indiggio

Ran into @enjoralas in the lodge who informed me that I missed creme brulee day, dammit! As Philly team fans say, "There's always next year..." Had to be carried out both Saturday and Sunday, as the snow softened and the bumps turned HERO. Can barely walk this morning as the legs are just complete @toast21602 Will be interested to see what's in store for the coming weekend, what they can cobble together. Definitely Razor's and Nightweaver have plenty of snow, but the runouts will probably need some Old MacDonald treatment. After the impressive magic they pulled on upper Paradise to get it covered, I'm pretty sure they won't have any problems opening. Where they got the snow for Paradise is a complete mystery.

Turtleman rippin’ Razors! IMG_9572.mov

Right church, wrong pew...

Hear the quad has been down with people stuck this morning for an hour or so. Can't wait for @GrilledSteezeSandwich report...

Break out your best Speedo for tomorrow!!

Well, I think they're closing at 4pm Sunday 3/30, probably to preserve what little snow there'll be left. The warm rain is going to put an even bigger hit on it. So long as they open the first weekend in April (why they're not opening Friday is beyond me), I don't think they give a rat's ass about the rain after that.

This weekend temps are gonna put a serious hit to the snowpack. Might be left with Vista open, but their marketing is just shooting for "only PA slope open in April", I think.

And pond skim is Saturday 3/29.

Oh yeah, the fries were delicious, amongst all the other delicacies @enjoralas cooked up.

+++ VIBES +++ to Rose! Hope she's feeling better.

Stuck around for the season pass party that was very well attended and Blue did a very good job with it. When you registered, you got the typical drink ticket and raffle tickets as well as a new Blue mountain pom-pom ski cap! The party took over the entire upper level of the summit lodge, with the food in the big reception area and a band playing in the lounge. I failed to capture the name of the band, but had an attractive lead singer and played the typical party tune and did a good job at that. The food was all self-serve and consisted of a small salad bar, a pasta bar with pasta and tomato sauce and mac and cheese, a taco bar with all the fixings, a mashed potatoes bar with all sorts of toppings, a prime rib bar with horseradish sauce and a dessert bar with cookie and brownie trays. We didn't stick around for the raffle, as the snow started turning hero just before the party and returned to Razor bumps that we skied in earlier and had now softened. On a tip, we moved over to Coming Soon bumps that also turned hero and became the run of the day. The bumps were nice, big and round since they hadn't been skied much lately, which made for a heap of fun as the sun and blue skies unexpectedly appeared around 2pm, making for a fun spring skiing afternoon.

We hit, well tried, them one night. They were tight, gigantic seeds and unfortunately, because of the brutal cold, icy.

I pity the poor kids going into the valley lodge's men's room during the height of a busy Saturday afternoon to clean up. On the other hand, I admire their wherewithal to do so for a poultry, near minimum wage paycheck and, of course, a season pass.

I heard that one day they had a single person out using one of those extenda-grabber thingies, picking up a can at a time and putting it in the bin. How'd ya like to do that for 8 hours?!?

Zero fucks given anymore, obviously.

The absolute height of laziness and lack of respect for nature is Truly pitiful...

Chatting about it on the lifts, the majority of the crap being thrown is *probably* from the after dark visitors, as we've not actually seen anyone randomly throwing garbage off the lifts except for the few times people trying to hit the under lift bins. Unfortunately, enforcing would be limited to SP actually seeing someone toss something while riding up behind them. Maybe put fake security cameras on the lift towers with blinking LEDs? 😉 Blue definitely takes the "garbage dump" award of the surrounding mountains. None of the others even come close.

What's absolutely hilarious is that it took Blue until this past weekend to put garbage cans in the lift lines! Really?? Putting trash cans in the lift lines isn't going to help because everyone's drinking ON THE LIFT RIDE UP! Try putting the can's at the top of the lift!! Perhaps a little guilt and trash cans there would help a little, doubtful. Start putting up signs: If you're caught littering, your ticket will be pulled!

Reading a Google review: "Best moguls, trees, and steeps in the Midwest. Spa is the place to be after a day of hard charging. Truly one of the American greats in the ski bum world. No grooming or beginner terrain, so make sure you're ready for it." Sounds like a cool place!

I don't know exactly why, but I do know and have seen the bear enclosure beneath the lift. I believe there's a natural cave there that Boo the Grizzly bear prefers and the Canadians set up the area to give it free reign of the place. I thought I read that there were people on the box that fell off, aboot a meter off the ground; nobody was injured. But people from the other boxes had to be dropped via line or saved by helicopter, that I thought was odd. Thinking about it now, maybe it was the people in the boxes over the bear enclosure that they pulled using the helicopter?

Hung with it and the clouds finally broke and the sun started blazing. Snow turned hero 11:15ish and the sugar began to congeal, everything turned Spring fun snow after lunch, Barney's, CS bumps and ditch were a hoot. Falls was a minefield of bumps eating up the unwary. Great Spring skiing afternoon!

Here we go! We ran into the same issue in Philly going out to Denver last week. United baggage UI software royally sucks donkey dick! There's no indication on the page that says you have to do anything special for ski and boot bags, so I just went on my merry way checking 1 bag, expecting it to ask me later whether they're skis/boot, but no. It never asked and never printed out a second luggage ticket. When I went to drop the bag off, they guy said there's an exception button at the bottom of the page. Can you make it any LESS obvious? He printed out a second bag ticket for boot bag. On the way back we thought we had it figured out. 1 bag checked, pushed the exception button, no I don't want free check my carry on. Kiosk starts flashing for attendant, probably for weight, as there's a scale right there). Attendant comes over, scans badge, pushes some button and walks away. One ticket gets printed! WTF??? Fight through crowd to get attendant back to get second ticket printed. How is this saving any time? Absolutely stupid! Get into Philly awaiting ski bag. Carousel comes to stop, ask attendant, no more bags. Slim & my ski bags nowhere to be found. Get in line with like 20 others from flight who also didn't get their skis. Go into office and attendant has a list of all our bags and checks off my name on the list, I see Slim's name there too. WTF? Skis end up being delivered next day at 11pm. Off to X to complain. Got $40 luggage fee refunded.

They have Tele days up at Blue every so often to introduce people around here into it. Did it once with Tele-Jake, a Blue instructor.

2/27/25 Batted about the idea of hitting the newest CO ski slope, Echo Mountain, but at 600ft vert, that idea was replaced with going back to Loveland. It’s fast becoming the slope of choice and worth the double-down. Up 2 then lapped a few off 6 as a warmup. Groomers were good but off them was wind-blown and baked, so we decided to go higher. Up the 9 there was a nice cornice in Patriot bowl that had good snow so we lapped that a few times. After lunch we headed back up the 9 and instead dropped into Castle Rock. The snow wasn’t as good as expected. Headed over to Chet’s to end the day. Avalanche bowl, Zoom, Cat’s Meow all held very nice snow and we called it a day. No complaints! Dinner was grilled chicken and stir fry veggies and cheesecake.

2/26/25 It was off to A-Basin today. Day started out crystal clear and colder than previous couple of days. Weather at the mountain was mid double digits, but it didn’t feel like East coast cold. Over the pass there were many fresh tracks off in the surrounding hills and also a lot of slides. The snow was squeaky cold chalk, firmed up with some wind-blown icing. Up the BME, we headed right back down for a warmup and check the snow; fast, firm packed power. Off the groom, the snow was baked Alaska with some lipstick on top. After a couple of laps on the Lenawee, we dropped into the bowl. With mostly South-facing aspects and recent warmer and clear days, the snow was quite grumpy. Made a few laps looking for something good but came up empty. Up and down to the Black Mountain lodge for some lunch where we ran into some others from NJ who spotted a Blue sticker on our helmets. They too are out touring the local mountains. After lunch we decided to check out The Beavers. Made some runs down the outer tree runs looking for somewhere good to lap, but even the trees didn’t help, so we headed over to East Wall. Traversed out to the boot pack to see what it was like out there. More if the same baked snow with some wind-blown in the troughs. Had to watch the light crust on top wanted to grab your ski to take down an unaware skier, which it did to Donny. Also traversed over to check out one of the slide remnants, ugly! Lapped the gully’s a couple of times and called it day. Not the greatest snow conditions, but it was still a fun day regardless. Dinner was salmon, salad, baked potato and cheesecake.