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I know you're not a mod here. I was referring to your vivid description of skiing as a hard process.

Lol, you're really enjoying yourself here being off mod duties

Not when you're on these skis. Or this ski? Whatever.

Heh, I found it funny how all racers today morning were initially on various kinds of fancy almost boutique skis with their gaper skis (read Rebels, Racetigers, RC4, Redsters) on their shoulders when they traversed down from the summit lodge.

The newest Mantras (2019) are going back to camber, so the trend reverses itself. Soon we'll see powder skis in the 70s because hey, it's so much funner to ski when you don't see the skis under snow.

Well, life is not without compromises. I'd get my share of cord in March or on weekdays. Like today.

I already said it once, but it's worth repeating. I wish BM had exactly that kind of a pass! Would ideally suit my skiing. Unlimited March skiing, plus anytime unlimited weekdays and weekend nights. Perfect.

I heard rumors of you giving Sally your number on a napkin.

They're gonna have a demo day this Sunday. Not sure how this is gonna work out with the upcoming rain.

I hope it stays low, or goes even lower, LOL. I don't do charity.

Why not? They already have the sale announcement on the website, could've as well listed the price. But OK, let's see if CB does it sooner.

Oh, so those turns on Dreamweaver are new? I thought I just wasn't on BM for too long. Got there once, never tried again. Btw, I had to straighten out some things with my ticket and while doing so asked about the price of next season pass. They just laughed and told me that they don't know it themselves. Damn.

Decided to give the new Monsters 83 a try today morning. Didn't have high expectations for snow, since last Sunday it was such a downpour in NJ, and it rained on Wednesday too, but hey, what do ya know, it still feels like winter in Pocono with all the white stuff everywhere, not just on the trails. It even started to snow lightly around noon. There was full blown racing event going on, but other than that I've never seen the place this empty. Best runs for me today were Lazy and Main Street, though Lazy started getting occasional ice spots later during the day, and lower part of Main Street felt harder than the softer and better groomed upper one. Sidewinder was fast and frozen. Paradise was sweet an unpatrolled. Very happy with the Monsters. Definitely built for speed and are encouraging to ski fast. So steady and supportive, they skip over occasional ice spots like they aren't there. I had my slaloms in the trunk for backup, but never wanted to get them.

Hehe... Somebody didn't get $80 from me today...

I'm also trying to digest how or what this skill can be useful for...

And what's "turning the ski on a flat surface to help make short radius turns"??

He actually said it? That's funny because while I saw you doing this too at JF when you said you were carving, this is just the matter of a skiing style, and is unavoidable on steeper terrain. What was the lesson about?

Where did this screenshot come from? I can't find it either on their main site or FB page. Also, is the price known yet?

Alright, to sum it up... We liked skiing and staying in the Warth area a lot. Actually, we didn't stay literally in Warth, we chose to live about 25 minutes east of it, in Bach, and while initially we questioned this decision, it all worked out OK. It wasn't just a hotel, it was a huge apartment with kitchen, two bedrooms and bathrooms, and the convenience and savings of being able to prepare quick breakfasts and dinners just outweighed the inconveniences of a morning drive to the mountain. The drive itself wasn't too bad. Even during snow storm the road was very passable, and the difference in altitude between Warth and Bach is just 400m: Warth is at 1400m, and Bach is at 1000m. While the road is not a straight highway, it's not a mind-blowing serpentine either. We've quickly discovered that though the mountain's official hours are 9am-4:30pm, the lifts open as early as 8:30am, and so by the end of the week we've been abusing this a a lot. Even on our departure date we just skied for two hours in the morning, returned the skis, and still were able to get everywhere we wanted during the rest of the day, including the airport. The pros of staying around Warth are better snow, thinner crowds, quieter area and cheaper prices. Warth is not without cons though. By the middle of the week we've realized that we can't physically cover the entire Arberg area if we're stationed in Warth. It takes 30-40 minutes to get out of Warth zone to Lech, and if you want to go south of Lech, e.g. to Zurs or St Anton, you need to get on the double gondola lift to Rufikopf, and from there the only way back would be via that White Ring route, which takes 3 hours to finish. This means that the moment you cross road in Lech and go up, you commit to 4-5 hours of skiing just so that you'd be able to go back to Warth in time. In the middle of the White Ring you can "get off" and take a detour to St. Anton, but it seemed from the map that it would take another 30 minutes to reach St. Anton, and so that would leave us with less than an hour of skiing there, and that's provided that we skied non-stop, w/o breaking for lunch. So in the end we chose not to go to St. Anton at all. Lech would be a better place to live in strategically. It's centrally located, and would allow one to either migrate to Warth or St. Anton or stay locally. It also has plenty of ski to door lodging, and livelier village, so if someone fancies that kind of stuff, Lech all the way. The problem with Lech is that this area is busy, so good snow lasts less. I think we got lucky with the weather, 3 first days were sunny, and that allowed us to explore the area safely. The snowstorm day was a complete disaster. While we skied till 3pm anyway, it was very challenging due to extremely poor visibility in snow and cloudy weather, and variable snow conditions. You just can't go with reasonable speed on a slope with a thick cover of fresh or displaced snow w/o seeing what's in front of you. I've seen lots of people falling, some managed to go off the trail because they didn't see or understand the markers, and all in all, it was a tough day of skiing. Pure cloudy days can be a challenge too because of visibility, but to a lesser extent because at least in the morning the piste is decent, and you can generally (but hardly) see grooming bands. For those people who'd rather explore the ungroomed terrain, there are a lot of opportunities too, and I'll just attach a few pictures of a brochure I found in a hotel nearby.

How come you've rented? Jeff was saying that one of the beauties of JH is that you can move around without a car?

How? I can understand Jeff's situation, because he flies a lot. But how did you personally pull it off?

You've got to be kidding me. The chairs are on only one cable.

Anyway, about today... It's been a perfect day. Infinite visibility, fresh snow all over, perfectly groomed trails, just a little bit cold, around -10C. While I absolutely love my current Atomics 72/172 GS, I couldn't stop looking for what other people were at, and what do ya know, the scoop has changed! There were powder skis, 100% rocketed skis, I've spotted Monsters as wide as 88, there were Volkls around at least a hundred mm, and overall a lot of people clearly came to the mountain for the freeride. More boarders too this time, probably 10-15%. We realized a few days back that lifts actually open earlier than the official 9am, sometimes as early as 8:30, and we've exploited this to our advantage. Too bad the lifts on the upper part weren't as ready as those coming from the road, so we couldn't move to Lech right away and had to ski locally a couple of runs. The upper lift initially didn't even have any chairs on it, and that's how the picture above was shot. Groomers were perfect until about 2pm, but after that they went to hell, I guess because the snow was fresh, and crowds were higher. We'll ski one more time tomorrow morning when snow is forecast again, and that will be the end of it. Oh, one of the pictures below features a tunnel for skiers to cross the road to get from the slope to the lift on the other side. Sometimes these can be bridges too.

Which, as we all know, just circles the Globe.