Helmet959

According to Blue Knob's website they got 6-8 inches last night, and it's still snowing today and tomorrow. And supposedly they're blowing snow too in "key places". Whatever that means. I'm going all day on Saturday. As long as High Hopes and Stemboggan are open I'll be happy. DAvid

I'd like to add to this conversation.. that there are indeed challenging single blacks in PA. Apparently that poster has never been to Blue Knob. Stembogan Bowl/Trail/Field Lower High Hopes Lower Shortway Edgeset These are all difficult single blacks. IMO Lower Shortway should be double black, from the pics I've seen. David

The triple chair servicing Expressway, Jack Rabbit and Mambo Alley on the skiers left covers about 750 feet vertical by my estimation. And the Lower Mountain headwall of Stemboggan, Lower Rt 66, Lower High Hopes Extrovert is probably about 750 feet as well. So the drop on Upper Rt. 66 to Lower Mountain is around 250.T he drop on Run Out from the triple chair to the bottom of Lower Mountain is about 250. From lower mountain if you cut across on Deer Run to the triple chair, you're looking at about 500 feet elevation drop. All in all, you get about 1072 elevation according to the website. A handy feature is the Mid Station unloading deck off the Rt 66 double chair at the top of Lower Mountain, so you can stick with all blacks as long as you want. Great for repeated runs on Stemboggan. Blue Knob really ski's like a much bigger mountain.

By glacier ice I mean true, hard packed, smooth ice with zero turning ability. Usually shiny! Like whatever point in your turn you hit it, you'll still be at that angle when you come out of it, just farther down the run a few feet :-) Blue Knob might have gotten hit with some rain before the snow came a few days before I got there. Lower Rt 66, Lower Shortway, Edgeset, and all the glades were roped off all day. Forgot to mention that.

Hey guys, I got back from BK on Sunday but with work and everything... you know how it is, I'm finally getting around to writing up a trip report. First off, Blue Knob really came through for us. The conditions were great on most of the runs. The powder in the morning felt great under my skies. But scraping caused spots of glacier ice to appear later in the day on several trails. I was disappointed that on their website it showed Edgeset and all of the blue/black glades as open but of course they were roped off all day. We started the day on Mambo Alley which had great powder snow all day and night. After we that we moved up to Expressway, Stemboggan, Deer Run, Jack Rabbit and High Hopes. Out of those, Expressway was held up the best through the night session. The bowl had great snow all day but the straight sections after both of the first two turns on Stemboggan got scraped down to sheer ice by about 6. It seemed like every spot that you'd really want to slow your speed down had no powder so youd enter the turns with too much momentum. I took a nice spill on turn 2 of Stemboggan early in the day which thankfully didn't hurt my confidence. High Hopes, which gave me fits last year, seemed much more manageable, even with some ice surfacing before sundown. I got the last run of the day because a cute snowpatrol snowboarder was trailing me to close it after I was through. I'm still wishing for lights on that run....would have loved to get more unstressful practice in because the Blue Knob crowd really disperses after 6 p.m. Around 5, I jumped the closed rope for Lower High Hopes to get a nice challenging start to Deer Run on Burma Road. I have a thing for narrow trails. Even if they're short. Speaking of narrow trails, earlier in the day I convinced my friends to follow me on Edgeset, despite the fact it was roped off. The website proclaimed it was open, so I figured and could somewhat see from the East Wall Traverse that it had good enough cover. I'm not sure why it was closed. Staff too lazy to take the rope off? Over on DCski, the new Blue Knob photo link shows Edgeset being open the very next day and I know they didn't get any natural snow after 10 on Saturday night. I really don't feel bad about jumping the rope. It should have been open. The natural crusty ungroomed powder had more than a few tracks already made, which made it lumpy. I took my second fall here, head first without losing my skis. The snow caught me nicely! I've never face plowed and had it hurt less. Natural snow, even when crusty makes for a great landing. I believe that was the first natural snow trail I've ever skied, cept minus a few connector trails at different mountains. The headwall of Edgeset has good sustained steepness so I don't consider it a "connector trail". I just had to do it again with better success before the sun went down. Did I mention I love narrow trails? After dinner beers we tried Stemboggan again but it was too icy leading into the turns to get comfortable. Sticking to Mambo Alley, Deer Run, and Expressway was challenging enough with BK's lights. Upper Rt 66 was fun to try and follow the slalom course at night when it was abandoned by the racers. I was very happy with Expressway in the dark because the ice was few and far between. At night they removed the slow down barrier from Lower Expressway as it crosses Mambo Alley. Doing a run on Expressway top to bottom without stopping made me gain a new respect for that trail as its steeper than Jack Rabbit and taller combined than Deer Run. The 2nd most challenging blue I've ever done has to be Deer Run. The first being Forty-Niner off the top of Pico Mountain in Vermont. That has a similar grade, is more narrow at the top, and has twice the vertical drop. They need to invent a new blue with black diamond inside it just for these kinds of runs. The skiers right half of Deer Run was groomed moguls, or at least they appeared to be machine made and very consistent in size. I spent my last two runs of the night around 8:30 p.m. on Deer Run practicing my moguls. I hopped out of the moguls a little down the second steeper headwall on my last go to get a blast of speed before calling it a night. Overall we were on the slopes from 11 until 9, with an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner beers. My friends and I had a great time. My wishes are still that all the trails be lit for night skiing and the warming hut at the double chairs confluence reopen. How great would a beer be at the bottom of a tough go on Stemboggan. Snowmaking on Edgeset and Lower Shortway would also be nice touches. Just my two cents! Even without snowmaking on those trails and Lower Rt 66, Blue Knobs varying types of difficult terrain was still the best part about the whole trip. One day I'll get the cajones to try Extrovert. But tackling High Hopes and Edgeset with better form were the highlights for me. Which makes me think I'm still capable of becoming a better skier.

I'll be renting from BK, so.... rocky glades here i come! On another note, would anyone like meet up this saturday? We will be probably be catching a few beers in the lodge around 6 p.m. Group of 4 skiers in their 20's....

What's up everyone? Me and my buddies, well my band really, are headed up to Blue Knob this coming Saturday. Anyone else plan on being there? According to the website BK plans on having more than 30 trails open. If you check the slope list, that means at least one glade will be opening for only the second time this year. Considering how this season has gone, it's shaping up to be some great late February skiing. I've been reading the weather report for the past 11 days and it hasn't gotten above 42 there and that was only for a day. I'm stoked. Did anyone get to the Knob last weekend?

i'm planning on going tomorrow morning, thursday...

I think I saw a sticker on the back of someones car in the parking lot right after arriving. I would love to go again, but I might not be able to until sometime in March for financial reasons. I'll post on here if I'm thinking about going anytime soon. I've never gone on three one-day trips in the same season... but the idea sounds great to me

Hi everyone, my names David. This is my first post on this forum. I'm 24 and learned how to ski at Roundtop. Just thought I'd throw that out there. I made it over to Blue Knob for the first time in my life. What a mountain! From what I had heard, it's best to wait for the big winter storm to hit before planning a quick trip there. So we did just that. I didn't exactly know what to expect terrain wise even though I had studied the trail map extensively. Good variety of runs for my taste and ability. We hit the slopes around 11 and didn't quit till 8:30 (except for lunch and a couple beers around dinner time to warm us up). The wind chill sunday must have been around 10 degrees by sundown. It was not nearly as crowded as we had expected. I never waited behind more than 10 people to get on any of the slow lifts. I'm by no means a true expert. I consider an expert to be anyone capable of doing every run on a given mountain. I consider myself a decent one diamond skier. I did everything at Blue Knob except Extrovert, Lower Route 66 because they were double blacks and Shortway which I thought was closed. I loved Stembogen, Deer Run, Jack Rabbit and Lower Expressway. Lower High Hopes was another story! I've been to Canaan Valley, Snowshoe (I've done Cupps Run), Roundtop, Whitetail and Tremblant and this is the only one black I've found to be above my level. Got a little scared even. I was afraid I'd end up tucking on such a narrow run because I had lost control of my speed. About every two or three good turns I would stop. Contemplate my next few turns and go again. It's definitely the most narrow run I've ever done, especially the part past Extrovert and it made me reconsider my tight turning ability. I feel challenged and want to give it another shot without someone who was more nervous about it than me. I wish it was lit so I could have practiced with no one on the run. Oh well. My favorite run was Stembogen. The bowl was much more impressive in person than in pictures. By the 3rd time down I was able to manage from Bowl to lift without coming to a complete halt. Loved it at night too! The spotty lighting wasn't an issue for me. My favorite blue was Jack Rabbit. I like blues that have good speed combined with pitch variations and left and right turns. This run reminded me of Toboggan on the Le Soleil face of Tremblant. All in all I was very happy with the mountain. The lack of "amenities" did not bother me one bit. It reminded me of visiting a nature park like Shenandoah and stopping at the Panorama restaurant store at the Rt 211 gap. Someone on this board described it as third world? The toilets worked. They had lockers to store our bookbags. They served hot food with cold and fresh beer. The lodge was warm. The rental equipment seemed less than 5 years old. As a skier/snowboarder what more do you need? This coming from someone who's been to Tremblant 3 times and Snowshoe once. I enjoyed the rustic nature of the operation. However, the environmental mess that the management has presided over is another subject I'm not going to approach here and now. I enjoyed Blue Knob more than Canaan Valley and Snowshoe. I have a new favorite destination for day or one night last-minute trips based on good sustained cold weather. I don't feel like it would good idea to plan a 3 or 4 day trip to the Knob far in advance for fear of catching it on a bad stretch of warm weather. It's a bit shorter and an easier drive from Falls Church, my hometown. No one I was with on this trip had been to Blue Knob before so it was all on my shoulders if it was disappointing. I did my research If anyones curious my life skiing experience is as follows. Roundtop once a year for a weekend from 1986 to 1999, and again in 2002 Tremblant 5 day trips in 2001 2004 and 2007 Whitetail 2003 Canaan Valley 2003 Snowshoe 3 day trip 2005 Blue Knob 2007