method9455

You are certainly right about fans guns being less efficient on marginal temps. The advantage comes during a cold snap when you cannpump out a large volume of snow in a small window. Every fall at some point we get a cold snap prior to the real start of cold temperatures, or at least a warm up after the initial cold spell that marks it marginal or impossible to make snow. So whoever can lay down the most snow in that initial window wins. The truth is that the initial cold front that allows snowmaking is usually a fluke out of Canada that is short and sweet. Being able to make more snow for less money at the start of the front out weighs having to turn them off sooner when it warms up again. Id also really question the way you calculated ROI. That is not a simple calculation to male and the assumptions you make on inflation and energy prices will effect the outcome. It seems like most resorts think energy prices will rise and i would probably agree with that. You are quite right on having a mix of guns, but as of last year both jfbb and mt snow still made heavy use of air guns as well. Excuse the horrid spelling I'm doing this on a tiny mobile keyboard

The Triple Play is back, $69 for 3 lift tickets if you buy now. I'm jumping on it, maybe get 1 or 2 for all my MC needs this year.

Certainly I won't knock Yakima, lots of people prefer Thule but the Yakima stuff is solid. I was refering to OEM stuff, I had a set of Ford racks that SUCKED. The feet are surprisingly expensive but, worth it.

Do it, you won't regret it.

Just a heads up, small park boards go really fast, so you probably want to jump on them asap. We would usually be sold out of the smallest size park boards by October at my shop. What is your actual weight? I'd say the WWW and the Artifact are good choices if you are big enough. I had two Ride Kinks and they're not that great for riding (and by not that great I mean terrible) but they butter like crazy. But realize you will be getting just a butter/jib board, that thing chatters like a mofo. I thought I wanted that out of my first board but if I had to do it again I would go more middle of the road all around board. You can get a lot more out of your butters from the right technique rather than the perfect board, and then not have to sacrifice ride quality on other stuff.

Moved into a new apartment and my walls are bare. I tossed out my old collection of posters that I built up over several years because I was tired of them, and now I'm looking for some new ones. In the past I got them at work or at events but I'm trying to just order some and put them up because this place is bare. I tried allposters.com but they have no clue what skiing/snowboarding should look like, their most recent poster seems to be from 2000, many are early 90s. Anyone have a good source for new ones? I'm looking for big, high quality, ski or snowboard. I'd rather pay a bit more and get some quality ones than have a bunch of free/cheap ones with logos all over them or centerfolds out of a magazine.

Don't know the answer to your car specifically but if you go to a shop they all have a book with make/model/year and what you need. I look at my racks as a long term investment and picked up some of the better ones. The OEM ones that came with my SUV were kind of crap and rusted out before the car did. On the other hand I have Thule racks that are almost 15 years old and still going and you can just have to buy the new feet for new cars. The OEM ones are nice because they are custom for that car but you end up buying a new set every time you buy a new car. Just make sure you take the racks off when not in use, I rarely leave them on the car and at the end of the year I clean them up so I don't put them away with road salt on them.

The rules have a lot to do with the size of the company. A public company could never pull that off but a small private company could. There are a lots of rules that change based on how you are listed, for example I am an "independent contractor" even though I work 50+ hours a week for the last few months, because it keeps our company under a threshold for the regulations based on the size of the company. They can fire me at will and I don't get benefits like a real employee, but to compensate they pay me more salary, so it works out better for me in the end since I only work a few months a year, the extra cash is better.

http://www.vimeo.com/941386

I would give Love some more attention next year, Freedom and Boulder rocked but Love was mad ignored. I liked One Park all year. I think they should take one of the little green trails at JF like Frosty and turn it into a beginner park like they had on Janes Lane. Janes Lane is too good of a freeriding trail to make a park but you need something, so I'd put that. Or where they had the mini rails over what used to be the pipe at Boulder, there really was not much for newbies this year. I was teaching people and I found 3 flat boxes on One Park but that was about it. When you went over to Mountain Creek they seemed to have a better progression. Overall I was pleased with the park though, every time I went it was solid, so just keep doing what you are doing, tweak a little here and there, and we'll all be happy.

I got quite a few days this season in the glades but I wouldn't say any of them really had me wanting to huck a cliff in terms of depth, I think it maxed out at a little over 18" depth at the good times. I would like to see them clear some of the thorn bushes in the glades, I don't really mind rock scrapes in my base since that is expected but I ripped my pants this year when I ended up in an area were the only exit was through a thorn bush and while funny, now I need new pants damn it.

I wish Peak bought Mountain Creek, that is the mountain most in need of new management. Blue might have slipped a little but they still shat on MC.

The show is a good marketing ploy, but it will probably gag me to watch it so hopefully I don't get the channel. I can't believe the trail would NOT be open next year, it could have been open this year if they wanted to though so maybe they are just dragging it out. The snowmaking costs on it over the next 5 years will probably exceed the cost of cutting it, maybe the new owner didn't want to occur such an increase in snowmaking expense.

Yea I think of Big Boulder as the Bear Mountain/Boreal/Echo Mountain of our area, those are the one only correlations I can think of. (Although didn't someone open a small hill in New Hampshire in that vein?). I find it a little embarrasing that Camelback has been open days when Boulder has not, but it is what it is. I also am with TT C6, though I like Boulder Park (and the jumps now are not nearly as intimidating as they where mid season, they are a good size step down but not as monstrous as they were, its just slush out there go for it), NOT having Love park is dumb. There is a time for everyone when a 5-10 foot jump is intimidating, if I wanted to teach someone who has NEVER done jumps before, I would want Love open to play on, this is the time of year to learn and you have to start somewhere. Boulder needs to aim for a long season and high quality because they will never measure up to the other mountains on vertical. I'm not going to say that vertical doesn't matter, but if you want to make the fact that they have half the vertical of elsewhere OK with me, keep the long season and keep the quality good. They started strong, they had great quality all year, they are going long on the weekends, I'm slightly disappointed about the lack of midweek days, but I hope they continue to stay open on the weekends as long as they can. I probably finished up my season yesterday at Belleayre because sailing team is going to start practice this week, but the fact that I can now roll my winter sports season into my summer sports season without a break in between is amazing. I only had 3 weeks inbetween summer and winter last fall, Boulder will get my business next year. And you know who else stepped up big this year? Camelback. I will be going there a hell of a lot more after this year, I think we can start to stuff all the Camelback SUCKS crap after this year. Their park may not measure up, but for free riding they are always good, and this year their managment took a lot of steps in the right direction. Blowing snow this time of year? Staying open a lot more days than Blue and Jack Frost? Free passes for season pass holders? Good work Camelback. I will be getting out there more often with my non-park friends next year.

Congrats man thats crazy. I have been loving the park at Mount Snow this year, my favorite over everywhere else I've seen, so damn good for flow and their jumps just feel right.

That is it in a nutshell, anyone not seriously investing in fan guns is making a making a poor decision especially as the price of energy goes up Sno/JFBB are going to continue to ou tpace Blue/Shawnee/Mountain Creek and to some extent Camelback because of their snow making equipment.

Actually they're open later than Blue & Jack Frost, I'm impressed.

I saw that park at Stratton too but I don't think it is a good idea. The rails are too small, the jumps too small, they form bad habits. If the rail is 4' long then you go incredibly slow (opposite of what you should do), if the jump is just a little ramp that lands on flat you don't get a feel for the goal of getting past the knuckle (opposite of what you should do) so I'm not quite sure what you get out of it. The sweet spot is a 10' long rail that you actually get to ride for a bit, probably a ride on, probably a foot wide, with a mellow landing, low to the ground. There are 3 at Jack Frost's One Park. I think the best park for learning around here is Mountain Creeks though, they have so many trails they just setup one as the ideal mini park and it was really good for teaching this year. Same thing as One Park in size, but 8 rails like that instead of 3. A couple of mini jumps, and instead of just flat boxes they had some flat/down and mini battleship type stuff that was good too.

Welcome to America kid, heaven forbid we have corporations that have to make a profit. Did you ever realize that "corporations" are simply amalgamations of regular people? That most people who like their jobs care about what their company does? Especially upper management, running a ski resort is risky and low profit business. They need to make enough money in 4 months to cover their expenses for the year including payroll and maintenance, and hopefully have enough left over for upgrades. It doesn't come cheap. About the only thing I could see that they could do better than what they are doing, is if they just setup a park and said hike it whenever. They probably can't because their insurance, but I would say they are 1 step short of that ideal case.

I love slush you just need a good amount of wax. Speaking of, I need to wax my boards the last time I went out it was STICKY

Thanks for the pics, its amazing what a toll the consistent warmth does. A warm day or two and all in the rain in the world isn't an issue in january when the base is cold, but once it all starts to warm up it disappears all at once.

Yea I feel like it is not weddings, although it might be, they could conceivably be open this time of year so why schedule a wedding? What if they got 3 feet of snow? Plus who would want their wedding now with the mud & the chance of bad weather, just have it at a normal place or wait 4 weeks for the trees to start popping some leaves and the snow to be completely gone. One of the guys from my shop had his wedding on top of a mountain in vermont and it was awesome, but not a week after the place closed with all the mud and snow patches

You got that right, I'm not going to blame them for not making it clear, they have to cover a lot of info in not a lot of time. I know it was a all mountain twin but I was believing he meant symmetrical. Some of the stuff reps tell us though is just BS, a lot of times tiny differences get magnified into gods gift to skiing. Just watch as the industry walks away from 5 years of telling us how integrated bindings are the best thing since sliced bread, they are already starting to go back to regular mounts.

T*Maki had a point though, I was reading this thread and skipped your post until he quoted it and then I went back and read it. If you don't make it easy to read, people won't. I fall victim to that when I write posts that are too long and people ignore it. Keep it simple. As for his corrections, first off the shift key capitalizes not intends (thats tab) and that sounds obvious but you never capitalize anything in your post. I generally don't care about capitalization but it was just funny. My spelling sucks but Firefox has a spellcheck, beyond that endless paragraphs are the big thing. Don't bother indenting, don't bother with capital letters, don't bother with the ' in don't, none of that actually impacts what the message says, but put some line breaks in. When you start a new idea, put an empty line for those of us who skim (i.e. most people). As for the hikeable park, that is awesome. But there are a few things I'm thinking, first and foremost, why no weekends? It seems obvious to me that you would make more money on the weekends so there must be some reason (someone mentioned weddings? but it seems a bit early for that). What is the reason? Secondly, I know BC Mark can't condone this officially, but come on, the hikeable park is obviously hikeable you could just go up before that time period or on the weekends. I would love it if you guys just left it until it just was completely unskiable. Mountain Creek used to do that and it would last until may, sure the strip of snow between features was about 2 feet wide, but they just left it up there. Locals groomed it, locals filled the dirt holes between features with snow from the piles remaining. Then the last 3 years after the season was done Mountain Creek sent cats up to push all the table tops out so that it would melt evenly, and removed all the rails. Obviously something was making them spend money to prevent people from using it (probably insurance). It would be cool if you guys just left the snow in some piles for people to use as jumps, maybe take the rails out so they don't get trashed but leave a few small hikeable tables, people will use them.