Ski

Well, since Elk management has a long history of asking any employees and passholders who get the Ski Mag survey to give them high marks for snow and grooming, I figured I'd do my part for the 2008-09 season...

Music? Dancing? After pond skimming, we just headed down to the NF. The snow was so slushy and thick on Lower Fast Track that I jokingly offered Ty $10 each time she made it down without crashing...to which she took the deal and refused to ski anywhere else until closing. One cool moment was when a boarder came ripping past us on the headwall and then got in the slush on the left side and went head first into the mud. Oh, and yes, I'll shoot you. No problem, Hon. Actually, there was still a bump line down skiers right on Boomer. You could only see it from the lift, especially with the weird ridge the groomers created. I didn't ski them, but some of my friends took a few runs down.

Ha, thanks...just a crappy little point-and-shoot, but it takes some nice pics...

...

...Sno should give you guys a comp family season pass for all doing it

Bikinis, epic pond crashes, blue skies, and every kind of snow possible...here are a few pics of the last day of the best season the mountain has ever had...

I buy gear on eBay all the time, Rat...stores are just dumping GOOD gear on eBay right now. I just picked up a $750 pair of new Lange World Cup race boots for $95. Ty has new skis/bindings for the next two seasons and both sets of Atomics were each under $100. Doug's right about used rental gear---it'll turn newbies off to the sport.

Big was nearly arrested while using it correctly this season. Not sure he's in a mood to poach...

We had a thread about the used RENTAL gear last season---or the season before. They really should just give the stuff away...and I assume the bindings were pulled off these boards because they were broken and that's generally not a good sign of how the board has been treated by its renters.

It's back to 'closed for the season Sun @ 5pm'...

Hmmmmm.... The front page of the website is back to saying Sno's open April 1st: * March 27 - closed * March 28 hours will be 3pm to 10pm * March 29 hours will be 8am to 10pm * March 30 hours will be 8am to 5pm * March 31 and April 1 hours will be 3pm to 10pm Not so sure I believe it...

You mean Sno passholders driving down to CB while Sno is open? IDK, I'm more inclined to think Sno passholders are done until next year, except for next weekend. I could see some Sno passholders taking advantage of super cheap Catskills tickets, but not CB...but who knows?

Cool that they are now calling for an inch or two both tonight and then again Thursday night for the Northern Poconos. Might get a better turnout for the last weekend at Sno.

Ha, at least you didn't get kicked of their email list. I agree, Melissa---even before getting kicked off, I got 10x more emails from Stratton because I filled out a 'get a free lift ticket' form at their website two years ago. I think you have to make your passholders feel like they have some inside knowledge...maybe disguise a little spam/promo with weekly mailings that also include things like "we'll be blowing extra snow on Boomer this Wednesday night, so maybe head into work a little late". And even some pics of the day...give people a reason to let it through their spam filters while getting a chance to promote a menu item.

It'll be a tough sell because even the passholders stopped skiing/riding. When they shut down this midweek, you just knew it killed any chance for April. The carnival weekend is going to be pretty quiet, too....

Yep, that's for sure.

I'm just going by bits and pieces of what I heard and I'm pretty sure I'm not saying anything that isn't obvious...that said, Sno used this year to stabilize a shaky infrastructure and to see what events and programs they could manage. Consider that ski areas are going bankrupt around them and Al Gore has most people afraid we wont have winters in a few years. So they built a crazy 22' pipe, held a USSA race and the mid-Atlantic high school alpine championships, did the jib academy thing, and brought in a former US Ski Teamer to hang out with the kids. Doom and gloom was predicted by how many people on here? Well, Sno hit all their projected numbers, and then some. With almost no advertising and only one person doing marketing. If Sno was a publicly traded company, I know where I'd put my money. They do plan to market to DC and Baltimore and Philly---in fact, they did manage a few bus loads from, I believe, Baltimore. I've said it before, but Sno is set up to run with extremely low overhead, compared to other Pocono resorts. CB had to make a million bucks to pay their board members before the first snowflake fell. Sno sank money into snowguns. A while back I came to a conclusion: that after listening to all the employees and a lot of customers, there was one central idea in Carlson's plan for Sno. It's also, perhaps, why he picked the name Sno. He heard about lights and lifts and new trails and better food and cleaner bathrooms and water slides and tubing runs... But he decided he wanted to begin with snow. A simple idea. We're skiers and boarders and all the six packs and great lights and chicken fingers in the world don't get us all talking and taking pictures and acting like Ass Clowns like it does when we see big piles of white snow. Heck, just a few flakes in October wakes this MB up every year. All the haters and flamers can say what they want, but my loyalty goes to a company who brings lots of snow to where I live. Hating on snow is like hating on Santa Claus. Let is Sno.

Go easy, TP4...DH is currently painting my toenails...if he does a good job, I may take his collar off and let him run around the front yard. (I can almost feel the tire iron hitting the back of my head if DH ever sees me first )

The original PR person for Sno used a couple of years worth of budget on all those TV ads last year, so the new PR person had just about zero budget when taking over this season. TV and radio ads will be back in full force next season, only a lot smarter. They'll be teaming up with radio stations for lots of promos and that sort of thing.

Yes, please.

Yes. I like to sleep in every day. Oh, and I just realized when I was adding today's stats that today was Day 40 for the kid

Hadn't been over for a couple of days and was amazed at how well everything has held up. There were actually quite a few newbs snowplowing down Cannonball and lots of people speaking foreign languages. Kinda weird. But it was just cold enough to keep most of the corn from slushing out and coverage on the NF is still mostly edge to edge. Melissa, was that you blowing out of the parking lot as we were booting up? I had your medal....

I know you can do it. The first 2/3 isn't very steep and, by that time, you start to see the bottom. But it's much more fun to do things when you are scared and have a little fear of Zaldon in you.

But if you're up tomorrow and plan to do it, lemme know. I wanna watch what happens.

WL sure has gotten into your brain. When I taught kids, I'd tell them to trick the slope into thinking it wasn't steep by skiing across the fall line. I showed them the power they had over any stupid hill that thought it was steep. Thanks for the TR...we'll be over all weekend...