Ride Delaware ?

I know GSS and I both stayed here. I stayed here once when my Sugarbush condo was being renovated in 2011 and there was nowhere else open in the fall, and then a second time in 2014 when I hiked the Long Trail. I know when GSS did his annual trip to VT back in the day this was an annual stay for him. Apparently it sold the first time in 2018. Those owners were awesome. I came in off the trail soaked to the bone at 10 AM asking for a room when check in wasn’t until 2 PM and not only did he let me in early, he had me in the computer system from 3 years earlier and cut my rate 40% for being nice enough to think of him when coming back to the area. It needed an overhaul in 2014, so I’m sure this is well overdue, but it’s still sad to see something else affordable sold at a high price and overly gentrified. https://www.vtcng.com/stowe_reporter/news/local_news/town-country-stowe-resort-gets-refresh/article_b667f7da-588f-11ee-96a7-6300bacddf73.html

Wait, what? Papasteeze died? Also, what’s your totals looking like there? Just flurries here in Vermont.

I had some work to do in the morning, but the leg felt pretty good after yesterday, so I decided to stick to the plan and do a couple lower mountain runs followed by some mid mountain runs to ease back into it. I got out on snow about 1 today and went about an hour and a half to 2 hours on 7 runs. Mostly went off of Bravo and Gatehouse lifts. Only 7 degrees colder today than yesterday, but a huge difference in snow consistency. Yesterday was corn and today was more sugary. There were plenty of sugar piles and icy spots to be had, but for not having any natural snow in a week plus, I thought the conditions were standard for February in New England. There was a good crowd for a Monday. Trails of the day surprisingly were Downspout/Domino Chute and Valley House Traverse. The traverse, while relatively flat, was pitched well with snowmaking this year and wasn’t skied off due to the pitch. I stopped in the middle of it and still made it across with plenty of speed. Quite an enjoyable little section with a great view. All in all, a great day, and tomorrow I’ll try to make it to the top and test the leg out on some t2b runs. I guess I’ll stick with the PT and home PT. It’s made a huge difference so far. Pics below:

It’s been a tough year on the snow so far. Lots going on personally, and I’ve been dealing with a nagging injury that finally de-compensated and required PT. We had some water damage this summer to our place in VT that I had to come address, and the leg was feeling better, so I decided to get out on the snow a little while I was here. We split the drive over 2 days, so we didn’t get into Sugarbush yesterday until around 3 PM. It’s been 6 weeks since I rode last and I hadn’t tested the leg, so I figured getting out on snow for a few runs on the lower mountain would be a good test. I pulled a Joey move and threw the snow pants on over the jeans, went with the old PLB, and got on the Village Lift at about 3:15. It was the end of the day so most of the crowds had dispersed. 42 degrees at the base and an early corn harvest. I did one run each of the “distinct” runs off the Village lift for 3 runs total. The leg felt pretty good overall. It was good to be back out. The goal is to get out today after lunch for a couple hours and at least get to mid mountain for a few runs. Here’s some pics:

I’ve never been a huge fan of Hunter, but I did appreciate it for early season. They can really blast that mountain and they know how to dial those guns in. Every time early season was under the guns and they were dry and soft. Fantastic snow. I don’t know if they’ve evolved since being bought by Vail, but I always loved how easy it was to “accidentally poach” there. They never roped off closed trails. They had this small sign in the middle of the trail, which was always covered in snowmaking snow that said “closed”. By the time you were close enough to read it, you were already too committed to go back uphill.

Only gondola I’ve ever ridden in NH is Loon’s old 4 seater. I think it’s still in use. I think Bretton Woods has one now too. Not too many in NH…

Throwback thread. Whatever happened to Robert2?

Looks like you weren’t the only one…

My guess on that one would have been Highmount next door to Belleayre. I’d really like to make it to Bell this year. I haven’t been in over 10 years and haven’t experienced any of the improvements ORDA has done, including the ski bridge and gondola. I don’t know about build out, but I know they acquired the old Highmount ski area years ago, and this approved plan does show that it is part of the future plans. It would be rather large and add another base area to split up the crowds if they ever completed it. ORDA has had a quantifiable impact. Since 2015/2016 to 2022/2023 skier visits have gone from 72k to 237k.

You ski down Paradise off of Heaven’s Gate and before the trail turns to the right, there’s a sign and a path that leads to the left and puts you on the Long Trail. If you’re on a snowboard, you’re hiking 90% of it. If you are on skis and adept at duck walking or whatever skiers call it, uphill, then you can keep the skis on, as there are a decent amount of downhill sections. There isn’t any type of trail between North Lynx, and the elevation change is much more drastic. When the lift isn’t open, we don’t run a fixed patrol station at Castlerock, so patrollers rotate every hour or two, and therefore, I know the hike rather well.

Very elevation dependent. On the main road before the access road, there wasn’t any snow outside of what the plows had pushed a few days earlier. Up on the hill there was probably about 10”. The guy I rode the lift with told me it had snowed on and off for about 2” the day before. It was groomed in nicely. Nowhere near enough to open anything on natural. On the flip side, Sugarbush was reporting 20” and counting in 4 days from some upslope, and being the most aggressive resort at opening terrain I know, was opening natural trails left and right.

I think I’m going to be pretty happy with the Ikon Pass this year, and I hope to get a day or two at Blue this year, but I did just see the Northeast Epic Pass, and it seems like a really good deal…

I’m sure somebody could sleuth it if they want, but I can’t even take a guess at the last time I wrote a trip report. Maybe 2019? It’s a little weird not patrolling this year. For the first time in 15 years I bought a season pass for my home mountain, Sugarbush, which happens to be an Ikon Pass. I am up in northern NH (near the shuttered Balsams) visiting family for the holiday, so I decided to use one of my days on the Ikon Pass today for my first day of the season. Since it snowed most of the night last night here, but not SR, and was a weekday, I decided to go over for an afternoon session so the roads could clear up a bit. I left about 10:50 and rolled in about 12:30. Temp was 24. The roads were clear in the tire tracks and I never saw anyone on my side of the road. Sunday River is replacing the Barker Quad this season, which along with the Locke Triple, is their early season terrain. Subsequently, they decided on a very unique opening plan this year. Last year they replaced the Jordan Quad with New England’s only 8 person bubble chairlift, so they decided to open t2b in Jordan. It’s an interesting play because services are limited, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and the trails are long and wide, so they require a lot of snow. After they opened in Jordan, they went back to the Locke Triple, and opened Upper Sunday Punch to Cascades, making sure to avoid going under the Barker lift during construction. Since connecting those two trail pods would require going underneath the Barker Six Pack, they are operating as islands and you can’t ski/ride between the two. They have started expanding from Jordan towards South Ridge, and have some terrain open in Aurora, but they still have a long way to go. Since I was getting there late, and wanted to maximize my runs/enjoyment, I decided to go to Jordan and lap the high speed 8. The parking lot had about 50 cars in it when I got there, and there were still an equal amount of people arriving and leaving at 12:30. I had to do some work in the car, and by the time I booted up and got on the snow it was 1 PM. I went down to the base of the lift and was immediately impressed with size and scope of the terminal. It is massive and entirely enclosed. They even had a temporary customer service area for lift ticket issues inside to the left of the terminal. I scanned through the RFID without incident, and noticed the lift used a conveyor belt system. Since I first used one at Okemo 20 years ago, they have become more prevalent. We’ve got one now at Sugarbush, so I leaned up against the gate and loaded without incident. For a standard chairlift, the chair is luxurious to say the least. All the seats are designated with dividers, there’s molded padding for each seat, and the safety bar locks and automatically lifts at the top. The bubble is heated, but despite the colder temperatures, they had the bubbles locked open and not in use. The lift ride is probably about 5 minutes and was very smooth. They even have an automated PA system that updates you when the lift unexpectedly stops. There were four runs open off the top. Lollapalooza, Excalibur, and Rogue Angel are all separate t2b runs with no crossovers. The final trail was Kansas (connector to the rest of the mountain and very flat) to Northern Lights, to Firestar. Firestar hasn’t been groomed yet this year, and it was under snowmaking, so I opted to skip the bumps for the first day of the year. I hit Lollapalooza 5 times, Rogue Angel 3 times, and Excalibur 3 times. Lolla was by far the run of the day. It’s a couple miles long, has a nice steady pitch, and due to the pitch, wasn’t scraped off. It held a great edge all day. It is a wide trail, but since the snow guns are on skiers left, only about 60% of the trail width was covered and groomed. The snow was stellar. Rogue and Excal are steeper and straighter down to the lift. The top parts of both trails are the steep parts, so they were a little scraped off, but once it flattened out, snow conditions were very similar to Lollapalooza. Those trails were basically groomed wall to wall because they are generally less wide than Lolla. There were so few people that I never had to dodge anyone and only had to pass a single person on all 11 runs. Since the parking lot isn’t at the base of the Jordan Bowl, the last run of the day has to be Lollapalooza so that you can take the side trail over to the parking lot and avoid hiking uphill. The only food at the Jordan Hotel is the Northern Lights Cafe (assuming it hasn’t been renamed since I worked there), so to avoid getting swamped, there were a couple food trucks they brought in just outside the hotel to feed the early season crowds, and I was told from someone on the lift (9 of my lift rides were solo), that this weekend was a madhouse. Apparently there were a lot of upset patrons because the hotel isn’t setup as a lodge, so they weren’t allowing people to boot up inside. Doesn’t affect me since I always boot up in the parking lot, but I can see the downside to starting the season in Jordan. However, I can say that the early season offering there was absolutely stellar. I don’t think I could have had much better of a first day. When I got back to the parking lot at 3 PM, there were only 6 or 7 cars left. My legs were tired and I was getting cold. I warmed up in the car and headed back towards the in-laws. The roads were clear until the last 15 minutes. Overall, I logged 11 runs in 2 hours. That’s about 11 minutes a run round trip. Each run was about 1,250 feet of nice consistent vertical. The drive was easy and the snow was incredible. Well worth using one of my 5 Sunday River Ikon Pass days for the year. It was good to finally get out.

As a Christmas present a few years ago, I converted all our family home videos to digital, but I had to buy a “new” VHS player in order to do it. So while I had it out, I figured I might as well watch one of my favorites on VHS, and it helped refresh my memory.

All time favorite Pizza Hut ad. Only seen on the OG TMNT VHS before the movie started. https://youtu.be/VIPUCPMd_nA?si=KuiZ2q5bQjZQTNc9