back to car. Quad line could get long as the only lift that gets you to anything but a green.

So with the new lift not yet up I guess the only way to really do Burma will be Tuts-Connector-Burma-Shuttle-Homestretch. If Lazy Mile is really a mile, that's gotta be close to 2 miles. And it's gonna be a traverse over to the top lot unless you ride Vista

Nice - so basically 3 runs, which is almost as much terrain as the 2 open at Hunter

May hit Blue Friday if weather forecast looks clear. What runs do folks expect to be open? Shawnee only has Pennsylvania opening. And for Hunter forecast looks way better for Sat - may hit that then.

How many more skiers per hour will this chair move compared to the # moved by Burma and Main St? My guess is it will reduce crowds at base a bit, but all lifts there will still have longer lines than the old doubles would have had on equivalent days.

Open tomorrow before the rain!

Old and new map shows changes in BBoulder trail layout. Basically they added one fall line "black" Hickory Run parallel to their other fall line blacks (where they now have 1 lift instead of 3) and slapped some extra names on parts of trails to announce "4 new trails". Lifts should be faster than the antiques. And nice having 5 "blacks" with no park stuff all coming off a new lift. Will likely check it out once when going to Frost. Nice Vail'll need way less lifties to fully open JFBB

Remarkable that 4 of the 5 main Pocono ski areas have installed new lifts this year. What was the last one before this and when? When was Blue's first 6 pack?

I would figure drive to Catskills probably costs an extra $40 in gas/tolls in addition to taking an extra 2 hrs and putting more miles on car. if I was going solo it would only be worth it if I felt it would be a better ski experience. Would feel otherwise if bringing kids.

Yeah if it didn't conflict with the new lift I would have left them there - and honestly if there was a conflict I would have rather the new lift just have been placed where the old ones were. It is really not a plus have to traverse over to homestretch after doing Main Street / Switchback / Burma etc. Plus you lose the advantage of smaller lines at those not-from-the-base lifts. Hopefully removing old lifts means you can coast directly across Main St from Burma without that brief uphill bit.

Farewell Little Gap. At least we still have the upper lot and lodge to remember it by

Shawnee announced 11/25 opening via a video with folks standing in newly made snow. Expect I will be either there with girls or Hunter on my own that day.

Would love to use an Indy Pass day skiing at least the Pennsylvania trail with my girls on Black Friday to start their 10th skison.

So you are being sarcastic about it being smooth? Or being smooth gives you motion sickness?

Enjoy the Bubbles at Okemo and Snow - and a real nice thing about the Snow bubble is on crowded days it draws the crowds away from the parallel non bubble HSQ