method9455

That is a great video man, lots of style in the filming too

Thats just because Mad River Glen stores the bumps in the summer well

Ha yea, I am a snowboarder and a skier but primarily a snowboarder. I'm not saying that good snowboarders, hell even midly decent snowboarders, are bad. But on Floyds that day there was just a train of people on their heelside edge scraping down Floyds that should not have been there. Then to add insult to injury they did the same thing down the line under the chair lift exposing all kinds of rocks which is one of my favorites. Contrast that with the noobie reaction of a skier - the snow plow. In reality the snow plow displaces the snow sideways where as the falling leaf just pushes it downhill, ruining the trail. When people go down a trail out of their league they revert to that noobie instinct and on the weekends it trashes eash mountain. My feeling is that there is a big difference between pushing snow around sideways (ie moguls and the chop you get in the afternoons) and scraping it off. The first is repaired when the groomer goes over it again each night, the second is not because they generally groom going downhill so it doesn't get pushed back up. Plus in this case we're talking fresh snow on an off trail line under the chairlift, so that is just never getting repaired until the next snowstorm. As for the skiers going to boarding, I skied for 10, snowboarded for 6, and last year I bought ski boots again. It is not an either or thing, they are both great for different things and I missed skiing. On an icy day? Give me two edges please. Everything else I'll do on either, but on a powder day for god sakes give me a snowboard. I do find snowboarding more fun but once in a while I really like the feel of skis just laying out one turn and rolling into another is great. And the best snowboarding I've ever been good friends with went back to skiing. So much so that the sold all his snowboarding gear and went back entirely. Hardly an indication of a trend but from my point of few there is a period of time where people switch from skiing to snowboarding, and life is good. Then you realize that there is not much room left to get better on a snowboard with the terrain we have, and you get bored, so you go back to skiing and it is fresh and new again. Someday you switch to tele skiing and that is new and hard, its all about having a new challenge and more fun. But you never switch to ski blading because no matter how you slice it, that is just plain gay.

No dude, MY posts are from 2-3 am

Did he hit the coping or the deck? Because I can't imagine how hard you would have to ollie off the transition to clear the vert part with any kind of momentum horizontally too. What video was it where the guy starts on one outside part of the pipe, cuts in, and gaps the deck, the middle, the other deck, and lands on the outside? That was crazy

Nothing kills surfing time like a job, its rough

Yea I don't have an "agenda", I could care less which mountain "wins" beyond which one gets my day on the hill. Nothing ticks me off like bullshit though. Flea just ticked me off for lumping me in with the others, and if you look the posts are about 2 - 3 am, not exactly the time for clear thinking

Best internet forum post ... ever

I thought by intuition you meant that Rob doesn't actually hit the features so therefore he shouldn't have an opinion. And my point was that you don't hit them either.

Ski what exactly can you judge the park by then?

A million is easy, thats just 2500 trips up the Freedom Lift I wonder how long it would take to get a million vert at Boulder on their slow lifts

Another tip, whatever you do DO NOT LIFT YOUR GOGGLES UP. If you put your goggles up on your helmet the foam side that touches your face will get wet and it will never dry while you are there it is miserable. You can't ride without goggles because it stings, so if you get that foam wet you are basically set for a bad day from then on. The worst I had was up at Tremblant it was this really weird storm, we where leaving that day but we had a voucher so we went up for a run and it was extremely warm and my goggles (which have never fogged any other time ever) fogged like hell as did everyone elses and we could barely see 20 feet, coming down it was freezing rain crusting on the goggles with fog so you had to choose between stinging of ice pellets without the goggles or not being able to see, otherwise I have never had a problem doing it.

Yea say what you want about the guy but I still say he is tame compared to the soccer/baseball/football/basketball moms & dads out there.

Thats rough man, my girlfriend just got a bad concussion riding and she is having a hell of a time with it. Peoples sitting in blindspots cause a large number of accidents in the park and I have yet to see a good solution for it.

Ski - no offense taken. I can't be responsible for the idiocy of others who share my opinion, the fact that the park is full of 12 year olds with the IQ of 8 year olds means this board will get littered with them too, a lot of hits to the head probably doesn't help matters. I'm a nerd who rips on a snowboard, and I do a bit of park too. That makes me a minority of a minority of a minority, my opinion IS meaningless to Sno in terms of ticket sales. But on the other hand I think I come with some experiance they should hear, maybe not listen to but just get it out in the open. That fact that it is lost in a cacophony of "Sno iS GAYZORS" is out of my control. I'm sure the Sno guys watched them build the park every step of the way, and cut the pipe every step of the way, but so did the Mountain Creek guys and they blew it as soon as they started having to do it. It is not a knowledge thing, it is a motor skills thing. Driving a pipe cutter is hard, a lot harder than it looks. Basically you a driving a mac truck for 500 feet trying to avoid any variance in it, oh and its skid steer, oh and the snow is slipping. It just takes practice. Thats why you bring in a guy who knows what hes doing for competitions, thats why it never comes out right the first time, thats why Mount Snow tore theirs down this year mid season and did it again even with a guy who has building them for 10 years including the XGames. No it is not rocket science, but its not easy either. I know how hard it is and I'm impressed Sno pulled it off, like I said I hope they do it better in the future too. The amount of snow they made this year would make a 500-600 foot long pipe if it had dirt underneith. I'm not ripping on the local guys for being incompetent, that is just the way it is. I could tell you how to build a pipe until I'm blue in the face, but put me in a cat and I'm going to suck at it. There is a reason I just design things. But I still have 2 main problems with the place. 1) Their designer is a consultant. No matter how you slice it, they outsourced it to Ryan Neptune. Every engineering project I've been on, as soon as you outsource something when shit hits the fan its a long wait to get it fixed. No matter what. You can see it with Sno. If the guys are watching so intently why did the 13' pipe suck for so long? Why was the park a disaster until this event? 2) If they had built a great park this year instead of the pipe, I would have gone. I got to Blue, Camelback, Jack Frost, Big Boulder, Shawnee, Mountain Creek, Hidden Valley, and I'll get Bear this weekend or next this year, but I may or may not get to Sno depending on when they close. I had to wait until the end of the season for a visit because there was no reason to go. It would have been better to invest that money in a park this year and go for the pipe next year, look at the two "Best" parks in my view, Boulder & Mountain Creek - neither has a pipe. Then others count Blue as the best park, it has a 13' pipe. If they did a park as good as Boulder with a 13' pipe done as well as Camelback they would have been the best park in PA. Obviously they can crank out the snow for that park, they just chose to work on the wrong thing in my opinion. In my book, its a bad decision. I don't think anyone can say its a bad thing Sno got bought out, and it is going up, but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of room for improvement. I would put it 5th in park around here behind MC, JFBB, Blue, Bear (In that order) even with the Superpipe, somehow I don't think thats what they where aiming for. In terms of pipe they may be #1, but I'm not convinced a 22' pipe done ok is better than a 13' pipe done perfectly nor a 18' pipe done perfectly. I know for sure an 18' pipe done ok is worse than a 13' pipe done perfectly. That said, I'm trying to get up there to hit the pipe, if they stay open they will get my money, and again in the future when they get the pipe open next year. I hope they keep working at it, it remains to be seen if the Mountain Creek one is toast or not and although Blue & Camelback had great pipes, they are not superpipes. I just think they can't neglect the park until March if they want to seriously claim to be an "olympic training ground" or "the most jibs in the region".

That is so true, I let Camelback's employees & park deter me from going there for 2 years after having gone there nearly every weekend of every winter as a child. I went back this year 3 times to meet up with people I knew, and had a blast each time. Camelback still has the best on trail free riding in the poconos. Blue may be steeper in a few places, Jack Frost might have some better stuff that is unmarked, but combine Camelback's terrain with high speed lifts on a weekday with no crowds and it can not be beat anywhere in the Poconos.

Depends how much you fall and how water proof your gear is. If you are in a good quality shell and don't fall much, it really doesn't feel any different. Rain doesn't go through my pants, jacket, goggles or helmet so as long as I have a good face cover it is all the same. The snow is kind of interesting, grippy but fast, sometimes a bit slippery if its on the edge between rain and ice. If you fall a lot you will be miserable though because the water pools in spots and gets you soaked, but if you stay standing you will be fine. I have probably a dozen days in the rain and I don't regret going for any of them.

Yea, when we where there there was a club entirely made out of ice from the roof to the shot glasses. We went over winter break and it was loaded with hot girls, lots of bars. Probably a lot the allure is the drinking age I go out to parties and drink here but I'm only 20 so I can't get into clubs and bars yet, up there we got drinks at 17 without ever being bothered

This season is never ending At least its getting closer, I passed it on my way to work every day over the winter. While it might be the ugliest thing I have ever seen, I'm definitely hitting it up once it opens.

Yea nor is it worth it for skiing. I had an opportunity to get up there for free by plane twice so I took it but I wouldn't drive past Jay or Stowe by any means. Going up for spring break if you are a college kid might be though, the town is unbeatable.

I definitely want to hit the pipe its a question of if I will be able to get there before the season closes, if they are open the weekend of the 22-23 I will probably drive up but until then I have plans.

-Flea a lot of that stuff is referenced back to well before you joined (January 8th, 2008? Lets not talk about creditability, my opinions are rooted in actions of Sno over the last 2 years, yours are in what? 8 weeks?, and you said Elk has a great park? What?) -You can't compare Palmolive ads and Ford MPG numbers (which if you want to get technical are NOT Fords numbers, but the government EPA testing numbers which the government fucks up the testing for i.e. excluding idling at red lights from MPG estimates lowering the Prius's MPG advantage, but now I'm getting technical) to cold hard facts. Here is what they said before the season:

Yea up at Tremblant there are a bunch of narrow trails, some of them narrower than a cat width so they are ungroomed and it is awesome. My favorite trail there was this little trail that swooped into a huge wide open groomer, you come flying out of this tunnel through the woods into this giant expanse of snow.

I really enjoy narrow trails, I dunno there is something about them that is a lot of fun, especially riding with your friends as a group and just ripping down one close together, it adds a lot to it.

You are wrong on several counts 1) I couldn't give a shit what my post count is, its more an indication at my own failings to get work done that I have this many posts 2) Its not about how good or bad the park IS. We're not hating on the park but the people/companies who CLAIM for it, you don't see me ripping on Shawnee? Or Elk? Or Hidden Valley? Or Belleayre? Or Hunter? Or Windham? Yet I know every single one of those mountains have worse parks than Sno. In fact Sno might beat Camelback and I don't berate Camelback that much (it is debatable, but whatever). The point is that none of those mountains CLAIMED to have a great park and what not, Camelback did that last year and we jumped on them then too. 3) Why do we care if they are claiming a good park? Because if they don't have criticism they won't improve. If we all sit here and say wow great job Sno this is perfect, will they do anything better next year? Where is the incentive? This is why you get grades in school, if they just gave everyone a pat on the back do you think kids would work harder? Plus we don't other people to waste their time & money at one mountain when they would be better off at another. All you have on here is creditability, if you burn that you have nothing. 4) What is so wrong with it? Do you really thing that the park is that good? Sure they put in a good effort and a lot of money but what are we going to hurt Sno's feelings? Come on get real its a corporation, not the new kid in school. We are hardly bullies to point the flaws in a place that is trying to get us to spend $70 a day to come visit. there are two ways Sno can take our criticism. They can scoff us (as Boulder did to me last year for my JibLab rant) and ignore it, or they can learn from it. Camelback obviously doesn't learn much from us, Bear Creek on the other hand definitely does. Ride Camelback and ride Bear Creek in the park and see who has the right strategy. 5) We rip on it because it is REDICULOUS. Sure they put up a pipe this weekend and its going to be open for 4 weeks or whatever, but honestly, they claimed "Best Park in PA" for about 2 years now and haven't shown jack shit for it. I don't think you would ever find someone worried that a competition was coming up at Boulder, do they have hard enough features? Mind you I was riding harder features on an open park last Saturday at Boulder than the kids competiting in what is supposedly "One of the biggest competitions on the east coast" at Sno. Oh yea and they where installing a giant concrete staircase at the time, downhill of the 3 biggest jumps PA has ever seen. It is just laughable. And go to Blue, there are 4 jumps in a row that are better than all the jumps Sno has scattered around the mountain. Or go to Mountain Creek, there are more innovative features on one trail than Sno has ever had. Its just laughable, in a makes you cry with frustration sort of way.