Ski

No, I don't mean to say Sno is rushing to open before CB this year. They had to backfill the river summer ride that was just finished. But it took just 48 hours of snowmaking last year to open the Iron Horse lift, which meant roughly three times the area to cover than CB. Years ago, it was a hard fight to get ski areas to allow snowboarding. Are they glad they did? Now, some ski areas are taking full advantage of boarders and jibbers. Why isn't CB? The attitude that park rats are just a few people on this MB is wrong...they are a huge population with money to spend on tickets.

I say this a lot: "Oh, God, please stop smiling at me." I probably shouldn't, though.

You are dead wrong and might want to get out and see how people flood BB's early opening slopes. Jeez, you're actually doing HARM by repeating the same old line, instead of spreading the word about how many kids turn out when a ski area commits to early/late riding and skiing. BB sold over $10,000 worth of tickets by the time we showed up on opening day... "Little coverage just to say we're open" "Just to please a few peeps that are on here" Dude, CB has piled snow and rolled it out in lanes to get people to the lifts. They have overcome their "enormous" acreage in the past. Sno has to blow a hell of a lot more base area snow than you folks do and somehow they manage it----here's the secret: there's a little switch on the snow gun: turn it to the ON position. Magic! They just CHOOSE NOT to open early. They want zero risk and give the impression of making no extra effort. Instead of excuses and bitching at guests, maybe CB should check out what BB is doing...just a thought.

I just figure that every ski area now calls their conditions machine groomed packed powder no matter how hard it just rained, so a webcam is the only thing I'd like to see them get. $49 and a little bandwidth...

Okay, so she isn't going to be wearing it this season, but Spyder isn't making the regular bubblegum suit anymore and one online store had a couple left, so I grabbed Ty one... I'm not sure what the equivalent is for the parent of a jibber, but I can tell ya it's a pretty cool day...

Since the web is the cheapest and easiest way to reach the most people, you'd sort of think a website would be a pretty high priority for getting right IDK, I've owned a small, internet business for just about 10 years and it's never gone a single day without having at least a mini update for the date or something, even when we we've been in Hawaii on vacation...or Disney...or at race camp. I hate having out dated info anywhere on my site. I shouldn't complain, since it helps keep the lift lines short.

Wow, I can only imagine getting on a fixed-grip lift 120 straight times. When Ty wanted to do 20 laps down Highball at Sno, it almost killed me. I guess if you're doing a marathon, though, napping on the slow ride up is a good thing.

Yeah, the mention of snowmaking on the website is just hype. It's written more like "nightly through the season" than "nightly right now".

Unless it's to run tests, there's no other reason to turn the guns on than to be laying base with the intention of opening within a week. You don't blow and just speculate about weather in two weeks. If they are really blowing, then they are looking at insulating what they have against the two warm days coming up, then planning to hit it hard. If, if, if...it could be a really good sign.

Finn, if you're gonna bash Pocono skiing with fancy words, at least spell them right.

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One reason some companies won't fund projects under such a high return rate is because there is an automatic assumption of 'favorable' book keeping. Even with an independent audit, number are only as good as the people reporting them. CBeach would take a big hit if CB closed. They draw a lot of their customers from winter visitors. It's year 'round advertising. And water parks don't advertise in the winter.

Ha, Camelbeach isn't doing that well. If your winter op is doing $4 million a year and your summer op is doing $6 million, why would you shut down 40% of your business? Why would you even shut down 10% of your business? Although I could see CB turning the whole mountain into snow tubing.

We hit 10" at 1:15am and it's still coming down hard. It's getting into the range to be able to hike for turns at our ski hill...

Just FYI, Sean, a person under 18 can't be bound to a contract...so their mistake was last year, not this year. The woman doing the pics yesterday sent a lot of kids away without their passes, after they spent hours in line. Now that would have been a drag. She said she'd take their pic, but they'd still have to get back into line---if there was one---when they came back with a parent. Not really a well oiled machine...yet...

And I like the way you think... Well, you can definitely make plans to do it, since independent racers are also welcome---both on the course and at the post race gathering. Otherwise, just stop by the ski school building and have them put your name on the list as an available female amateur racer. And I'll be more than happy to go over with you---you can find me around the NASTAR course every Sat/Sun.

Did you meet the owner? He was chillin at the bar in the blue "staff" vest waiting for pretty girls to say 'sup... Just FYI, they go all out for the passholder party at the end of the year. Gigantic shrimp and free booze...shitty band (well, country, so I don't know)...that was why I had higher expectations. Melissa, have you ever skied NASTAR? We have a Thursday night race league that runs on a really easy NASTAR course---on a blue square run. The amateur division teams are always looking for females. You don't have to be fast, since times of only the top five out of eight racers on each team are scored. BUT every team has to have at least one woman or their team gets a zero score each week. Okay, I know you haven't skied in years, but it doesn't start until January and there's a party after the races in the bar each week. Just something to consider...some of the racer guys are pretty cool.

Good decision. And, yeah, Doug...just one box of Ritz would have made a big difference. I think I saw Melissa, but she was mobbed by a group of Scranton's finest dirt balls at the bar and didn't have time to say hello.

Holy freaking lines...we got there at 3:50pm and stood ina pretty short line for TWO HOURS. :banghead Jeez, it took eight minutes per pass (a woman in front of us was timing it). That was a bad start. And the cocktail party? I guess people were in such crap moods from the line that they didn't want to hang out. And we sort of expected hors d'oeuvres. Nope.

You so nailed it.

First your rap groupie thinks I called him queer, now you think I'm hitting on Melissa? Am I somehow not typing in English? Melissa already said she wasn't attracted to rich, muscular men, so I'm not even trying...and, just for the record, my wife passed away last week, so I'm single again. Three wives and they all drowned in the bathtub. I've had some bad luck.

Where the hell were you when I was younger and single? :banghead

'Cause you know what would have happened otherwise, right? j/k

Thanks for the info, skibum...I'll talk to some people about maybe getting you rehired. No promises, though. Did they move the NASTAR start house, yet?

Punch out and turn in your keys, son.