EdBacon

Won't ride it if you paid me.

Ha. I remember when they widened Timberline. Maybe 2004 or 2005ish? They built a banked slalom course/bordercross course on the trail with big berms and everything. There was a NASTAR style starting gate at the top and everything.

Sort of. It's closer to Coudersport.

Have they actually done any work on this thing? High-speeds are complicated and if you want to keep them running this long they need a big overhaul to keep going. Or are they just doing rattle can overhauls and hoping it passes inspection?

BC has the second lowest average natural snowfall total in the state (21 inches) ahead of only Spring Mountain (11 inches). That's averaged over the last ten seasons. Fun fact.

Wow! My favorite kind of skiing is the kind where you go uphill! Thanks CBK.

Heard Blue sent a snowmaking crew over to CBK. Thinking about it... why would you want to ride a lift that keeps failing inspection anyway?

BC invested heavily into snowmaking in the decade after the Doe/BC transition. They basically have one monolithic purpose-built system for the mountain, not the patchwork system most mountains end up with. They've always done a good job with snowmaking especially relative to their location.

The Knob is fun. Road up is dangerous when it snows because it's an upside down resort on top of a 3200 ft mountain. The lodge is where the old missile defense shield radar base was. That's why its upside down, when the military closed the radar base they repurposed it to a ski area, but the road and facilities were all at the top. Snowmaking is marginal. It's an old system that's in need of a lot of maintenance and upgrades. Really shines when there's a lot of natural snowfall. Sometimes it can get that owing to elevation and catching the same weather pattern WV resorts benefit from.

CBK doesn't want to operate the ski area anymore. They're focused on their waterparks. That leaves Blue and Shawnee. Blue is ridiculously crowded now and Shawnee is, well Shawnee. It's nice for what it is but it's small and doesn't even have the small geographic advantage of being on top of the plateau. Plus it's in an awkward location. It's the same drive to Montage as it is to Shawnee for me coming from Montgomery County.

Wildcat had a lot of pre-existing issues with their snowmaking system pre-Vail. This is hardly the first time they've struggled. However, Vail really doesn't seem to understand any of the east coast mountains they bought and have failed to make the necessary investments to get Wildcat back up to a state of good repair. At least management seems to be giving some more leeway to operations at JF this year. Challenge was allowed to go ungroomed to bump up which is nice. They have everything open except Floyd's which I expect to open any day now. Full opening by mid-January isn't bad and puts them about even with pre-Vail opening schedules. And that's with a reduced snowmaking regime and less snow guns. But then all of that is really just relearning what the old operations staff already knew. Vail came in, gutted the place, got years of complaints and now falling revenue and visitor counts, so they're kicking back some operations to the staff with any experience on local operations. It's like every dumbass corporate job you ever had where your MB business casual boss reinvents your job then gives up and eventually lets you do things the way you already knew they were supposed to be done. Like, it's a waste of time. Thanks for nothing, Vail. I hope their stock price is buried. They've ruined a bunch of good local ski hills. I would suggest the entire Poconos ski experience has been degraded by them. Multiple competitor hills have jumped on the suck bandwagon to try and squeeze blood from the stone that is Poconos skiing and now we've got multiple underinvested hills with aloof leadership looking at spreadsheets and planning their slide deck to talk MB buzzwords like an AI chatbot at their next business retreat in Palm Springs. What a load of crap. I hate Vail.

Grick Pick

I heard they're going to pump water over it from the indoor water parking lot. It's their new Ice Slide water park attraction parking lot. You have to pay to park though. Then pay to get in, then pay to use the slide then pay to let them let you leave the water park. Then you have to pay to let them let you out of the parking lot.

I once took a picture of the sign at the top of Cliffhamper that says "EXPERS ONLY" I sent it to my wife. She says you do not go down there it is dangerous but I am a really good snowboarder and I went down anyway.

What this thing? Is that harder than a double black diamond Cliffhanger I hear is teh steepest in the Eastest