method9455

From their front page Camelback is open for the season, the mountain is open 9am to 4pm today and will reopen Monday to Thursday from 3pm to 9pm with the Glen Terrain Park only. Click here for rates and hours. Camelback will reopen for daily operation 9am to 4pm on Friday, December 5th. Tickets are aparently $20 based on their ticket rates page It certainly isn't for lack of snow, the ONLY thin areas on the entire mountain were getting onto and off of the Raceway triple as I mentioned in my TR so this is simply they don't want to spend the money to run the stevenson quad and groom those trails. I guess we can't bitch about it because they are never open this early at all, but it still strikes me as weird that they can't make enough money off lift tickets to keep that lift open during the week, when it was packed all weekend. I don't know what the weather will be but come on, you are telling me that you can run two high speed quads plus a few extra lifts all winter long when few people are there until after school, but you can't make a profit running one quad after school this week? People are pscyhed to get out there, and you have the best combination of terrain and snow conditions available in PA right now but you are going to be too cheap to run a lift for it?

Yea I don't buy into it as a real great tech solution myself. I have the Alphas from last year and I don't even un-do the toe strap all the way, just pop it off a bit and push it down, then when I strap in again I flip it up and one crank makes it tight. I can't imagine the contraband holds as well as a toe strap, but I've figured out that toe straps just really aren't necessary. I've broken them off countless bindings and ride with just the heel strap and it really isn't that bad.

I would heavily consider buying it from you for a reasonable price. It is not a scam, it is just different. The risk of going with a bleeding edge gear is that you won't like it. Stop being sensationalist. Plenty of people like it, some don't. A scam would be if there was no difference and they made a big deal about it. But there IS a difference and then it is personal preference on the other side whether you like it or not. You don't like it, thats fine, sell the board lots of people are clammering for them. But based on what I've heard from a lot of guys who like it, it is a step forward for those that like twitchy boards.

I wonder if they are getting rain or snow today

That is true and also Blue is significantly lower in elevation than either of those mountains so you can add 3-4 degrees to the temperature at any given time, which makes the conditions for snowmaking a bit wetter and you get the death cookies in abundance.

Wow I was blown away when you said "season pass picture" but that is the rational I took when I chose JFBB. It takes longer to get in as much vert, no trail is as good as Razors/Challenge at Blue, but there is good skiing to be had no matter what the weather.

So my girlfriend and I went up today and we brought a camera, and forgot to take pictures with it. So this is going to be picture-less TR i.e. my lamest TR ever. We intended to make it for first chair, but partied too late last night and got there at around 10 instead of 9. Decent number of people at that point, and by mid day there were almost normal length lines for a mid-winter saturday on the stevenson, though only two other lifts were running it was not surprising. Tubing had a good number of people on it, as did surprisingly the bunny hill which was packed. The triple for the park had no wait but a lot of people getting turned back at the park pass place. Conditions across the mountain were excellent, great snow, many trails, not all that crowded on the slope, thick base and wide coverage. I didn't see any trails that were not open that had any appreciable snow on them. Looks like they are basically starting from grass on anything that is not already open, but anything that is open is going to be around for a while. There were really only a few mud spots - primarily around the park triple which I think was because they couldn't run the Glen today and had pushed snow to connect to the top and bottom of the Raceway triple and it was a bit bumpy and muddy but whatever. The fact that there were 6 ways down off the top was a bright spot in my book, plus the park on a separate lift and the bunny hill. I don't know how Camelback is counting their trails but for me it was an impressive amount. We got park passes, that went smoothly and it was a nice gesture that they were free. As for the park, I agree with what everyone else was saying, it is the best park Camelback has ever had. Although the bar is really low so that doesn't say much. I wasn't completely stoked on it. First the plusses + Will knows how to setup jibs, they are completely different from the way camelback used to (improperly) setup jibs so that makes me happy + Park passes are great + The jibs are a whole lot better, wish they were not white but that is a stylist qualm so whatever + The jumps improved + Less circus shit (not entirely gone) + Decent flow (but not perfect) Then the negatives - What gives with the jib selection? Its Nov 28/29, not all of us made it out to the hike park. You got to have some easy stuff to warm up on. To me every jib was the same level, high intermediate. I am unintimidated by any jib in that park - on my 2nd day of the year. My first day of the year I am trying to remember what the hell I am doing and wondering why I feel like a drunken sailor. I ended up hitting the last flat box on the right first and then I went back up and did the whole line, but even that jib is not as "easy" as I'd like it to be because of the drop off. (Is it supposed to be upslope?, not sure). The boxes are mellow (especially like the battleship box), but my girlfriend would be stretching for most of those boxes mid season so there was nothing for her to hit today. By the looks of all the people who went through the trouble of getting park passes and then ended up only jumping off the sides of the jib ramps, I think the level was a bit high. The jumps had a decent progression and were mellow but by the 1 or 2 when I was in the park had the bumps that you get in the landings on warmer days, the washboard effect. No fault of camelback's that just happens and makes it a little sketchy. My suggestion, knock out that little jump on the left up top, put in a 10' long, 18" wide, 6" high flat box so everyone can remember what they are doing. Not all of us skate, hit rail jams in the fall, went out for the hike park etc. I ended up hitting everything in the park except the wall ride but it just struck me as really wierd for that to be the jib selection this early in the season when so many of the guys riding camelback are at a lower level than that. You gotta know your rider community Overall, I'm very pleased with Camelback's management of the whole thing and specifically Will's of the park. I thought the park was lacking some easier stuff for a lot of people, but the feature setup where setup great. I'm really stoked on Camelback for this winter, right now they are doing everything right. Oh yea, and buying 2 tickets for $70 and getting 2 free park passes was a lot better than paying full price x the two of us at JFBB. We had planned to go to boulder but you can not pass up cheaper tickets, faster lifts, more terrain, and closer. Good work CB, bad decision on prices JFBB.

Forget that, a hike park when everyone else is open.

I hope you are not serious with that.

I'm going up Saturday, does anyone know how much tickets are?

Should they pro-rate per acre? If camelback is charging $10 for 1 trail, and boulder is charging $25 for 4, who has the better deal? I have no problem with $25, for me the ticket at the end is incidental compared to the cost in time of getting free to go so they could be charging full price and if I could go I would. I remember back when I was in high school and couldn't afford to spend any money skiing aside from my season pass and I can understand if that is the situation, but then you don't have a season pass to JFBB and it is not a surprise they are open early so you kind of have to deal with it or wait until the mountain you do have a pass to opens.

Well the good thing about Whistler is that if the weather does end up sucking the nightlife can make up for it. Go during spring break time period even if you aren't in college, great parties then.

We can define mid flexing in a lot of different places, the Ion is at the stiffer end of mid flexing in my opinion, they are stiffer than the Hail but softer than the Driver and T1 among others. But Dan and I can agree on one thing, they really suck at bending forward I don't understand the ankle blow out on Burton boots at all but it is definately there. 32 Boots are the shit but they fit my specific foot terribly. K2 boots seem to fit very differently and wrap my foot like a glove, so the fit really did it for me with the T1. If you wanted a stiff boot I would recommend the T1 with or without the boa on the inside. Without it, you avoid the problem with the pressure point inside. WIth it, you can adjust it on the fly. I've learned to pop the boa every now and then on the lift to get some more circulation going because you can definitely over tighten the liner and that is half the problem. Honestly if the Ski Bum had without Boa I would buy that one over the one with Boa based on my experience. However, your original spec said mid-flexing and no one can say it is mid flexing. It is the best free riding boot I've ever had but it just isn't as great for park. Only you can really decide that question. It definitely isn't unusable for park I do 40 foot jumps with it and pretty much any jib I ever see but it makes landing more difficult than it has to be primarily when you have a bit more force on jump landing you need to absorb for one reason or another. If you said I was doing 80% of my riding on trail and 20% in the park, I would say it would be worth it. Thats about what I do and only recently has it started to piss me off in the park as I switch to more 60/40 now that I ride Boulder a lot.

I'd knock Okemo off that list and replace it with Mount Snow. Stowe is more expensive than Snow or Killington but it is the best mountain. I'd say it depends on what kind of skiing your family does. If you guys are looking for blue squares in abundance, Mount Snow is the place. If you are looking for something harder than that Killington and Stowe are where its at. A lot of people on these boards forget that not everyone is stoked for the gnarliest terrain you can find and with my parents they had more fun at places with mostly intermediate terrain as compared to those that were harder. Look here for more info on the mountains in VT. http://skiernet.com/ski_vt.html

I'm not really buying Burton's rating at the moment, unless they have drastically changed the Ion only a few years ago it was not an 8/10 stiffness on their scale. It is stiffer than the Hail for sure which is probably their most popular boot other than the cheap ones like the Moto and Freestyle, but it isn't nearly as stiff as the Driver and they used to have the SL-7 as well that was really stiff. To me the T1 & Driver are more equivalent, and the Tm Twos are a lot closer to the Ion. The Tracker is more like a Burton Hail.

Blue Mountain looks like the best bet, it is about 2.5 hours from AC while Mountain Creek is about 3.

It's Barack Hussein Obama, duh look at the picture

That is sick as hell. Boulder, Bear, Camelback all have legit setups right now. Good stuff. Where is Sno, Blue, and Mountain Creek right now?

As the title says, MC started making some snow. The report says the usual route at South (though which trail is renamed Bakersfield this year? And why?). Can't get any pictures because their daily gallery is embed in their trial map? Seriously, what is that?

Now that is a deal. Hmm, wednesday is very tempting if I can get home before 9 with the traffic. The edit makes the park look pretty damn good.

Great thread over at TGR about 2 guys from University of Maryland hiking at Wisp this weekend. http://tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141084 And there is a legit avalanche - seriously.

I have been riding the K2 T1's for about 2 years, going on my 3rd. I'm looking to replace them this year because I have about 80+ days on them and they are packing out. My girlfriend and my best friend are also on K2's but they are the male/female version of the Tracker Boa instead of the T1. If I had a choice today I would go with the Tracker instead of the T1. I went through all the boots at my store over the course of a few weeks (i try on every boot every year when there are no customers to kill time), and the K2 T1 for my foot was far and away the most comfortable in the store. I like stiff boots a lot, and I figured it would be really stiff and great for free riding and pipe and I could make it work for jibs/jumps. It turns out, they are really good for freeriding and pipe, but they really suck for jibs and jumps. I make it work but barely. What ends up happening is when you land on a jump with a boot that stiff and you have to bend your knees to absorb it, instead of bending your ankles and knees and having your weight come down straight, you are basically forced to keep your shins vertical and bend your knees such that your ass hits the ground. I seriously fall that way 99.99% of the time when I fall on a jump. It is just impossible to bend through the front of the boot because they are like ski boots. They feel stiff in the store but once you strap in, they obviously get even stiffer. Additionally I"m not a fan of the placement of the knob for the internal boa. It ends up pinching the back of your ankle sometimes in a really annoying way. For pipe and freeriding I absolutely love the response. I feel like I can thread a needle when I'm carving in them and I have 0 complaints there. So to me, the tracker is a bit softer and I think that would be ideal for you if you ever want to do park. If you are solely free riding, the T1s are superior. I don't know that specific ride boot but I do like the new ride boots, and I know several people in the Ion but they are more park oriented, that boot is going to be softer than the T1. For my next pair of boots, I'm going to go a lot softer than the T1. I've had two pairs of soft, then a medium stiffness, then a really stiff boot, and now I'm going back down to the medium stiffness. I will keep the T1's and I might pair them up with an alpine board for a nearly hard boot setup.

It takes forever. I worked at a ski shop and of the 50 jackets we got each year there were only a handful I wanted. I actually picked the jacket I have right now after looking at the stuff coming for the year after in the catalogs as we were ordering and just saying "Fuck it thats even worse than this" and buying the one I hated the least, but now I"m actually really a fan of that jacket. I don't even remember why I didn't like it at the time. My girlfriend took even longer to find one, almost a whole year of going through stores. It just seems to be a lot more personal than your hard goods and there are a lot of love it or hate it designs these days.

Nice, I have been looking at those boards but haven't pulled the trigger on buying one yet.

I think the generally accepted definition of open is a lift running because no one counted Mount Snow's hike part as "open". Camelback ran a lift so its counts. Setup looks decent IMO.