Robert2

Really nice fast chalky powder. Just plain lapped Janes...the crossover above the headwall..then Lehigh for 3 hours. No crowds at all today. No waiting to drop in at the headwall, no waiting at the lift. Phenomenal speeds all the way to the lift. Definitely a top shelf adrenaline rush day. JADIP Like I said. Same as yesterday.

Never been to Floyds. I just lapped Lehigh for 3 hours. I think the groomers are doing a great job this year. The surface has been very consistent no matter what the temperature or storms drop on us. I gotta buy somebody a beer for a job well done.

Really nice fast chalky powder. Just plain lapped Janes...the crossover above the headwall..then Lehigh for 3 hours. No crowds at all today. No waiting to drop in at the headwall, no waiting at the lift. Phenomenal speeds all they way to the lift. Definitely a top shelf adrenaline rush day. JADIP

I saw a one legged skier at Jack Frost today. Jack Frost has an ADAPTIVE SKI Program for people with disabilities. So its actually common to see these people having a great time skiing.

2 inches of very dry powder everywhere today. Never waited for a lift even with the kids off from school for MLK holiday. Crowds made for some interesting riding. I had to park it on the top of the headwall of Lehigh and wait for the swarm to clear the rest of the hill 4 times today. Its been snowing off and on all day. JADIP

nope... I don't live there anymore. Only time I've been back there was for funerals.

I salted my sidewalk and steps at 10PM last night and it worked great. No shoveling for me here today.

Sounds like you all had a great time at JF today. After today's temps you know why I posted so much about investing in high tech clothes and dressing like an astronaut. Its been teens a few weeks of February in past years. I haven't had cold feet with snowboarding boots but I could never keep warm toes with ski boots at 10 degrees. I don't know how you guys do it. About the chalky slow snow..... can anyone recommend a specific wax they use when its 10 degrees outside? I had my board waxed on Monday and it lasted 3 days. By the end of Wednesday it felt sticky.... and the temp never got above 25 degrees so its not like the snow was wet and sticky. It was very dry and chalky. I sort of hope a wax job lasts more than 9 hours of ride time.... 3 hours a day for 3 days. But I don't ever seem to get any more time out of a wax job..... then I resort to ZARDOZ oil until I get another wax job.

I said K&A just to get an idea of the area but my house was 2 blocks from the Tioga L stop near ST Joan of Ark Church. My deed said Horrowgate Estates on it. For some reason...history wise... the area around the Tioga L stop was considered Estates. Beats me why. Its just row houses. anyway.... 15 years ago there were factories on every corner and everyone had a job. It was a factory neighborhood where everyone could walk to work. Guys worked, women raised kids, and the kids went to the catholic school in the local church. Then the factories all closed.... the guys left.. anyone who could then bugged out. Then it turned into crack cocaine and hookers. My property value dropped $10,000 in in 10 years. I was lucky to dump the house and make a profit at all when I left.

Times are tough for a lot of people. Who do you steal from if your hungry? Rich people. Who skis? Rich people. OR so that's the illusion that ski resorts attract wealth. Who else could spend $50 to play in the snow while the rest of the world uses a sled on a golf course? I'm from K & A. I bugged out of Philly 15 years ago when it turned into crack cocaine and hookers. When I moved up to Jim Thorpe I was stunned to see that nobody even locked their front doors and a lot of people here didn't even have a house key and always left their car keys in the the ignition in their cars. That shit just made veins pop in my forehead. I came from a world where you locked up your shit , trusted nobody, and always carried a gun. So then I moved to freakin Mayberry and saw how the rest of the country lived. Then I took my kids skiing and saw how really rich kids lived. This was 15 years ago ......before they even rented snowboards OR shaped skis. I was very surprised how everyone left their shoes and bags just loose all over the ski resorts. A pair of NIKE sneakers costs a days wages for a lot of people yet they were everywhere. I could understand going rollerskating and leaving $15 Keds sneakers out like when I was a kid but it just seemed to me that when you ski you left the lodge and nothing was safe from vultures. So then we learned how to snowboard and after spending $2000 on boards and bindings for me and 3 kids and we see a sign that says NO EQUIPMENT ALLOWED IN LODGE and then wonder just how safe is it to leave $2000 worth of gear sitting on racks outside the lodge. I never left anything unlocked anywhere at any ski resort and for the life me don't understand why anyone trusts that their stuff will still be there when left unattended for an hour. Same thing for leaving ANYTHING of value in a car. Anywhere. Period. A lot has changed in 15 years. One thing for sure is that skiing is no longer for a hoity toity crowd anymore. Anyone who ever stepped on a skateboard or surfed a wave would just love to try snowboarding. The huge success of the rail parks is proof of that idea. Perhaps its the economy overall. I wouldn't just blame skater rat kids and surfer dudes. Its just that I ride the lift every day with "first timers", "never evers", people all ages who never skied or boarded before and they bought the lift ticket and rental and never took a lesson and as they fall off the lift or get hammered on the hardpack I give them two pieces of advice.... TAKE A LESSON.... and WEAR a HELMET. Easily more than 80% of those people say they don't have enough money to pay for a lesson, or a helmet, or even to buy lunch. The really sad part of all this is that now that its cold they are getting frostbite because they didn't invest in the right clothes and can't buy gloves or hats in the ski shop. Last year I saw a kid with bare fingers in 15 degrees trying to buckle his snowboard but his fingers were too cold to negotiate the rubicks cube trick straps on his rental bindings. I sent this kid to the lost and found. I told him to just say he lost his gloves and they would let him grab gloves out of the lost and found box. So I'd say in this economy that with money so tight you are going have a tremendous amount of theft going on....so do your part... lock up your stuff... and never in your car. A car is just a temporary container that is going to be left unattended for at least an hour so its fair game for any thief who watched you stow your pocket book in the trunk and go ski. Call me jaded but I just don't see how you can trust anymore.

Gonna have to beam up some dilithium crystals or something for those boot warmers tomorrow. IT was friggin cold out there today and I don't think waiting until 10 AM will make much of a difference. This morning it was 10 degrees at 10:30 AM. YOU WILL NOT have to worry about first tracks. There will be hardcore weekend skiers but nothing like other weekends with temps like this. Exhibition has bumps down the left side of the lift towers now. I stayed out of the bumps today.... just cruised the right side of the hill. I was dressed warm enough for 2 hours before sweating too much and had to swap out base layers. If you want to last the whole day then you might want to bring a change of clothes of base layers. I won't be able to attend tomorrow. I have a pipe freeze proofing project I have to do here tomorrow. Have fun.

Way cold temps keeping the surface reeeeeeealy nice. It was 10 degrees at 11AM. Today way had groomed cord that had grip and speeeeeeeeed. There was this way cool ice rainbow circle around the sun today. JADIP

The soft snow keeps falling at JF and the prolonged cold snap really seems to help. I can't remember the last time I saw solid hardpack at JF. Just another day in paradise.

JF had pow everywhere today. The low temps made for real dry surface. Nothing sticky today.

Totally amazing recovery after the ice storm. BB should be great tonight. Forget JF tomorrow. WMMR is bringing 4,000 drunks tomorrow.

snowing now at JF BB will be fresh pow tonight.

NO WAY NO HOW you could get me to ride down a ski slope with this steadycam hardware. If you fell or got run over someone would get impaled by the tubing.

I had the exact same issues with my helmet cam. The first videos looked down too much and almost resembled something like driving a car with one broken headlight looking down..... all my movie showed was snow passing right in fron tof the board. Then after raising the angle I got more view but shaky video. I was considering this year strapping it to my shin instead of helmet.

I don't really see much of an argument here. If you followed the weather and clothing discussions for the last TWO months here you should have been at the least entertained by the posts. I said it gets REAL cold here so dress for it. Other people said it doesn't get that cold here so don't bother dressing for it. Then opening week we had 12 degree weather and a lot of people did freeze their asses off and we got back to some banter about staying warm. I NEVER SAID YOU HAVE TO WEAR WHAT I WEAR BUT I did say FIGURE OUT WHAT WORKS WELL FOR YOU. The bottom line is that if you never try anything new and you do get cold then you never will figure out what works for you. The local Walmart, KMart, MACEYS...etc.... sells lots of cotton sweatshirts and cotton long underwear and cotton jeans and cotton has proven again and again and again to be the worst winter warmth fabric once its wet with sweat or rolled in the snow. The high tech base layer market has really exploded with some great affordable long underwear but not a lot of people get to buy and wear this stuff. $85 for a long underwear shirt can be pretty much out of your league but the guy that goes outside every day for 4 hours sees that as a good investment. When I say "you" or "your" I'm not pointing at any one person here.... I'm just saying that the price tag , that high price tag, makes a lot of my local ski shops not stock the best of the best. They stock something a little less pricey so it will move off the shelf. And once gone, its gone and they do not get more again until next year. So because not every product that is a good warmth product is even available to me the shopper I would encourage anyone who has found the best way to stay warm in 10 degrees to share names of what product worked for them. I used to only wear Patagonia capilene then found MARMOT and HOT CHILLY's made base layers just as warm for half the price of capilene. Patagonia used to make a thick fuzzy fleece they called EXPEDITION WEIGHT that was meant to be worn as your second layer over a wicking silk weight layer. They discontinued that product a few years ago and confused their customer base, people like me, who wanted to buy a tried and trusted product. So I experimented with other Patagonia base layers but did not find anything as warm as their discontinued product. Then I experimented with Marmot and HOT CHILLY's base layers. If you check out HOT CHILLY'S web site they have a dozen product lines and its very confusing so I just went to the source and asked HOT CHILLY'S to tell me what their warmest products are and they told me : The La Montana and HC4040 is our best expedition weight (and warmest) and I would recommend the HC4040 - M's Panel Zip T - because it has gussets made out of a less bulky and more technical fabric in our line called MTF4000. So I bought a few of each ....cost half as much as Patagonia shirts.....and I've been wearing one of these for a month now and won't be looking for any more Patagonia products again. I also found that Marmot made a next to skin base layer that looks almost identical to what Patagonia calls their capilene 4....... but the Marmot shirts cost half as much as the cap 4 shirts. Since the market will bear lots of competition we have NIKE and UNDER-ARMOR and Walmart has some kind of jock attire line but none of those products kept me warm enough to snowboard in 10 degrees so if anyone has had better luck with those products then of course say so. I don't own stock in any of these attire companies so I'm just saying what did and didn't work for me. Something as simple as learning about wearing mittens instead of gloves or learning about glove liners can make the difference between a day out or a day in. You never saw an Eskimo wear gloves.... they wear mittens because they are warmer than gloves. Check out DAKINE and BURTON snowboard mittens and you see insane $75 pricing for a pair of mittens. Look close and you see a waterproofed mitten PLUS a removable mitten liner made of some kind of thermal fleece. I've been wearing the same BURTON mittens for 13 years with a thin glove liner. My Burton mittens came with a removable mitten liner which I have replaced with a polartech fleece mitten liner. So I actually wear 3 layers.... thin glove liner... thicker fleece mitten.. then the rubberized outer mitten... what you see. I shove a rollerblade wrist guard plate in between the fleece and the mitten layer. You can buy polartech fleece for $30 for ten yards.... it sort of looks like baby blanket material.... and make anything warm you want out of it. How about mittens? Liners? Today as I was packing up to leave JF there was this lady with her kid trying to get two pairs of gloves on this kid's hand but glove two would not fit over glove one so I asked her if she ever heard of glove liners and showed her some standard thin glove liners. She went into the ski shop and found that they were sold out of glove liners. I just gave her an old pair of mine. I carry extras. Dress for it. Have fun.

Very nice powder conditions today. THE most crowded I've ever seen it but considering its the last day of the holiday week it was to be expected. Tomorrow will be just as crowded but don't let that stop you from coming out to play. The lift lines moved fast enough .... just enough time for me to drink a V8 and toss the can in the trash before getting on the lift. Monday they will all be back to school and I'll have the place to myself again with no lift lines.

Yes. From Nov 18th SNOWWWW post. http://www.paskiandride.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12497 I'm not familiar with these pants and jacket. Would you know a link on the web that sells them and describes their temperature ratings? It's no big deal if you can't. I just poked around on the web and found lots of Analog jackets but nothing specific. I bought a new jacket this year that I expected to be much warmer than it turned out to be so I'm back to multiple base layers so I am always looking for some input on what really is the warmest jacket available. Naaa.... never was an astronaut.... more like a spaced cowboy...... when I say dress like an astronaut I'm just saying that by the time every square inch from head to toe is covered up and protected from the wind that its not much less than dressing in a pressure suit. I wear the beard to stay warm but when the air gets into the 20s I wear two layers of balacavas. A silk weight then a fleece weight then the helmet with speakers and turbo fan goggles. The silk weight wicks sweat. The fleece is the insulation. Wearing one without the other is too cold when its 5 degrees out there so I don't even think about it anymore, I just wear both of them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaclava_(clothing) I found that wearing mouth covering balacavas warmed the air. It and made a huge difference between cold lungs and eventually a cold chest. It seemed that breathing cold air would make my back chill but when wearing balacavas my whole core stayed warm for hours. Nick was talking about head and feet warmth. I don't know how to wear ski boots and stay warm when its 10 degrees. I found that thick wool hunting socks did great for snowboarding but my ski boots only fit if I wear the thin merino ski socks, not thick hunting socks, and then I get cold feet on days like today. I normally only ski when its warm and powder and slower riding so I never tried to get heated boots anyway. That's one advantage of snowboarding.... the boots can be laced loose enough to allow good blood flow for warmth and thicker socks for the coldest days. My snowboarding boots seem to be a boatload warmer than my ski boots. A lot of people lace up their snowboarding boots real tight, almost like an ice skate , and don't realize that too snug a boot will impede blood flow and cause pain, fatigue, and cold feet where just a little bit looser would make a great day out in the cold.

Did you have to wait long for the lift lines or did you get on a lift reasonably quick? There wasn't much of a wait at JF today.

There are two lakes and ponds I pass on the way to JF every day and all have been ice covered last week and yesterday and today at noon so it does look like snowmaking and grooming conditions have been good for JF.

JF was great today. Groomers did a phenomenal recovery after the weekend slop. As per that Friday weather forecast....... yep..it got cold in a hurry last night and today the groomers made 2 inches of soft slippery stuff that just flew fast at day long. You would never have known it was slush yesterday from what it looked like today. There were holiday crowds but I never had to wait very long for the lift. I guess 60 degrees in Philly yesterday scared off a few folks. Tonight weather forecast is for 29 degrees.... so looking great for tomorrow. Just another day in paradise.

and now that that's settled...ski where the snow is and like it.. All I was saying was that even with the 60 degree summerlike weather all weekend it looked to me like we would have great surface to ride on Monday morning at JF and even with the warm Monday we would have nice speed at BB after 6PM just because the temps forecasted were freezing temps. I don't NOT go if the weather is warm.... or cold. I go every weekday and ride whatever nature throws my way. Riding a snowboard on blue ice is fine by me. Just pop up on edges and ice skate. I have great control on ice so you may not like the conditions that I consider prime for ballistic carving speeds. I can't ride ice with skis. I need a few inches of powder or slush to ski. So when the soft stuff slows down the snowboard carving I go skiing. As far as comparing Blue to BB or JF goes I was saying that since it has been so warm that this may be the time to pick JF over Blue because it has been cold enough to make hardpack instead of slush. A lot of people are off Xmass to New Years and expect to ski so I figured the weather would determine where to go Monday..... by car... not plane.