method9455

Went up to Shawnee today with my girlfriend and her two younger sisters. One is a complete never ever gone snowboarding beginner and the other has gone two or three times and can link turns down most trails, but we figured it to be primarily a teaching day. I brought my new Line Prophets and went skiing for the first time in 7 years. We got to the hill by 8, and bought tickets. 4 students tickets at $36 each on a holiday is super sweet, especially when at 21 I'm getting charged adult prices everywhere else. We went up and started our first run by 8:15. It was snowing pretty nicely by that point, with maybe a half inch on the ground, and ultimately 3 inches by around 12 fell. Shawnee was also running about 60% of the guns scattered around the mountain - which is a lot of guns. Only one or two were sticky so overall it was about 4" of new snow on the ground. It made for a soft learning surface which was good, because if you scraped away that you could see the previous surface which was basically groomed ice. It took me about 2 runs down a green trail to remember what the hell I was doing on skis, but by the end of the day I had hit all of the trails at the mountain. The girls definately improved a lot today. Between 8 and 11 there was literally no one else around us. We took a break at 11 and a lot more people were there after that so we took some different trails, but still never waited in a lift line. We broke up a bit because I was started to really crank down the runs so I took a few on my own which helped me remember what going fast felt like. I only fell twice, in exactly the same spot. I'm fine on a even trail really no matter how steep it is, but when it starts getting bumping I get rocked pretty hard. I took a run throught their park. I have twin tips so I figured while I would be doing rails I might want to try a jump on skis. I hit a 5' and a 10' to warm up. I cleared both to the landing and rode away which was cool, but seriously, how did I ever do jumps on skis? The toe bang on the front of the boot is awful and my boots felt great for the rest of the day, I just can't handle that. I also see what people are saying about needing the ramps higher when you are skiing, I can only jump like 4" off flat snow, where as I can ollie probably 18" off flat ground. There might be technique to it but I just didn't get it. I did a bit of skiing backwards too, but I don't foresee any more forays into park skiing for the time being. As for the mountain, grooming was excellent, the surface was good, and the snowmaking impressed me. The downside was at around 1 the wind kicked up and a lot of snow started migrating into the woods, hopefully the surface won't get scoured too much. The only thing that sucked was the park. They have quality jibs now but really don't set them up well, and the jumps are awful. The jibs could use the ramps about 3' wider, and about 6" lower. The jumps could use the landings about 10 degrees steeper, the front side of the table should be about 40 degrees steeper, and the deck should be actually defined. All of them are basically a 100' long mound of snow that is rolled over into an arch, with a 3' ramp placed arbitrarily on it. There are no knuckles, there are no tables, and it is a horrendous waste of snow. Did you know they had a staircase jib? I didn't. We left at 2:30 because we were tired and the wind picked up, which made it a 6 and a half hour day. The younger girls and I were exhausted, skiing works a lot of different muscles I haven't used in a long time and they fell about a thousand times each. So Danielle drove back and we all were snoring by the time we made it to Delaware water gap. All in all, it was a real good day and due to the prices we will be going back to teach the girls more.

When are you going? I always find parks suck after about 2pm on the weekends and 5pm on the weekdays due to the crowds, pretty much regardless of what the park crew can do to lips the landings can't be fixed without a snowcat and eventually break down. That is what ruins it for me more than anything else.

Large 1 hole test tube rubber stopper 2" screws drill A whole lot cheaper for the same thing Just mount them fat end out in pairs and you count hang the board from them, we used to do it at work for our display models. Strength is based on if you hit a stud or not. Drywall will hold up a blank board, but with bindings you probably need a stud.

Got up to Camelback this morning for 9am, a hell of a lot of people there already it seemed, but after the first line dispersed we enjoyed about an hour and a half with no crowd since so many people were in line for tickets. Snow conditions were good, sugar for sure but groomed well and we didn't see it get scraped off anywhere until about 12. After about 12 it started to get crowded pretty quickly and we left at 1. The Stevenson didn't open until 10, so we got over there right after it opened and had a few good runs before the masses shifted over there, but then it became significantly more crowded than the Sullivan so we shifted back. Overall the wind was a lot worse on the side by Stevenson but blue skies and warm weather made for decent weather. The only trails missing were hump, cliffhanger, and the far right trail when you are looking at the hill from the bottom. Not bad for Dec 30th, and the base is thick. Decent grooming. The only disappointment was that they weren't running all the lifts. It was basically the two high speed, raceway, the park lift, and Laurel Glade. There are 3 other lifts that aren't running that usually help disperse the crowds. Liftlines got to about 10 minutes by 12, but for the holidays it was about what I expected. There really were not crowds on the trails because they weren't running the other lifts. We only went through the park twice, once down the small run and once down the big one. We didn't hit the medium trail. The park looks damn good and was well manicured. With park passes actually be enforced there was 0 line for the lift, and little traffic. There was corduroy in most of it when we left at 1. I would say it was probably the best condition park in PA at the time because I know Boulder and Blue are going to be over run with newbies, it was a blissful little uncrowded park and plenty to play on. Everything I hit seemed to be setup well and the jibs slid well. The wall ride looked pretty bad (need more vert on the transition!) and there were a bunch of little hips that were kind of boring (can't really air them out or you will die), but otherwise I was happy with it.

Nice, the Dalbello's are really great right now.

http://www.paskiandride.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12693 $349 for skis & bindings, spend $350 on boots and you will be there.

On my jib board I would estimate 45. I took an angle grinder, put it on the side and took basically the edge off in the middle. On my other freeride boards I'm basically 1/1. Honestly I never felt like the edge angle made a difference free riding. You feel a lot of difference based on base finish and waxes and how sharp your edge is, but aside from catching on rails i never felt like a degree or two could make a difference.

Thats pretty realistic pricing so you should be able to figure something out. I just got skis (should be heading out to pick them up from being mounting in about an hour) for the first time in 7 years after a long stint snowboarding for pretty much exactly the reasons you stated. I paid $325 for Dalbello Proton 8s. I paid $200 for used Line Prophet 90s (used 4 days) I paid $175 for the bindings that came with the Lines, I don't know what they are at the moment but I trust the guy selling them to me So I paid $700 to get into it. And you could easily see $400 for skis so $900 getting in. It is significantly more expensive than snowboarding. The bindings involved a lot more engineering, the boots involve a lot of expensive parts and pieces, and the skis carry higher loads over a smaller cross section which requires them to be stronger so more composite and less core. You ratio of core material to composite in a snowboard is signficantly cheaper than the ratio of core to composite in a ski. I would definately go with twins, there is no disadvantage on hitting trails on twins for our level, at the top end when you really want to blast down a trail or race then I could see avoiding the twin, but the twins ski so well there is no reason to avoid them. I would say Rossi, Volkl, Line have good options for all around twin tips. I've heard good things about other brands so thats hardly a completely list but I considered the Line Prophet, the Volkl Kharma, the Rossi Scratch and a few others. For boots, I would buy those in the store, pay any amount for the right boot. For skis and bindings I would get them used or last years stuff for now. It doesnt' matter how beat they are when you are just going back.

Thanks for the report, that makes me a lot happier after hearing the negative ones lately. Definately good to have a beginner park, I was pushing newbies to other mountains last year because there just wasn't that much for them at BB. I like the step over jump trend lately, it really makes it a lot safer.

Not necessarily. I look at those temperatures and would rather go to Blue. Why would you want to go to the place where all the water from Sunday/Monday is going to freeze solid on Tuesday? You can have spring conditions at Blue or crappy frozen hardpack at JF? Its going to take more than 1 night to groom it back into shape, and its probably going to require some snowmaking which won't be happening with those temps. So I'll be at Blue on tuesday enjoying soft snow.

Mountain Dew: Code Red tour - tastes so much better, sounds so much worse.

Skier vs Snowboarder stopped being interesting after about the same amount of time as the "Beer Pong vs Beirut" conversation did - that is to say after about 3 seconds. Get a clue, I spent 40 days out on a board for the last 7 years, and I woke up to ski boots under the tree this morning and I was so stoked, best Christmas gift in a long time. Picking up some Line Prophets tomorrow, I'll be out on Blue trying to remember how to ski on Tuesday. Maybe I'll get a lesson and see whats really up at the ski school, but first I'll see how fast it comes back to me. I got on water skis for the first time in 4 or 5 years this summer after a lot of wakeboarding and remembered after about 5 minutes so I hope real skiing is the same way.

A bit more detail: Saturday: Woke up around lunchtime and packed up for the semester, hit the road and got home around 3. Unpacked my school stuff, repacked the car to head to vermont. Took a good look at the weather and the "do not go out on the roads if you don't have to tonight" warnings on the weather channel, and over the protests of both of our parents decided we could beat the storm if we left early. Went to bed at 11pm, set the alarm for 2am. Sunday: Woke up at 2am, took a quick shower and make a cup of coffee. Danielle picked me up at 2:30 and we hit the road. Luckily our timing was good and we made it to about Poughkeepsie before the snow flakes started falling doing about 60mph instead of my usual 80. The snow did start getting heavy once we got up near Hunter/Windham but they were salting and plowing pretty well. Once we got within about 20 miles of Mount Snow things got a lot worse. It didn't seem to be a problem going uphill but those downhill turns were really slippery. I was coming down pretty much the last downhill on the way into Wilmington and I braked too late and started to slide right for a road sign, I steered out of that but over corrected and ended up spinning us completely around and we went right off the road. We hit the snow bank on the side of the road at about 20mph but it was light and fluffy so not even a scratch on the car, though it did take some shovelling to get it out and a few guys stopped and we pushed it out. You can see in the picture at this point there is about 4" of snow on the ground. We made it up to the mountain only about 30 minutes after first chair, we would have definitely made it for opening if we hadn't spun out and we even had time to stop for a big breakfast. Cue awesome powder day pictures. I didn't really pull the camera out because we were having too much fun but here are a few random shots. Plenty of untracked to be found, it snowed all day. The North Face was a bit more tracked than anywhere else because all the locals were there, but the glades had plenty of snow. We found a lot of the south side of the main face was being ignored and had huge swaths of powder on it. We skied from 8:30 to 3:30 with 2 or 3 breaks. It was pretty damn cold, I think the wind chill was 0, but we had too much fun to really worry about it. I forgot my face mask at home so I had to use a bandanna which sucked cuz it kept freezing solid, but it was better than nothing. I would say it was about knee deep. AtomicJeff says 14", the locals were saying 18", honestly who could know because the wind was blowing it around so much it was between a foot to 3 feet depending on the location. Definitely the lightest snow I've ever ridden in was a blast. i wouldn't say there were face shots but you could hit a patch here and there that burst up to waist high, what a great time. Monday: I have no still pictures from this day because it was brutally cold. 2 degrees and a windchill of -15 doesn't make you want to take off your gloves and snap some pictures. The wind overnight was about 50mph, it really shook the place we were staying. On the hill, the summits lifts were closed because of wind (I felt like i was at camelback, but honestly, I didn't want to go up there). The snow had migrated all over the place and what had been great the day before was bare and what had sucked the day before had a huge amount of untracked. We hit some fun trails but the cold was killing us and we took 3 or 4 breaks inside to warm up. I started doing a lot of powder ollies which led to some awesome times, but also a lot of wipe outs. I did a big shifty under one of the lifts and landed it so went for a 180 off another bump, and caught my nose on the landing and did the classic tumble down the powder field over and over you always see in the snowboarding videos. It didn't feel that great to have snow inside the helmet as well as completely filling the goggles, but still fun.The high point of the day was hitting a trail that had a few brooks in it you had to ollie over, along with 2 downed trees (still a lot of those from the ice storm around), it took a while to get down but made it really interesting. We left the hill around 1:30 to head for home, and after lunch in town were seriously on the road by 3. The drive home took a long time, and was actually worse than the drive up. Lots of slippery stuff on the roads and we didn't spin out as bad as before but we had a mild slide into a guardrail that had us both holding our breath to see if there was real damage (there wasn't, about 5" of snow plastered to the guardrail protected our paint) and a half spin out on route 100. It took about 3 hours to get to albany when it usually should take about an hour, but from there south was dry roads and we made good time. I did break out my video camera on Monday for the first time, but I haven't looked at the tape yet so I don't know if there is anything worth seeing. I doubt it because I was just getting used to trying to hold it steady while riding but I'll see. As for the park on carinthia, it looked good but honestly I only took 1 run through it. I'm not going to be hitting the park on a powder day, but I should try it another day soon.

Don't worry, I got plenty

We made it up here this morning only a few minutes behind first chair, but it was a pretty tough drive, lots of pushing, lots of shoveling, and a frontside 180 with the car on a downhill curve, nice. Ridiculous day of riding, it started snowing hard on our drive up at around 4am and it is still snowing that hard at 8pm, thats on top of the 18" they got yesterday. Really light stuff, really windy so I guess its east coast blower. I got my dumb ass stuck several times today trying to explore some of the deeper parts of the windblown stuff. Apparently a 156cm board won't float my dumb ass when it gets above knee deep. Danielle stayed in the 12" deep stuff and had a lot less trouble. I got some pictures that I will post when we are home but at the moment we've been up for 16 hours on 2 hours of sleep so I'm not going to get a full TR just yet.

Yea I'm feeling like a flat lander at the moment, I'm trying to decide between working my drive around that snow or just going through. I had wanted to leave like 3am Sunday and make 1st chair without paying for a hotel tonight (and considering I'm still in DE packing up my crap to go home, and I have to unpack and get my gear out in NJ before hitting the road for VT, it might be impossible to make it tonight). I'm going, but I might miss 1st chair ARGH.

That is true but when its snowing during the day its going to get all tracked out anyway, better to be one of those doing the tracking.

A lot of effort has gone into clearing out the JF woods. Honestly it is something every mountain could do in select places that would add a lot for advanced skiers but few do.

Oh god not this discussion again. I'm going to get one of these and settle all of these arguments over the course of the season: http://www.acehardwaresuperstore.com/strai...340.html?ref=42

I'm wondering whats up with that as well, Camelback had a nice jump at their hike park and multiple nice jumps on their first opening day. Boulder can build great jumps over 15 foot in size like the line that is usually at JF, plus the stuff in Love and Boulder, but I always found their like mini table 5' jumps to be sub par. There is plenty of fun to be had on 5' jumps but you need some height out of them to throw stuff and I never felt like the mini jumps on Freedom were that great.

Great pictures man, the Bush looks great. I've never been there but I might get there for the first time this year, I didn't even realize that it was such a big mountain until recently.

I'm really excited, 2 more finals to go and then I'm getting in the car and driving straight up to Mount Snow. I've got my fingers crossed the storm comes as forecast.

Yea but Chuck Norris could destroy Sugarbush with one hand.

I don't understand why everyone hates on skiing in the rain, if your gear is good it really isn't that big a deal. Whatever you do, do not take a break where you take your jacket and everything off. As soon as you take it off and your body isn't heating it anymore, the temperature of it all drops down to 75 or whatever the lodge is, and when you put it back on your body has to warm it back up to normal temperature and even if it is water proof, it is still coated with water. But it is great, empty trails, decently fast snow if you have wax, grippy as all hell.

Ha I'm not going to lie to you I thought the Tremblant gondola was one of the sketchiest I ever rode and that was before reading this: http://www.tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=90027 It blows in the wind like crazy, and a couple times of year they pull all the cars off and have bare cable during big storms. I think they built the towers too tall because the whole thing is above the tree line and is really exposed. I still say the most dangerous part is the drive to the mountain. And stay on the North side of Tremblant, it is a lot more fun anyway. Make sure you hit Expo and there are some fun trails with with snow covered walls to play around on Solelil that are fun as well.