Ski2Live Live2Ski

Staying at Best Western in Waterbury. I am pretty much a regular there for Stowe trips. Paying $180/nt (split two ways) with hot tub and free breakfast 30 min from mt and 30 min from Burlington to go out at nt. (Edit - I just saw Salty made same call - nice!)

Cancelled my Sat flight to Vail (where it has only snowed a few inches in last 2 weeks and there is none in forecast) and driving to Stowe instead. Unfortunately the friend I am travelling with insists on our driving up Sat instead of tonight, pointing out roads will suck tonight and it will be super crowded and super cold Saturday. Bad decision IMO - and could have forced issue as taking my SUV - but dont want to start trip with him mad. Should be lots of awesome snow still to be had skiing Sun through Wed, with it unlikely to get above freezing the whole time.

Had about 11" of snow by noon and was still coming down and had shoveled twice. Even I-295 had enough snow that folks were going 35 and other roads about 20. With route to Shawnee being almost all snowy 2 lane roads I decided to stay home. First non-skiing weekend since early December. Gonna take kids sledding

5-8" expected here in Lville No accumulation yet.

At this point aiming for Shawnee tomorrow as only 2/3 as far (90 min on clear roads) and they seem likely to get a few fresh inches with Montage getting negligible snow. Plan to ski at all contingent on what roads are like tomorrow AM as gonna be snowier in NJ than PA. Will wake early tomorrow and assess situation. Shawnee worth a 90 min drive but not 150 min drive on snowy hazardous roads.

We are between Shawnee and Montage for Sat. My biggest concern is potential wind holds with up to 40mph gusts forecast. I'm guessing this might be more of an issue at Shawnee - with a detachable lift and a west facing mountain. And Montage's North Face feels a little more sheltered and in a valley.

As I am between hitting Vail and BC for Feb 8 I think I will skip this. Probably be at Montage with the girls on 1/29 (can you believe they are in HS now?) but will be sure to leave some snow for you folks to enjoy. For those who wanted a Greek Peak pic (From chair in lot area the day before the big snow)

Nice - probably gonna hit this Sat

Roundtop was great. Lines never exceeded 2 min. New mini glade is fun as were Ramrod and Gunbarrell. Never waited more than 3 min in line. Super friendly locals to chat with on lifts. Got 16 runs in. Good call. No food purchased.

Nice to also have all the lifts open and some food service. Is Frost lacking there too this year?

JF is 90% open - really only missing Floyds and coverage in glades isn't great. BK 10% open and only easiest stuff. Actually pretty impressed RT is 100% open. That is pretty rare. Upper Gunbarrel is historically tough to open as so steep and some seasons has never opened. And they are in a pretty warm zone compared to JFBB.

Well getting all but a few trails open isn't Blue Knob league of giving up.

Probably due to staffing shortages. 9am open to 4pm close every day lets them have no more than 1 shift at every position even with a little set up and clean up time. Roundtop has night skiing so they have to run 2 shifts and can open earlier.

2:10 which is about 20 min more than JF and 30 min less than Hunter (but return trip from Hunter takes another 30 min at least as traffic on that route is worse in mid afternoon than pre-dawn). I generally only consider Roundtop when they have Upper Gunbarrel and Upper Ramrod open, and Frost is not fully open. RT also has the plus of opening at 8 on Sat (JF is 9) so there is more time before it gets crowded. So far this year I have only used Epic at Hunter 3x.

Will hit JF Sat if they get 100% open (which seems unlikely). Otherwise will hit Roundtop which is, and will be a bit warmer. Gonna be too cold up at Hunter at open. And if you aren't at these places at open on a weekend this year, with all the extra Epic passes sold, it is not worth the trip.

Wonder what is going on with this place. They report 16" of fresh snow this week and they have only 8 of 34 trails open, which includes none of their "advanced intermediate", "advanced" or "expert" terrain. If they can't do better than that after a big natural snowfall in late January, they have basically given up.

It was a site but I rarely take out my phone amd take off my gloves on cold (Sunday) or snowy (Monday) days

There were some real steep double blacks, some pleasant long winding trails, 3 very nice glades with well spaced trees at various degrees of incline from blue to black - a highlight, and a bunch of bike trails through the woods. With almost everything skiable on our day 2 it had enough for a satisfying couple days. The vertical is not huge and the lifts are all slow, but with the great conditions we got Monday it was a delight and had more to it to explore than my kids legs had stamina for deep somewhat heavy snow. And my back got a bit beat up lifting them out of it when they fell and got their skis caught in it.

I wasn't asked to describe trails. I was asked what we got at the cafeteria.

Where did you get the idea this was free food? We bought it at the Mt. It was really bad except for the onion rings.

We were in line like 820-8:25 and lifts started at 830. Really nobody there at start of day. Got first tracks on trail we chose first. Roads were pretty hairy getting there. Was glad for SUV with new winter tires. Sampled Chili (small, flavorless except too salty), Nachos (nothing but wiz), Grilled Cheese (small), Mozarella sticks (small), Soft pretzel (hot and fresh but too salty). Redeeming order was onion rings which were some of best I ever had. Fortunately also had excellent Hampton Inn breakfast buffets and found a real nice Asian fusion place for one dinner. Other dinner so so at Wegman's.

Yeah hard to believe it was the same mountain today. Everything had beautiful conditions, every lift running, no lines, every trail and glade skiable. They seemed to have a "please poach" policy. Impressed my girls motivated early enough for us to be on the 17th chair. Their cafeteria food is definitely subpar though. Beautifully clean roads all the way home. Made it door to door in 3.5 hrs.

The trails off chairs and 4 and 5 had better conditions. Nice to see there was some coverage on the closed trails including the glades, so the 8-12 they are forecasting for tonight (followed by 1-3 tomorrow).should get everything open.

Trails on main face all a hard pack surface today. Parking lot packed and a hazardous sheet of ice, but lidt lines only 3-4 minutes max. Gonna venture to other parts of Mt and see if we can find better snow. Should be way different by tomorrow morning.

Gonna be skiing Greek for the first time today and tomorrow. Looks like they are in a sweet spot for the Sunday night storm and thinking that it will clear out of here for the drive home Monday night earlier that it clears out of places East, plus the drive home being almost all interstate will make it easier to get home.