indiggio

Blue's text and Facebook pages have Sidewinder opening this Saturday.

F'ing weather blows big time!

Indeed! Especially nowadays with Facebook and Twitter making it far easier to rapidly dispense opinions on quality, service, etc.

Afternoon/Evening conditions used to be pretty good when they did twice daily grooming. It was actually worth it to go up in the evening, as you'd get almost opening hour conditions. Now by mid-day, everything's so plowed off, there's no joy in going up for the evenings anymore, especially if you don't have a season pass.

Sounds interesting. Will give it a go next time up. Thanks! Funny Saturday morning on Mountain Road seeing Bug and BMW stuck trying to climb the hill. Thought the Germans built cars for snow? Suby had no problems getting up or down.

That's an interesting way to squeeze some more revenue out of skiers.

Crowds were really light early, but started to build later as the snow tapered off. Got the fill of fresh powdah early, left the chowdah for the latecomers... Thought Jackson was supposed to get 50+"?

Did you take it? How's that road? I don't ever remember being on it. Might have to try it out.

Awesome day in the Pocono powder! Got some nice float down Challenge, Razors and Dreamweaver, until it got skied off. Then it was a battle of the bumps. Lots of hard pack from the other day between the soft stuff. Still blowing on entire Sidewinder up until about 10, then they shut down on the lower portion (I'm thinking, they're thinking they have enough?), but continued to blow on upper half. Looks like they're still light on snow for the booters. They were also blowing hard on Switchback. I'm guessing they'll probably open that tomorrow, as it looks like they've got some wicked deep wells on the lower portion.

Oh yeah, been to some kick-ass parties at people's places back there!

I just make it an adjunct to Razor's. Keep to middle of Razor's while approaching entrance to Razorback, cut in high and get some air off Razorback's lip. Nice change to Razor's almost straight run.

Wanna bet they name that little cattrail that goes from Razor's over to falls?

Bet the people that live back there are going to just love all the extra traffic coming through, once people figure out that way. I followed a bunch of cars last night that took the detour, was like a parade through farmland.

Oh, I tried cottonwood the other day, that route seems to take forever, over hill, over dale, winding around. Not for me.

PennDOT did set up a detour. Just as you pass the Moore Twsp park, at the next stop-sign where the corner-store is, I think they have one make a left there. Looking at the map, I suspect they bring you back to 946 via N. Hokendauqua Rd. I didn't take it, so I don't know for sure. I also took the back-country detour on the way home as well (turn left before the church). I didn't see any detour signs southbound, which is why I'm thinking Hoky Rd.

Bridge is finally closed. Took the back-country detour around it. Roads are a bit squirrely back there.

I totally agree.

It'll be interesting to see if Blue holds their line and waits until they've done Sidewinder right before opening it or cave to the pressure.

Oh yeah, I totally agree that it requires "an epic crapload of snow" and I'm not one that's even begging for it to be open. Frankly, I'd rather have Challenge and Switchback open! I'm just thinking that because Blue gets pestered so much, by so many to get it open, they may just do the minimum they need to get it open, just to say it's open. Pure speculation on my part.

Unbelievably cold morning to start the day off at 9 degrees, no wind, dry air. Cool valley clouds coming down mountain road to lot. They're blowing snow mad on bottom and full-tilt on Challenge, Sidewinder, Central Park and Finish Line. Snow was the best that it's been at Blue so far this year, IMHO. They finally opened up Nightmare and Dreamweaver about 9:45 after finish grooming shortly before. As expected, lots of chunks, marbles, ditches, etc., but it was breaking up fast with the crowds hitting it pretty hard. It started to become a pinball run about an hour after it opened. Lines at both the six and quad weren't too bad at all, at most a 2-3 minute wait. The six lines were shorter than the quad. We'll probably see Challenge open tomorrow or Wed as they've got nice deep wells on it. With any luck, we may see Sidewinder by the weekend!

That's the route that I was going to take if/when PennDot ever does close the bridge.

Ditto, but at Little Gap.

Hey, it looks like they added some new cams on the BM website!!! http://www.skibluemt.com/SkiBlue/the-mountain/mountain-cams.aspx They look pretty damn good! Why The F are they wasting prime snow blowing water/pressure/cold on Home Stretch? It doesn't add to capacity. They need to get Burma open to get more people off the already crowded runs!

I finally remembered to start it yesterday with about 5 runs to go. When you're done you hit the pause button and it uploads the data to command central. From there you can view your runs overlayed on a Google Map of the mountain and even do some virtual race or something crazy. I just wanted to see if it worked, how accurate it was, etc. It seems pretty accurate as I was doing a bit of carving down the run out to the six-pack and even they showed up.