EdBacon

I was already coming up with a contest idea where you had to collect beer cans across the mountain and the first person down the mountain with all the beer cans got a free year supply of beer. Guess that's not happening now. Shame.

Those are electric. The diesel is just there to drive a generator if they lose power. Those old 60s Halls are just really loud.

This is a half hour from my house so I thought, why not? Never been. Super old-fashioned little family ski hill. Lodge is from the 60s. Love the lodge. Smells like feet. Muddy gravel parking lot. Plus points. Their lifts are old. A fleet of 1960s Hall double chairs. It was a ten minute ride on the slower double chair to go whatever, like 300ish vertical feet. The other side of the hill has a double chair geared a little faster. More like a 3 minute ride. They don't clear the lift line properly and the trees on either side have pretty much grown over the lift which makes for a cool tunnel-like effect as you ride up. Not gonna be great when one of those weak-ass poplars splits and brings the lift down. Snow was great. Packed powder. Super grippy and fun. I grabbed a fat Japan air on the sweet jump they built. Fun day. Ski patrol man yelled at me to put the safety bar down.

I tried using my phone at Jay and it said I couldn't because I was in Canada.

Shoot. The real conversation should be who here wants to get together to buy Elk?

Do they call their season passes "Camelpass" because they should if they don't.

Did you have to pay for parking?

I can't see KSL or Vail buying Elk. Just a vibe, but I just can't see it.

BB has a tubing park. Somebody said they used to have the whole mountain be a park before Vail. Wow that's a lot of tubing

I should try riding park tomorrow at Blue. Do they have a park open?

Back in 2012ish they had all their features and a bunch of sheds and fences tagged up by some graffiti artists from NYC. It was pretty cool for a minute there. Parks in general have seen a decline. They're expensive to maintain and build since they take up a lot of snowmaking resources, and the majority of guests won't care if it's there or not. It's a pretty small proportion of overall visitors to a ski area that are ever really using a terrain park. A few places like JFBB were the exception but even there Vail has decided it's not going to continue building terrain parks. Maybe that trend is reversing though.

I'm so stoked.

No.

What about all those many, many ski areas that don't have lights?

I'll start daily trip reports for tubing. Thank you.

I might switch from snowboarding to tubing.

I punched a French guy and broke my pinkie finger at Camelback. I think I told that story already.

Big money. No whammies.

Is that a euphemism for something?

what's a kunkle, anyway?

I wonder if it has to do with leadership at acquired mountains trying to put on a show for the bean counters. It's like they want to show they can run the hill on the cheap to maximize their margins to prove their worth and get some more leverage later when they need to make the case for investments into their mountain.

JFBB was the same way after they went onto Epic Pass. Lines were out of control and staffing seemed to be worse than under the Peak days. They would spin less lifts than the Peak days even with bigger crowds coming in.

Know how you can bring your own cup to Starbucks or whatever and they'll fill it up? Maybe they can do that with lifts. Bring your own chair and they'll hook it up for you and you can skip the lines.