Ride Delaware ?

Went to Magic last year and only got one run in before my friend hurt his knee and had to go to the hospital... However, I really loved the vibe and the mountain and can't wait to get back... Glad to hear that you scored some good accommodations at a good price near Magic

Where did you head Moe? Looks like SoVT is going to be in the sweet spot tomorrow... Up to 10 inches expected at Magic... I heard it is skiing great...

I've never been to Platt, but I've heard great things about the terrain for the vertical drop and also that it never seems to be crowded... I would try it out... Everywhere will have people, so why not give it a shot... I expect a report when you return...

Well, it is hazing... I'm calling it awesome based on the fact that it seems like it is all staged... If his friends really hate him that much that they thought this stuff out and made him do it, then yes, thats pretty terrible... Although, I can't believe he fit in that TV stand drawer...

That is a fucking awesome video... Priceless find Steeze... He is that guy...

Write it up detailed for us... Thats another place I'd really like to hit on a powder day... Please include some tree reports for us...

I guess its adding to the snowpack... It is a great base for off piste stuff, but we need some real powder on top of it... This mix stuff just isn't going to be necessary or cut it from this point forward...

We nicknamed Jeff Showtime... He is the star of the show... He will be there and post his fastest time yet... Nothing beer can't fix...

Just not as many CB posters as there used to be... Dime is almost nonexistent on the CB threads nowadays... Your guess is as good as mine, but I'll take TP4 one step further and say someone got injured badly... Hope they are ok in the long run...

Looks awesome. I have wanted to try the place out, and with the snow years they have had these past two seasons, it sounds like I need to get up there soon. However, it is 7 hours from here, and if I am going to drive that, I could be in WV or SoVT... Maybe one day... Definitely glad to hear you had a good time. If I ever have the chance to get there, I will definitely do it...

The last day of the trip finally arrived. I would like to say it is bittersweet, but that would just be a lie. I would stay for as long as I could. But alas, the final day had come. Unfortunately, since the drive back home is so long, I was restricted to only a half day. Since I had spent the past 3 days at Killington, and had been lucky enough to find untracked powder on Thursday, I figured the closed midweek less busy trails of Pico would be excellent Friday morning. I arrived at 9:15 to maybe 50 cars in the parking lot and quickly headed over to the Golden Express Quad. Most of the terrain off of that lift is for beginners and intermediates, but it was still perfectly groomed so I decided to do a couple runs off of it to start my day. My first run of the day was straight down Expressway underneath the lift. It has some great rollers at the top and was pretty fast. The corduroy all over the mountain was soft packed natural powder with no ice or hardpack to be found. Here is a shot of Expressway looking down the Golden Express liftline: Next run was a run down Panhandler. Same conditions as before: After a couple more runs, I decided to head over to the Summit Quad. When I was here several years ago with OutCold and Afroman7, the terrain off of the Summit was some of the best. The top section of the glades is a little tighter and off map, and the bottom two sections are either classic New England glades or open beginner glades. Here is Fools Gold heading over to the Summit Express: While there were skiers and boarders coming down off of the summit, I was dismayed to find a closed lift sign at the front of the lift. When I was here a couple years ago, there had been a slight warmup, and it froze over, so they didn't groom the top, and never opened the lift. I was afraid the same thing was going to happen. After talking to the liftie, we found out that there was some maintenance issue, and the lift would reopen in about an hour. Looks like I was going to have to stick to the bottom a little while longer. I took several more runs off of the Golden Express and then decided to head back over. They were just opening the lift when I arrived, and I was the first one back up. I scoped out entrances to the off map woods on the lift, and headed down Upper Pike (liftline) down to the woods. Upper Pike was ungroomed and bumpy with some hardpack and ice in between the bumps. I found my entrance and immediately slid inside. I immediately noticed the quality of snow inside. Nobody had been in since the last snow, and there were easily 3-4" of untracked on top of everything. The glades were a little tight, but the coverage was excellent. Here are two shots from when they opened up just a little bit: Coming out of the woods there is an incredible drop off that was coated in fresh. You have two choices here, go down the intermediate Birch Glades, or go down the expert Birch Woods. The Birch Glades are hardly glades. It is a wide open ungroomed trail that has little patches of trees in the middle. You can go through the trees or around them. I decided to try out the Birch Glades first. The snow through this section was amazing. Mostly unbumped slightly skied powder. I took the path less traveled through the little tree patches, and had a blast, although it can hardly be called challenging. Here is a picture of it from the top of the drop off: I got back to the top of the mountain, and immediately wanted to try out the off map glades, but since I started at the top so late, and had to leave soon, I decided to try out a different trail. I decided to go down Upper KA and took this shot at the top of it: Upper KA was incredibly challenging. It was all natural with huge bumps and a bunch of decent sized brush popping through the bottom of the bumps. The brush gave me some new base scratches, but nothing too substantial. Another foot of snow (which they may receive this week), will cover all this brush and easily put this back into play for the majority of skiers and boarders. Mid KA, which is right below it, is a groomer and was much easier to traverse. Here is a shot of it near the bottom: I was nearing the end of my day, but I had time for one more run off the top, and one more off the mid station lift. I went back in to the off map glades and took a different line closer to the liftline. It was untracked and yielded the same awesome snow as the first run. Here is a shot from that line: After I got out of the woods there, I decided to try the Birch Woods. It was much more open and had pretty good snow. I ended up hitting a small branch in a bump valley and it gave me a 12' base dent, but it didnt cut deep, so I think I made out pretty good there too. They were fun glades, but were way more tracked out than the previous glades. Here is a shot to show the difference: I went to the Golden Express Quad and decided to bomb it down Expressway as my last run. I got to the bottom at about 12:35 after about 3 hours and change on the mountain. We loaded up the Explorer and hit the road by one. Overall it was a great trip. I decided to finally use my rock board for rocks, and while I picked up some good dings and scratches, I think it was well worth it, and nothing a good sharpening and wax won't be able to fix. They are having a great year up there and are expected to get a decent snow this week. That should put everything back into play and make those woods even more spectacular. I may give Killington a tough rep, but it definitely came through this time. I don't know if I'll be back again this year, but if the conditions stay like this, I wouldn't mind it.

Yeah, and it looks like more on Wednesday in PA... Ill be back in DE, so I guess that's just as good for you guys...

Had another awesome day at the mountain today. I will try to keep this one shorter than yesterday. It will help that I took less pictures. However, I will be adding a picture from yesterday that I forgot to post. Here we go. I had another rough start to the day. I was ready to hit the slopes by 9:15, but my dad wanted to go get a couple pictures with me, so there was a little holdup. We arrived at the shuttle stop at 9:30, but the driver didn't get there until 9:50. Once we got to the Snowshed lodge where the bus drops us off, my dad wanted to get some batteries for his camera, so that took some time. Finally around 10 AM I was on the Snowshed Quad. I looped underneath it to the Northbrook trail that heads over to the Skyeship Gondola Stage 2. We took that to the top of Skye Peak and went down Great Eastern to the bottom of the Skyeship Gondola Stage 1. The snow was a little faster today since it warmed up a little bit yesterday and firmed up overnight. It was groomed and in excellent shape. After a couple runs off the top of Skye Peak, which also included a run down Cruise Control, we decided to head over to the Snowdon Quad so my father could get some shots of the woods. I messed up on my directions and accidentally took us the wrong direction down to Bear Mountain. We took the top of Skyeburst where we went our separate ways down to the Skye Peak Express Quad. I took an ungroomed run with snowmaking which was a little bumpy with some chalky powder on the sides under firing snowguns. My father proceeded down Bear Claw which had been used several days ago for the jumps for the Dew Tour. They had been working the past couple days on removing the jumps and grooming them out. After four days of grooming, they were ready to go. Here was a picture from yesterday with a groomer on top of the jumps: After going back to the top, we took Skye Lark over to the K1 Gondola and rode down Chute to the Snowdon Quad. We went back to the top and proceeded down Frolic where I immediately went into the woods while my dad went down to get his camera ready. I took these two shots of the Frolic/Patsy Glades again. They were in excellent shape again. Very few people had found the top section: At the bottom of the woods where it segues into Caper, my dad got some footage and then headed back to the condo for lunch. I decided to skip lunch again, and headed back to the Snowdon Quad to hit up the Low Rider and Frolic/Patsy Glades again. After hitting those trails again, I jumped over to the North Ridge Triple to hit up the unmarked Powerline Glades. I got some great runs in again. They are tight, but definitely a bunch of fun. I was going to go to the top and try them out again, but the NRT was having some technical issues and was shut down. Therefore, I decided to take Reason to East Fall to the K1 Gondola. Reason is usually the early season terrain park, but with Bear Mountain in full swing, the park had been removed and I found some excellent corduroy at 12:30. Here is a picture looking down from the top with the lone tree sitting out in the middle of the trail: When I got to the top of the K1, I decided to head back over to Bear to try out some of the other trails they had groomed out. I took Blue Heaven to Pipe Dream which I don't know if I had ever been on before. It parallels the South Ridge Triple, which is an interesting lift in that there are two set of lift towers about 50 feet apart. The ascending side is on Pipe Dream while the descending side is on the other side of two sets of trees and a trail. Very different. It is an older lift and is only used on busy weekends. That being said, Pipe Dream was pretty ugly. It was groomed, but it was wind scoured and tough to hold an edge. Here is a picture of Pipe Dream looking over toward Bear Peak where snowmaking was in progress: I then proceeded to go down Bear Cub, which loops all the way around Beark Peak. I don't know if I had ever ridden it before, but it was a long beginner trail that had good pitch at times, and also very slow at times. On the way down it, I saw the Devil's Fiddle Chairlift. It is no longer in commission. It had no chairs and most of the sheaves seemed to be deteriorating. I decided to take a picture: I then hopped on the Bear Mountain Quad which parallels Outer Limits. Since I did Outer limits the day before, I decided to try Devil's Fiddle. Although it is classified as a Double Black, I had seen the runout by the old lift, and it was pretty tame. I started down it and realized I had made a very bad decision. It was a natural snow trail that was ungroomed and had some massive hardpack and ice moguls. Some of the first ice I had seen the whole trip. I was able to navigate the edges of the trail in a decent time and avoid falling. I then headed to the top of the Skye Peak Express and headed down Great Easter to take a little break. I then went down Cruise Control which was in great condition even at the end of the day. After that, I was going to hit Great Eastern again, but decided to call it a day. I took Skye Lark to High Road and eventually the Whiffletree trail off of the Snowshed Slope. After getting some firewood, I decided to go to the hot tub. It was 104 degrees, and after about 10 minutes I decided my muscles were pretty relaxed. I came back to the condo and showered. We decided to go out to dinner tonight, and headed to the "world famous Wobbly Barn." The steak was excellent, and I had a Wobbly Barn Red Ale which was also pretty good. Since my parents brought me on the trip, I decided to foot the bill. It was a hefty bill, but the food was good, it is a resort, and it was the least I could do. We leave tomorrow, but I plan on getting in a half day before we head out around 12-1. I am going to check the conditions report in the morning, but if it is well groomed and running to the summit, I plan on hitting Pico. If I don't get the trip report up tomorrow night, expect it Saturday.

Sounds exactly like that dump that hit New England in February last year. The one that dumped like 100" on the skillz in 2-3 days. We were at Magic and it was so wet that I was soaked through my gear, which is all 10,000/10,000 within an hour. Real tough boarding. Twisted AFroman7's knee... Great for base building... Riding, not so much... 30" of wet snow just leads to a bunch of sinking... And hiking...

They were sweet. I was hoping for this storm to hit, and when it didn't, I was a bit skeptical. However, I was richly rewarded and will be back tomorrow. I am debating on Pico for trees on my halfday Friday. I'll see how it plays out...

Jim Cantore on TWC was shown in DC a couple hours ago picking up snow and literally squeezing water out of it. I've compacted some snow into some rock solid snowballs before, but I dont know if I have ever wrung water out of snow...

Today was a different kind of day for me. I got up a little late and didn't get on the slopes until 9:45. I started at Ramshead today and took several runs down Header, Swirl, Easy Street, and Caper. Swirl was ungroomed and was in excellent shape with little bumps of super soft and powdery snow. Here is a shot of Caper headed toward Great Northern: I took Great Northern down to the Snowdown Quad and planned to hit up Chute, Mouse Run, Bunny Buster, Mouse Trap, and Frolic. The plan fell apart after Chute. Chute was groomed and had some hard pack, but was a pleasant ride. Here is a picture from the top: On the way down Chute, I noticed Great Bear, a natural trail loaded with moguls. I didn't ride down it, but since I'm such a good guy, I took a picture of it for all you mogul freaks: I decided to take my next run down Frolic. I had been scoping out the entrances to several tree runs on Tuesday, and I finally found one that had a couple tracks that looked legit. I entered the woods on an unmarked section that was tight, but I was still able to move. Come to find out, it wasn't a well tracked tree run, as Patsy's the actual tree run that I eventually ended up on, started later down the mountain. That left plenty of untracked soft powder that allowed me to make my own path through the woods. There were several times that I was boot deep. I hit some small trees popping out from the snow, and slid a couple of rocks, but my board suffered no damage minus some dulling of my edges, and it was well worth it. Here are some pictures from the Frolic/Patsy Glades: After that run, I went back up the Snowdon Quad. While on the quad, I saw several people going through the woods right beside the Quad. I checked the map at the top and then proceeded to the Low Rider Glades. They were a little more tracked out than the Frolic/Patsy Glades, but I went to the skiers far left and found plenty of untracked powder with some great lines. Here are the Low Rider Glades: After getting on the Snowdon Quad again, I saw my father get on the lift several chairs behind me. I waited for him at the top where he told me he was going to take Frolic to the bottom for lunch. Since I was already on the upper portions of Frolic, I decided to go back into the trees. Once again, I was richly rewarded with untouched powder. Whence I was done in those trees, I decided to head over to the North Ridge Triple to hit some runs that are usually skipped over by the larger lifts. At the top of the lift, since I had no plan, I looked left and right to figure out where I shalt go. I wasn't really feeling Rime, so I decided to try out Ridge Run. However, in between Rime and Ridge Run is Powerline. It was a narrow natural snow trail, and it caught my eye. I decided to check it out, but before I did, I shot a picture for your viewing pleasure: If you look in the back of the picture, middle left, you will see blue netting around a transformer. Just past the transformer I noticed a tiny trail heading into a very tight wooded area. Here is a picture from the outside of the glades looking in. I had to completely tuck to miss the branches above me: Killington has an incredible elevation difference from base to peak, and it showed in snow totals. There was plenty of snow in Low Rider and Frolic/Patsy Glades, and those are lower in elevation, so the snow was much more bountiful here and it showed. Here is a picture of the entrance from the inside of the trees. It is a beautiful wall of white. You can see my board track in the foreground: These glades are completely off the map and were the least tracked trees I hit. They really opened up about 50 feet down and were quite good. I had some of the longest tree runs without stopping I have ever had. There were a bunch of banked turns, some natural bridges over water bars, and boot deep powder. Very surreal and peaceful in there. I can;t wait to go back tomorrow. Here is a picture of the actual trees: I came out of those woods onto Great Northern/Ridge Run. The first time I did these woods, I rode down Ridge Run to the North Ridge Triple. The second and third times, I cut back into the woods after about 50 yards, and that trail took me right to the base of the North Ridge Triple. To quote the liftie, "Where the Hell did You Come From." I took the NRT to the top and then took East Fall to the Cascade Runout down to the K1 Gondola. I had to meet my father at the Skyeship Stage 2 at 2:30. I took Blue Heaven to Bear Trax to Skyeburst to Wildfire. I found out halfway through that I wasn't going to get to the Skyeship Gondola on this run. Bear Mountain was completely under the guns again still rebuilding from the Dew Tour. Skyeburst and Wildfire were partially under the guns and was very bumpy. It was fun, but I didn't come back. I hopped on the Skye Peak Express and took the Great Eastern to Cruise Control down to the Skyeship Gondola. My father wasn't there, and after a wait of 15 minutes, I decided to head to the top. The only trail I didn't do off of the Skyeship Gondola yesterday was Needle's Eye, since it was closed for race training. Today it was open, and I decided to try it out. The top of the trail is for experts, and it was still in race condition. Mostly hardpack and some ice. It was definitely fast. The bottom half is for intermediates and was groomed. It had great snow with some fluffy powder clumps. I got to the bottom and my dad was waiting. We got to the top, took Great Eastern all the way to the bottom, and then came back up to the top to hit Cruise Control. After Cruise Control we decided to call it a day. I decided to try out the Whiffletree condo trail that splits at the very end to go toward Edgemont (which is right beside our condo complex) or Whiffletree. Unlike yesterday, the trail got flat at some points, but each flat part was followed by some decent pitch. I went straight across the front of the Edgemont condos and just had to walk about 20 feet to there the bus would have dropped me off. I will be taking that trail again tomorrow. Overall, it was a great day. I got in 22 runs, 24,900 vert, never stopped for lunch, and got in 6.25 hours straight. Most of the runs through the woods were only 600 or so vert, but it was worth it. I'll be back out there again. I will try to keep tomorrow's report shorter. I was just so happy with the trees that I went picture happy. Hope you all enjoy and get some of your own tree pictures from this PA storm.

He picked a good color to paint his toenails...

As I stated in the weather thread yesterday, I arrived at Killington at 5:30 PM to -6 degrees. By the time I got ready to go to sleep, it was around -11. However, this clipper system moving through brought some warm weather with it, and the temperature registered 7 degrees by 8:30 AM. We are staying in the Fall Line Condominiums which are about 1 mile from the Snowshed base lodge. The room is very dry and caused me some trouble going to sleep, so I got a little bit of a slow start to the day. As usual, I got out of the condo and onto the slopes by 9:30 AM to light snow and anywhere from 1-2" of fresh. It flurried most of the day but didn't add to the accumulations at all. When I was here at the end of December, there were about 80 trails open. Today there were 133 out of 141, and it has snowed a ton since I left. There is easily 3 feet of snow off piste with even more at the top of the mountain. The road itself is becoming smaller from lacking places to push the snow. I started out at the Skyeship Stage 1 this morning and went to the top of Skye Peak. Although it is a beginner trail and has some flat spots, I love to ride the 5 mile (with the reconfiguration) Great Eastern. There were some slight winds this morning with limited visibility. It was still pretty chilly and I didn't take many pictures, especially in the morning. My first run down the Great Eastern was great. There were no crowds and the snow held up great throughout the day. The top half of Great Eastern was well groomed while the bottom half was groomed early last night and had an untouched 2" on top of it. I tried switching my binding angle last night, and wasn't happy with it, so I switched them back on the ride to the top, and I wasn't happy with that either, so I drastically changed my width and stance and am very happy with it. I was only able to switch one binding out a trip, so I got several more runs in to test the feel. I went down Cruise Control, High Road, and Bittersweet at least 2 times apiece, and they were all well groomed with fresh snow that was beginning to clump up but was easy to cut through. Around noon, I decided to head down to Bear Mountain to check out what it looked like mid season. Last time I was here, it was just opened with only Skyeburst open under a bunch of snowguns. The Dew Tour was this weekend, and they had most of the parks closed on Bear to try and reshape them. Therefore, most of the trails were under snowguns and also closed. However, enough snow had fallen that Outer Limits was open in its entirety. Part of it was under guns, and part of it was moguled up, but the middle was left ungroomed and was a great ride... But definitely a workout. After that, I decided to head back to the condo for lunch down the Fall Line Condo trail. It was groomed once with a light coating of snow on top of it, and it was by far the worst trails I have ever ridden. It makes the Birches at Camelback look steep as hell. It was easily a mile and a half long and was flat and partially uphill at times. It was a hell of a workout. After a lunch of soup and a sandwich, I met up with my dad for several afternoon runs. We started off at Ramshead and went straight down Header. Even at 2 PM it was still in excellent shape with some untouched on the sides. Here are two shots I took from the lift looking down Header and Easy Street: After taking 3 runs or so off of the Ramshead Quad, we headed over to the K1 Gondola to hit Great Northern from top to bottom. The view was starting to get obscured by some fog, but the amount of snow up there was amazing. Here is a picture mid-mountain of Great Northern where it intersects with Rime: After Great Northern, we went back up the Gondola to hit Rime to Great Northern, both of which were in great shape and barely scraped off. We quickly got down to the Ramshead Quad to get one last run in before the end of the day. Heres a shot from the Ramshead Quad Base: We shot straight down Header and through the tunnel over to Snowshed so that I could grab some stuff from the shop, which didn't have what I needed. Overall I got in 18 runs in for close to 28,000 total vert. It doesnt look the storm that was supposed to hit us is going to, but it is supposed to warm up a little bit and will be quite enjoyable tomorrow. Great first day...

Got up to Killington with the rents several hours ago... It was -6 in the car around 5:30... It got down to -11 before the front started coming through with this little clipper... Its now about -5 with temps rising throughout the night and tomorrow... Clipper is expected to yield 2"-5" with the most over the upper elevations, so if there is any upslope we should have a decent day tomorrow... They still aren't too sure on this storm... Earlier today they weren't sure if it was going to come this far west, but throughout the day they seem to be increasing the odds of it hitting... I'm hoping preliminary snow totals will come out tomorrow... The new powder board will be ready for Pico on Thursday if we get a decent snowfall... Trip report will be posted in the New England Thread...

Another thread!!! Yes!!!

Your not a pro yet?

That's awesome!!! Can't wait to get up there later this year... It was awesome when I went in December, so with all this good weather, I'm betting its getting better every day... Glad to see more people on PASR are getting out there to ski and board this year... Its well worth it... Great quality and conditions... Little pricey, but you pay for what you get...

Yeah, I decided to take my old and trusty downhill board and my powder board... I'm good to go...

Still looking promising for this upcoming week, even in the Pokes... Right now they are expecting the cold air to push out the warm air to make for an all snow event, but temps are borderline for the Lehigh Valley... Lets hope it gets a little colder and you reap the benefits of the storm... Should I take my brand new powder board to K-Mart, or should I just take my custom and my rock board for the trees?