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Can you use this gift card toward your next season pass payment? If you can, this has an edge over your 10% discount.

If you think of it, MC's map has quite a variety of trails. Just the fact that there are three peaks makes it interesting to explore. The peaks also have a theme to them, so you'd expect most of the boarders to congregate around South Peak, and all racers and schools will rarely spill beyond Bear Peak. That's actually the first time I hear that MC has a better snowmaking system. I know BM snowmakers like to brag a lot about how they can take advantage of every opportunity to make more snow (and yet CB got ahead this year)... IMHO, with MC it all boils down to warmer temps than across the Delaware river. They can only make snow if it's below freezing, and so if it's not, great snowmaking system or not, it's not gonna matter. Last year they had a total meltdown soon after offering new season passes. But yeah, $229 for an unrestricted pass is hard to beat.

Did you go to a ski school, Doug?

Yeah, I'd buy that in a heartbeat as well. They should look up to CB. $249 for a weekday and weekend night pass would be terrific.

Eh? Why is this season crappy? And why would you go to MC during a crappy season? Should be the opposite.

Oh, now it's getting interesting. How do you usually learn about the availability of the cards? Through a meeting, email, some personal contact? I've got an email on 12/05 like below.

They only had 6 available this year. And by the time you know whether you can get them or not, it's too late to jump on other deals. Too risky, in other words.

Where are you getting these cards? Lately it became a pain with only a few cards available through the ski club, and securing them becomes quite a race.

Yeah, I've also noticed that. No last year's "quantities are limited" kind of stuff.

$429

So it seems that there may be basically four reasons to just lurk: - leech local news and info on e.g. conditions, hours and deals (doesn't apply) - get some coaching on skiing or gear (again a miss) - hang around because you know someone in person - use the site as a reality TV show (you know, what are those psychos up to now?) Is there a fifth?

Yep, gonna be the best weekend ever. President's one. Looking for a rock to go under already.

So, do you know anybody on this site?

So, you're between three jobs, ski once a year and yet spend enough time lurking on this site as the thread clearly shows. Why, if you don't mind me asking?

And in about 3 hours of drive from that snow goodness - Venice.

I finally have a decent WiFi... So a few more pics from the last skiing day. First one is the frozen lake near which the road was closed.

I used it. It lied. What I totally ignored as it turned out was a sign about an hour from this place. The sign was in Italian of course, it mentioned the name of the pass (that I didn't know), and all in all it cost me an hour of driving up a serpentine to this point near a frozen lake, then an hour of driving down, and the cost of detour using a longer road.

Aaaaahh!!!

Wow, today was a racing day! The weather has turned back to sunny, beautiful visibility. I got tired of exploring, and just went straight to Val Gardena, looking for some secluded trails, and found two amazingly good reds. Pristine conditions all day, no people at all (the crowds were meanwhile storming Sellaronda circle not too far away). I was skiing these two looong trails a good half of the day alternating and stopping for coffee or lunch from time to time. Hero snow, ridiculously easy carving, I was flying the reds on edges and couldn't have enough of it, not even for a moment bored. Speed, give me more speed! Love the Lasers, want to buy them so much now. And Mama Mia, what a terrific last day in Dolomites! Off to Venice now for a full day of apres-ski. Important part will be to make it to the airport in Milan after that in one piece.

The weather went downhill today. No more flying down those afternoon Sellaronda moguls, can't see a thing. It's all uniform white until you get within a few meters of it, and that means a really slow return. Still, it was quite nice during the day, partly cloudy, and despite the slow return I still made it. Tomorrow's the last day, and I'll have to be moving out of the area by night. Might be a challenge because the windshield fluid froze, I can't believe somebody poured water there in winter. I think I've finished exploring Alta-Badia today. Parts of it turned out pretty challenging and interesting. All in all I wouldn't hesitate making it a base camp next time. Reasonable connectivity (even has a bus going to another isolated area that I've never seen, Kronplatz), not many people, large and variable terrain. And I didn't like SR88 on piste at all. Had to come back and swap it for Lasers again.

Today was nuts. I went to explore Seiser Alm - another secluded area about south west of Sellaronda. It's worse connected than yesterday's Alta-Badia, but it seemed to me after studying all the printed maps that a day tour was very possible. So in the morning I went straight in clockwise direction along the main circle never stopping anywhere and never taking any side trips. Took me 40 minutes to get to Val Gardena area, from where I was planning to go down to St Christina, use tunnel to cross under the town, go over the ridge to Ortisei and from there take the lift up to Seiser Alm. Once in Val Gardena I relaxed a little, well perhaps a little too much since I noticed a sign to Seiser Alm with a bus icon, so I thought I knew where to go. Also I discovered a nice trail surrounded by untracked slopes and skied on them like half a dozen time enjoying the quiet. Meanwhile the masses were attacking the main Sellaronda trails nearby like crazy. It's unbelievable how strongly many feel about conquering that big circle no matter what. Skiing is so much better on the sides, and yet people are just committed to doing the 360 degree tour. Anyway, I kind of got used to Lasers off piste, and even started to enjoy them despite the 78mm. Tomorrow I'll try Stormriders 88 for a day, let's see how that goes. Finally I got tired skiing the same place over and over again no matter how quiet it was and went all the way down following the signs to the bus and what I thought was the tunnel. With my luck there was no tunnel of course. But there was a bus. Full of Germans. With a driver who would speak German only. Who wanted money and was kind enough to say Seiser Alm a couple of times, so I shrugged, paid and went in wondering where the hell the tunnel was and why I had to pay for a connection within the big skiing area. The bus departed and instead of tunnel went through the forest along a snow covered road. I should have known better because I've noticed chains on the wheels and chains would be a weird choice for a ride through a tunnel. With nobody speaking English around me (WTH, even signs are in German, enough is enough!) I turned to my phone. And yep. I followed the wrong road down. The signs were right, it's just that it was an alternative, not the planned way of getting to Seiser Alm. But the good news were that apparently the bus was taking me to the far-far end of the Seiser Alm area, which was perfect as it was allowing me to cross it only once on the way back and return to Sellaronda using the path I plotted on the maps. So I fired the app, plotted the course, cursed at the 47km combined distance and weird 01:81 hr lift time, and went on to explore. That was an amazing area. So quiet and beautiful. Way more spread out and logical than yesterday's Alta-Badia, with decent groomers, and little people. It even had a clearly plotted and named route through it, and it was way more pleasant to follow it than Sellaronda, as other people didn't have this mad determination of sticking to just the trails on the route, so I didn't feel crowded. Once I yelled on a lift in desperation if anybody spoke English, and hooray, I finally had someone to ask about why was I surrounded by Germans. Turns out, this entire area once belonged to Austria, and only after WW1 was it added to Italy. Some towns adapted better (like Canazei or Alba), some cherished their roots more, and as a result there are now these places in Italy with German schools and people speaking German and Italian, which apparently leaves little place for English in the heads. This gets as crazy as towns having dual names, e.g. Ortisei on my path is an Italian name, and its German counterpart is St. Ulrich. These funny details make navigation all the more interesting of course. Anyway, I made my way back through Ortisei (quite colorful town that I had to cross on foot in order to start climbing over the next pass), St Christina and its tunnel and finally through the quite trashed Sellaronda. Frankly, I was worrying about timely return up until I reached St Christina around 3:20. From there I knew that I was crossing back into familiar territory, and indeed managed to descend to Alba by 5 just fine.

Just one pic today

So, today was fun... Having seen how rough the trails can get on the main loop, I figured I would get to another leaf zone, Alta-Badia while the groomers were still good, ski it to death and then would suffer a little on the way back. Alta-Badia is like on the opposite side of Sellaronda, a little closer if you do the circle counterclockwise, the map shows 17km of combined trails and lifts if you don't sidetrack. I have no idea how long it would take to get there straight, as fast as possible, and I simply couldn't make myself do it because all areas on the way there were very decent this morning, groomed, wide, fast, and I was just making too many detours including stops at slope cafes... SoI got to the edge of Alta-Badia only around 11 or so, quickly went in a couple of times to feel things up, but generally stayed on the circular route and even had lunch in a familiar place there. Too bad my memory failed me, and lunch actually wasn't a bargain at all. Bottom line is that at 13:30 I was ready to go in and do some discovering. I've never been to Alta-Badia, so didn't quite know what to expect. The first blue trail after the ridge ran and ran, I thought it would never end. Probably 5-7km one way. Once I stopped at the fork and didn't like what I saw at all. One of the branches had signs for rope lifts and busses. And making bus connections wasn't in my plans at all. So I took the other side, finally got to the bottom and noticed a single gondola lift. Yay. Problem was that it was not going to where I came from but instead was somewhere to the side. Like 90 degrees to the side. And it wasn't just one problem. The second one was that signs at the lift weren't familiar at all. And generally one can ski around here by just consulting the signs, they typically mention one or two adjacent towns along Sellaronda or even just point directly where to go to ski it clockwise or counterclockwise. Here not a single name was familiar, and I've crossed the entire Alta-Badia apparently. So I took that only available lift up, and tried reading the actual map. The entire area looked like an enormous basin with trails and lifts scattered around with no system, like a giant mesh. The problem was that in order to find your way through the mesh one would need to know not only how things are connected here, but also relative altitudes, for you cannot take a trail up, and a lift down. Altitudes were marked, but still understanding the layout was a real pain. So I took what I thought was the right trail, 28, and half way down realized that I'm somehow on 11, and it's taking me back to the bottom of that gondola lift, the farthest side from Sellaronda. Time was around 2:45, and I started to get nervous, for the closure time for my home lift was 5, and some less significant lifts on the way I knew were closing at 4:30-45. Luckily, the entire Dolomites area is covered by an app, and I even took time at home to download offline maps into my phone. I've never used the routing feature before, and it took some time getting used to it. I plotted a path to Arabba, approximately half way home, the app showed scary 11km of distance to cover, but at least all the guesswork was eliminated. Some time after I got back to Sellaronda with its bumpy reds, then to Arabba area, and the time was already like 4. I desperately needed to get out Arabba and cross the ridge so that even if my home lift closed by the time I got there (there is no skiing down to Alba), I would at least go down to Canazei and take a bus from there. In short, I was rushing. I was flying those moguls like I've never done before. Crowds were receding, and it was helpful. Also because I spent most of the day today avoiding crowdy and rough areas, I was still not too tired, and it was helping a lot. I've got to the last lift 20 mins prior to closing. Phew. Funny thing is that in the end I don't know what to think about Alta-Badia. Snow there was definitely awesome, very easy skiing, but unfortunately predominantly easy terrain. A nice place to escape to, ideal when you're with kids,but skiing it all day would be boring, I'm afraid.