Robert2

10/28/2008 http://www.jfbb.com/files/u6/JF_snow_-_10-28_031.jpg

GET YER STOKE ON Mix of rain and snow forecast in Jim Thorpe tonight and tomorrow. Today was the first time I could see my breath while kayaking this winter. We got flurries but nothing stuck to the ground cuz the air temp was 44. The rain passed about 3PM and we got lots of lake fog... warm water ...cooler air? This usually is how fall turns to winter around here. Lots of colorful trees one day and then a 27 mph wind and rain storm nukes all the leaves. Then it looks brown and white until April. Well.....I had my fun.... kayaking 5 miles every weekday for 6 months.

Nope. Been there 8 years ago. Was optimistic at first but as time wore on it became apparent there was no cure for retina and optic nerve damage. I learned braille in 2001 just in case it got worse. Having crushed and twisted vision does have its advantages. I can go to Walmart and everyone looks pretty to me.... even the toothless in stretch pants.

Bold's cool..... any font is actually OK because I use CTRL plus to expand fonts all day long in FireFox. I tried the couch slug thing for 5 years and then figured I know how to have fun around here so I went snowboarding or kayaking every weekday for the last 2 years. Way too many old people get fat and sick with all sorts of bad health problems just because they sat down one day and never got up again for anything except to eat. That's not me. As far as BLIND skiing goes...... I'm not blind yet , just impaired. Jack Frost has an adaptive program for disabled skiers. They DO HAVE blind skiers riding down the hill with a ski buddy holding leashes behind the blind skier and directing the blind skier just like you would direct a bridal when riding a horse. I do think that is nuts. I'll give up snowboarding when I get to the point where I need leashes.

I'll take a picture of BB and post it here during the week. Is there anyone local besides me that lives near BB that can post pictures? Its 11 PM and 50 degrees now in Jim Thorpe. Its usually 10 degrees cooler up on the mountain top so this is no where near snow blowing temps now. BUT DON'T LET THAT GET YOU DOWN!!!!! LAST YEAR I visited Jack Frost.... saw nothing but green hills and then 4 days later was snowboarding on those same hills. So it doesn't take much to make it happen and fast. One good cold snap and JF & BB is on the ball and good with snowmaking.

I take the bus every weekday. But they never run the bus on the weekend. So I buy a midweek season pass and have the place to myself most of the time. Sometimes they have to put up corral fences at the lifts on Fridays but usually there is ZERO wait time in lines for the lifts. Midweek skiing has always been the big secret of all ski resorts.

Everything I see looks crushed and twisted like funhouse mirrors. I stick to the first 5 hills at Jack Frost and don't go past Lehigh. I can carve like the wind on open hills. Its sort of like driving your car on a nice road that has rocks. You don't stop the car to reach down and touch the rocks....you just drive the car. Since I go every weekday I usually don't have anyone sharing any slope with me. I don't do jumps or rail grinding. I just ride very fast and never fall. I was a snowboard instructor for 5 years..... 12 years ago.... so that sort of makes me "old school". AND back to snowmaking..... I met an engineer from NJ who makes snow in his backyard with home brewed snowguns. Something to tinker around with here... seems all it takes is a pressure washer and an air compressor... and 27 degree air. We have all that here.

My vision is impaired and I have not driven a car in 8 years. I use magnifiers to read and use a 50 point font for email and web browsing. Try it some time. Its a bit slow going. I called Nestors on the phone and asked them if they had goggles with the anti fogging fan built in and they said yes so I took a Greyhound bus to Whitehall to make this goggle purchase. When I got to the store they showed me these goggles and said they had only this one. They had only that one because nobody would ever buy scratched goggles.... except me... because I already have screwed up vision and wouldn't be bothered so much by the scratched lens. BUT because they were so expensive they told me they would get the lens replaced for free. Ripping me off by not making good on this lens promise was about the same as stealing from any blind man.

I've had bad dealings with Nestors. I bought SMITH TURBO goggles there....last one in the showcase...and the lens had a one inch scratch in it when I bought it.... exxpensive ...something like $150. I could not find these goggles in any store in the valley. Its the kind with a blower fan defogger built into the goggles. Nestors told me they would replace the lens for free...place the order and call me back when they got the lens. They never called. I've been in the store 4 times in 18 months and they told me the order was placed but not delivered. I would never recommend Nestors to anyone after that. They sell snowboards and skis and kayaks at prices double the ARMY NAVY STORE in Whitehall.... right up the street. I bought 2 kayaks at the Army Navy store for the price Nestors wanted for ONE kayak. Perhaps they only sell the top of the line products and command those prices. I just don't see it that way. I bought snowboard bindings and ski boots at the Army Navy store for hundreds less than Nestors charged for the same stuff so unless Nestors gets me my goggles lens replaced I'll keep telling people WHY I don't throw my money away at Nestors anymore. I normally try to support the mom/pop businesses and stay away from places like DICKS and CABELLAS but NESTORS has lost my business and anyone elses who hears my experience with doing business with them.

Thanks for the snow making pictures. November snow making doesn't seem so far away now that you show those pictures. I've been kayaking 5 miles every day since April and they told me today at the county park that I have to be off the lake December 1st. Looks like I'll get off the lake on a Friday and go snowboarding on a Monday. I'm stoked. I bought a new snowboard Saturday and new bindings this summer. An old skier once said " if you rest you rust". I didn't rust this year.

Of course we all want to ride in November. I went snowboarding 3 hours every weekday they were open last winter and a few weekends too. Like I said before... I live here. All I said was they sold too many lift tickets for an opening of just ONE hill. They had enough people there to fill 3 small hills. I just hope they learned from last year and make more of an effort to open more than ONE HILL on early opening weekends. I was told by JFBB management about this FORUM so you should know they do read some of this dribble. I would suggest that you keep that in mind..... say what you want of the ski resorts... and spend less time insulting each other this year. They aren't going to bother reading here much if it always sounds like South Park.

BB weekend early open last year was a zoo. They opened one small hill and loaded it with rails. And then sold too many lift tickets for a one hill opening so the lift line was like snowtubing during peak season. The hill was covered with so many gapers it was like you were shopping potted plants in a lawn and garden store. I live near BB and we have had snowcapped pumpkins on Halloween so its not so crazy to think we may get ski conditions early but getting riders to PAY for lift tickets in November is like getting riders to pay for lift tickets in March. It does not matter if its cold enough to make snow early. They are not going to STAFF the ski resorts until they can get customers and that does not happen until very late November and early December. They can gear up , make snow, deep snow, and still will not open to the public until they are ready to pay staff and the electric bill to run the lifts, clean the lodge and make food.

I agree.... 11:30 to 3:00 was absolutely perfect.....no crowds, blue sky and fast snow. A bit windy but it died down. Even with the warm days and rain we seem to be rescued by but a nighttime freeze ..again...and again..and again. The temp was still below 30 degrees at noon so the surface held up great even in the afternoon sun.

This is not a powder over cord over ice debate. THIS is about how we do NOT get more than 2 or 4 inches of natural snow in our average snowfalls here ... JF...in Blakeslee PA......and still get to have more days open than BM and CB. I spend 14 weeks at JF last year and boarded in total whiteout blizzards no more that 3 times all winter. Sure we get a zinger snowfall once in a while but thats not how you run a ski resort here. We have to make and groom our own snow to depend on a safe surface at dawn the next day. So we have to depend on the art of grooming and that means groomed powder and cord ice..... or just plain ungroomed blue ice when its too warm to groom at night. So when I post a terrain report and say we had groomed powder you all should just take that as conditions were good for skiers. I'm a carver. I don't do jumps. I don't do bonk yards. So I'm not ever concerned about hard crash landings. I just like speed. Not flight. So when we get a real hard ice condition I still go ride while everyone else gets scared off the hill and I have the place to myself just lapping the hill and the lift for 3 hours. If more people learned to control on cord ice then I wouldn't be riding alone all day. This thread posting started with me saying winter is still here at JF ....seeing the ponds still have ice on the,........and asking does anyone go daily. My face is shown briefly in the third video I posted when I took off the helmet and adjusted it so anyone can see who I am 60 seconds into that video. I've been mistaken for Billy Gibbons of ZZ TOP. Just wondering if we all post here but walk past each other at JF.

LOL ......huh....yea... keep laughing at groomed powder..............laugh all you want...... The groomers have tillers that grind up the hardpack and leave a soft granular surface like snowcone ice or rock sugar....sometimes 2 inches deep...which skis better than most natual snowfall we get here. For daily maintenance the choice is to either make that powder or just scrape and form corduroy ice. New skiers always prefer powder over cord. Cord ice keeps you in control...instead of just sliding off flat blue ice pack. Cord ice is my choice for speed while groomed powder is what everyone else wants to play on. Most people think ice is too hard to ride with a snowboard. They just never learned how to carve. Once you learn how to get up on edge you never want to see powder again. Anywhere. Ever. The speed is that addicting. We do get a few warm days that makes slush and then night temp drops below freezing and makes solid blue ice. If the groomers can't work with the soft slush they just leave it...and we have blue ice to ride at dawn. This is the absolute best ride ..for me.. and it always chases away everyone else so I get to do laps and never wait for a lift chair. Today sucked after 1PM. The newly fallen snow was so sticky and slow I turned my board into the shop to get new wax and I put on skis........ only to find out skis stuck like tar just as bad as the board.

The ponds and lakes are STILL covered with ice here and the hardpack is still hard enough to groom with the night temps staying below freezing. Today we had groomed powder. It held up real nice all day. Does anyone here in the forum go to JF midweek besides me?

I'm calm. Sorry to sound ragged. I don't do digital cameras or cell phone cameras and this helmet cam came with instructions that said don't use it below 32 degrees so I couldn't even play with it all winter. I had to wait for the warm spell to make movies. So my first attempt to use it proved how little I know about making movies or editing video. It was hard enough to just figure out how to eliminate the 8 minute lift rides and just play the snowboarding. ahhhhhhhhh yes..... I've been a member for a month and I only saw one video..... I've also seen some pictures of snow that seriously do nothing to show just how much fun it was to be on the snow that day when he took those pictures. I figured I'd step up to the plate and show people that YES there is still very nice ridable snow at Jack Frost... all week... not just on the weekends...... and then I get Siskel and Ebert knocking my video. I'm calm. You calm? I'll get my 3 hours on the snow today. I hope you can too.

Grooming was good everywhere today and the temperature was below freezing most of the day so the cord kept its form and the powder did not turn to slush. Real nice riding. Again. The temperature is on the 20s tonight so we will have the same great ride tomorrow. Today was blue sky most of the day. Note that the lakes and ponds are still ice covered here. I think that means its cold enough to groom the hardpack.

Hey !!!!!!!!!!!!! what do you expect from a HELMET CAM???? I'm not Steven Speilberg making Star Wars here guys. ITS JUST A HELMET CAM I don't see any of you posting video of anything at all. OR even CBKpride videos are nothing more than short blips of grinding rails. Sure you can have fun in the park but there is more to snowboarding than the bonk yard. Check out www.extremecarving.com some day. I'm not going to chop down any of these videos. They are strapin to strapout and you can take them or leave them. Its documentary footage showing how fast you can ride on a sunny day at JF in the spring...with nobody else on the hill to get in your way.

I'm not surpised at all. We get bus loads of first time skiers and boarders and most of them are neverevers and they don't take a lesson or wear any protection. I watched about a dozen kids drop into the headwall on Jane's Lane and shoot straight down the wall and crash with total yardsales on Friday. Not a one of those kids should have ever been anywhere near a headwall. I was riding the lift over Lehigh and wished I wore the helmetcam that day. So it really doesn't matter how good you are if come flying over that headwall and have to plow through that maze of bodies and poles and skies..... and the other 6 kids pretending they were potted plants just sitting in the middle of the hill with their snowboards upright in the snow....just waiting for someone to fall on them. Even the best skier in the world can get cut in half by a board or stabbed by a pole in that mess.

I was able to make WMV files and reduce the 4 gigs to 3 movies. They are on a slow server so it takes a while to fetch the movies. These movies are complete runs from strapin to strapout. About a minute or two each of nothing but old school snowboard carving. No slowspeed bonkyard grinding here. We had an empty mountain that day so there are very few people...usually nobody at all.. on the hill in these movies. I prefer an empty hill when carving like the wind anyway. I overtake skiers everyday and got to the point now where I will actually wait for a clear hill before dropping in the headwall on Lehigh. Even then, I still caught up with skiers that I couldn't even see when I entered the hill. Midweek JF spring riding is nothing like Boulder. I saw CBKpride's NEWVID OH YEEEAAAH post and his movies. I don't know what quality everyone expects from video postings and since this is my first video posting I tried for a riders point of view, not a gapers point of view. Since I ride alone 3 hours every day I never considered snowboarding to be a buddy sport like some of you guys asking about who's going and even considering not going because there will not be crowds. I was stunned by the numbers of riders in CBKpride's video. They looked like a swarm of flies. MIQUEL (Mike) is in two.wmv on page2.html http://printthecard.com/snowboarding/page1.html or http://printthecard.com/snowboarding/one.wmv http://printthecard.com/snowboarding/page2.html or http://printthecard.com/snowboarding/two.wmv http://printthecard.com/snowboarding/page3.html or http://printthecard.com/snowboarding/three.wmv

I wore a digital movie camera on top of my helmet today and filmed 4 gigabytes of movies....2 hours. It was cold enough last night to get back the surface they can groom. I can't post the unedited AVI files on the web. Can anyone recommend any video editing software I can download that can chop out the lift rides so I can just share the snowboarding runs?

THe sun came out at noon today. The rain stopped before 11AM so the surface was a soft slush in most places with some ice patches. You could kick up rooster tails with the slush if you tried hard enough. I had phenomenal speeds with total control all day. Perhaps ten people showed up today. THIS IS BAD They WILL close JF and BB if they don't get any ticket sales all week so GET OUT THERE soon...while you still can.

WMMR days are always a real crapshoot. The first one in the season got rain this year and last year so everyone gets drunk, wet, then quits skiing and goes into the bar. The bar smells like wet dogs. BUT this is not a bad thing...because then THEY ARE NOT in the lift line with me. More smooth sailing in the lift lines. (remember sking..... isn't that why we are here?) I don't know about you but I drink when I get done , not when I ride on the slippery white slopes. Then you have the February cardboard races that atract one hell of a party and why not....it is a lot of fun to just watch this go down. February usally has real cold... teens... single digits... so even with the WMMR ARMY camping on the tubing hill, I wasn't really bothered by crowds in the lift lines... I still got my 30 runs in on Friday. There was no more of a wait with WMMR people than we had Presidents day weekend.

I just have to say WOW what a difference a day makes around here. Yesterday I skied 4 hours with my daughter in slow speed sunny slush...... great for her ...first time on skis in 8 years. I actually got sunburned. First time all winter. Today we had wet ice everywhere. ICE is NICE. Hose is down with some water and even better. Incredible speeds just not found in powder. Give me Poconoe hardpack any day. I snowboard on ice and ski when it gets soft so doing laps again and again and again for 3 hours with no lift lines is definitely my cup of tea. Oh... and about the rain.... forget about soggy clothes. Wear rain slickers and never get wet. Ever. I go every day so I never let a little water stop me from sliding down the hills. Just think about it like a water park. You wouldn't give up the ride just because you might get wet. And the ride is still there.... even when it rains.