Ski

Well, welcome to the area! Since Sno passholders are generally the smartest and most interesting people on PASR, we'd love to hear more about you...are you a jibber, hack, newb, or racer? How long have you been skiing? Blues or blacks? And did you know that if you ever travel down to Blue you can reserve a chairlift with your own personal rapper?

Lucky for Blue that BC didn't build an indoor pipe like Sno...

One sliiiiiiick mo fo. Melissa: where are you from? Have you been to Sno before?

When BC gets their 8-pack installed Blue will be in big trouble.

Ha...it's actualy pretty weird up here, Glenn. A lot of soccer parents are Elk passholders (some are instructors and patrollers) and it's as if they've developed an angry attitude about Sno. Sort of a BC v. Blue thing, but it's odd because it hasn't existed since there was an inter-mountain adult race league. Which brings up an interesting possibility... Hey, Skierdaddy: Elk skiers ski slower than arthritic grandmas

Billable hours and skiing? Where did Dennis Carlson finish in his class? Wtf? Sno is owned by a skier who is the father of a racer. They bought Sno because they love skiing and it was an amazing deal. You can't create more skiers? Huh? What do you think advertising is for? What do you think buying 193 high end snow guns is for? Best terrain in PA? Nobody's really going to argue because that's your opinion, but have you been to Blue? I'm not a huge Blue fan, but I'll take their two fall line diamonds over anything at Elk and if I want something a little gnarly I'd definitely take Sno's White Lightning or Denton's two steep runs over Elk. What is it with Elk and hyperbole? Best snow, best grooming, best terrain? You guys need to get out a little more. And trying to disparage Sno by saying it's going to be sold to Snowtime? First off, it's cool that you have the inside knowledge. Where'd you get it? I heard something a little different, but my info surely can't be as reliable as your's. The next few years will really test the loyal niche you mention. Charging a premium price and making token improvements while someone down the road provides a superior product will surely weed out your less loyal skiers. But regrooming the same 8 inches of natural over and over wouldn't keep my loyalties. A first class operation? Maybe in some aspects, but charging your race team for use of a slope to hold PA Cup races stinks.

Yeah, where are we racing? They have to keep NASTAR on the upper mountain and we just use their timing gear....Whistler is the only alternative.

Lube it? I'm pretty sure you said glue it.

Have you ever talked to the founder of Elk or any department heads about the whole 'not wanting to be crowded' thing you keep mentioning? Do you have any idea how much of a battle it has been for them to get skier visits? Jeez, you make it sound like they turn people away or that it's a choice not to spend hundreds of thousands on snowmaking and a park. Elk actually has plans for investing in a park and snowmaking, they just don't have the money. Saying they just don't care to have crowds is reminds me of Pee Wee Herman falling off his bike and saying, "I meant to do that." And Elk isn't worried about Sno? How were the years right after Montage opened? I believe it took three or four years of mismanagement at Montage before anyone at Elk felt job security creeping back to them. And something tells me Elk would sort of like to have back all the tickets currently being lost to Sno. You don't? If you had the chance to experience the new snowmaking firepower at Sno, you'd have a better picture of what kind of changes Elk will have to make just to survive. Recent weather trends have turned Elk's claims of 100 annual inches to more like 40. And when you compress 40 inches of natural snow during grooming, you're now relying on less than 8 inches of snow a season. Is there some hidden secret to making old, regroomed natural snow somehow superior to 8 feet of top-of-the line snowmaking? I suspect the legal problems Sno Mountain LLC endured but hindered early plans has Elk underestimating the impact Sno is going to have. Sticking one's head in the sand and reying on some hyped survey when the new kid down the block is offering real snow----and tons of it---seems a dangerous policy. I certainly hope all PA ski areas flourish, but consider KMart's glum new outlook in another thread today. You may not think Elk is worried, but not offering any summer income alternatives and continuing with minor winter investments would be troubling to me.

What does CB do to your gear if you don't tip?

It sounds like someone ran over Killington's dog. Jeez, could they make it sound any worse? And to be more competitive, they changed some hotel carpet?

Good stuff... Hey, Insidesno: any inside Sno info on whether the race course is getting new lighting? Skier's right on Switch is some of the sketchiest lighting on the mountain and makes Thursday night racing pretty tough in a few spots...

Well, how much is it, Craig?

Elk doesn't make Top 10's for food, lodging, or off hill activities...or even overall. They just somehow got a rep for snow quality (8th), grooming (7th), weather (7th), and value (10). It's pretty funny to even consider that Ski Mag readers vote that Elk has better snow than Stratton, Stowe, Killington, Tremblant, Hunter, Windham, Belleayre, Smugglers Notch, Gore, and Whiteface, just to name a few. Value is just as nuts: $51 lifts tickets and $740 season passes are an excellent value? The internet and MB's like PASR are a great tool for people to explore the reality behind the hype.

Here's a decent set of Salomons with bindings for $84 delivered with a Buy It Now... http://cgi.ebay.com/150-cm-Salomon-Verse-5...VQQcmdZViewItem I'm not so sure any local ski shops are selling used junior skis/bindings for that price...there are only a dozen or so sets right now but in another couple of weeks there will be tons more to choose from.

Yes. Definitely. A set of junior skis in 150 (140 would be okay). Junior bindings in a 3-10 range would be ideal. You could hook him up on eBay for less than $125, then sell it for the same at the end of the season.

To be fair, if it was single digits there, it was single digits most other places...although BC could have been in the mid-30's...and I like it without a hotel. But their slow motion snowmaking is what's going to eventually crowd things up a little at Sno. Montage 'stole' a lot of Elk passholders when they first opened, but many went back when Montage failed to invest in snowmaking. Now, Elk will have to make a critical decision because people like you aren't fooled by hype. And people are going to to see all that real snow at Sno and wonder what Ski Mag readers were thinking.

In all fairness, is it really such a stretch for him to park in a handicapped spot?

It's always interesting when someone appears out of nowhere to join a message board to either stick up for or bash something.

I've never been rude enough to ask him how long he has to work to earn them, but it's how 'Dude has made a friend for life in Ty by passing along CBeach tickets each year.

Work a five or six hour shift and get a $49 ticket voucher? If so, then it's the best deal ever. I don't see it, though, Sib... And I have to tell ya, guys, we may not see much of Ms. Ashleigh around here with that sort of piling on...a lot of local hills have been pulling back on the employee perks. Don't be hatin' on the player so much, especially the female one's...

I think it's black into blue, but really just a solid blue run. That's where we took a bunch of pics, either right before or right after you tried to feel up the Portugese girl on the lift...

The skiernet.com description is kind of odd: " The knock on Belleayre has been the short runs, slow lifts, and difficulty moving about between the lower "novice" area and the upper main mountain." The high speed was up and running all last season, plus who cares that you can't "move about" between expert and bunny runs? It's actually BETTER that the novice runs are way down below and out of the way. It's like they were saying it would be better to have long, flat runouts. Belleayre isn't CB, skiernet Like Jeff said, Belleayre is a PARS maggot spot...it's not a vert whore paradise, but you have lots of steep headwalls that line up off the ridge to choose from, so it skis even bigger than it is. And the Dot Nebel run is a GREAT blue cruiser for high speed turns. It's where ASRA holds an annual GS race and it's by far the best race slope in the region. BTW, Belleayre opens BEFORE Hunter these days and has 1/4 the crowds (and 1/50th the assholes).

K. Then be very, very quiet.

Lib, don't you live next to a bunch of unoccupied houses? I'll buy a used plasma TV if you come across one.