method9455

I should really write it up and post it somewhere, maybe with a video. I've given that advice probably 10 times to people in person and countless online and it always works out. Just go fast, minimize the waiting between hits, bend your knees, and look at the end.

Bear has said they have tried to get snowflex before and couldn't actually get a real quote out of the company. Good product, no US support for it. That is too bad, I could see a snowflex jib park going over big at Bear all year round. Obviously they have thought about it but it is not going to happen. That being said, it might work for jumps and jibs but it would never ever work for pipe. You have to hold a serious edge in pipe riding beyond what snowflex allows you to do.

I went over the holidays and it wasn't as bad as Mountain Creek on the weekends there, but mostly because there are so many more lifts. Mountain creek has 1 lift per peak basically and the line is out of control. JFBB also has 4 separate park runs so you can get away from the crowds. I find One Park at JF to be very uncrowded most of the time.

Excellent report man. Not sure how I feel about the bolding, it is great if you just want to read the bold stuff but tough on the eyes if you want to read it all. Good idea though we'll see how it pans out. A lot of people don't like GSS's long reports, but I like them. It only takes a second to read and a bunch of detail is more fun then "I went to Blue, it was good.". Couple notes. East Mountain is challenge, t-bolt, rivershot. West mountain is the flatter stuff. Janes lane sucked as a park last year, that trail is much more fun for free riding than park. I might be mistaken because I haven't been to JF in about a week, but when I was there it was a 3 jump line in a row, with the 2nd being the easiest jump and the 3rd being the hardest. I know it looks a bit different but try it out. There may or may not still be a mini jump at the start of the park, I am counting down the jump line in a row, the one in the middle is the easiest try that out. Flat boxes are the way to go until you get used very comfortable on them, then progress to steel rails. The thing is if there is only 1 or 2 features you hit on the way down, you only get a little practice. As you get better and you start hitting everything you are getting 4 or 5 times as many hits per run so you get a lot more practice in per run and you progress faster, you just have to be able to do them all. So stick with it, it will come and the more you learn the more it builds on itself. When hitting a box, whether it be ride on or gap on with a solid jump, still give it a little pop. You don't have to jump like mad or even bother ollieing for most of this stuff. Just come in real low with your knees bent and stand up so that you are fully extended before you leave the lip, it is not like you are jumping for a dunk in basketball. Just stand up slow and steady you could probably count 1-1 thousand. It just pumps you up the lip a bit and gives you the perfect air to glide smoothly on the rail. If you jump super high and come crashing down on it, it is unstable. If you ride up the ramp without moving it is unstable. This sets you up later when you want to start ollieing hard for big rails, so good to practice it now. Definately exit the ramp flat based. Make sure to bend your knees a little when locking onto the rail and a bit more when you land. When I was learning how to sail competitively one of my coaches told us that you don't want to ride the boat like a bronco, you want to move the boat around you like a tennis racquet at your will. A snowboard is the same way. If you ride up and it feels like you are out of control, you are going to fall. If you are in control and it is an extension of you, you will do better. It is a mind thing the whole way but it helps to think of it as an extension of your feet not something you are riding. If you are coming off the rail, don't fight it. This is what you just described as your fall today, your board decided to go one way, and your instict was to fight it and your body went the other. It is a common mistake and it hurts like hell. On a big rail if your board goes out and you fall forward you hit your shins or stomach and then crash on your arms/face like you did today. If you go the other way you hit your knees backwards and then hit the snow on your tailbone which sucks too. Don't fight it. You will learn to bail as soon as you feel it wavering off one side, just hop off in that direction. Even if you fall at first you will fall on snow. At this point now when I don't lock in a rail I just bail and ride away and continue down the run, sometimes you are just off a bit. If you try to fight it, you won't stay on. Its not like a video game where you lock onto the rail - at least for a long time. When you are a beginner better to do 50% and ride away than 75% and fall on it. Plus falls break your rhythmn, even if you are only getting a bit and riding away you are practicing landing, board control, thinking quickly, and a bunch of other things. Ok you are approaching the rail, look at the rail quick but your eyes on the end of it. Look at the end the whole way not your feet, keep looking at it and then look at the landing once you can see it. Your body follows your eyes, always. For speed, it is better to go faster. Always always always go faster. Unless you are overshooting the landing of the jump, go faster. You want to be going a little faster than you are comfortable with. If you fall on a rail when going slow, you are going to hit the rail. When going fast, you might fall but reach the end and hit the snow instead of the rail, that is always prefereable. You have to balance for less time since you are on the rail for less time. The ramp throws you higher so you don't have to worry about catching it. Your trajectory is over the rail, if you watch a lot of pros do downslope rails it is almost like they are jumping over the rail and just kissing it on the way down, and you watch beginners they have 100% of their weight on it riding it out. No matter what your body tells you, go faster. The only except is a rainbow rail or battleship box, it could launch you, but that is cool anyway. But on flat rails, flat-down rails, down rails, and up rails, you can not go too fast. This is my #1 most important tip for everything. I can't stress this enough, 99% of what beginners to wrong is going too slow. You can Finally, it is just practice. I remember doing my first 50-50, it was an 8 foot rail double barrel, ride on. It took me an hour to work up the courage, and a couple trys to get about 50% of it. It was my 3rd day snowboarding, definately shouldn't have been in the park. Later that year I could go faster, I started hitting a mini battleship, I hiked it all afternoon and the rush I got from a 2 foot high battleship was awesome. Dialed that, moved on to gap on flat boxes and flat rails. I spent most of that first season only doing flat rails/boxes of various shapes and sizes, with a few mini tables and battleships and what not. Then all of a sudden you cross a line and you can do 80% of the rails instead of 20% of them, practically overnight. Then you can 50-50 all of them, and then you start learning new tricks. It is a hell of a lot of fun, and you can do it without hurting yourself too bad. And hey, after 5 years I still don't land them all. Here is a pic from this week, I have a 12" by 4" bruise from trying to spin onto a rail, I landed it a few times, lost concentration one time and ended up hitting the rail on my waist at full speed. But I got back up, and did it again. By the end of the day I had a new trick and it felt great. It was the worst thing that could happen and you know what? It didn't hurt much at all it is the anticipation of what could happen that holds you back from doing it. After you fall, get back up and do it again. Sometimes I unstrap and hike it rather than sit on the lift, if you sit on the lift you think about it for 5 minutes and it gets in your head. Better to get the fear out of your head by just doing it. The people sitting there trying to get their balls together will fall because they are worried too much. Push yourself as far as you feel comfortable, know your limits, but shorten the time between hits and you will do better. Don't bite off more than you can chew, and you will be fine. If you ever want to ride I like to teach, I taught one of my friends to do her first rail this week, and I'm up at JFBB fairly regularlly.

I'd like to see some pictures too, what we saw last year looked good but the Sno riders are light on pictures/video compared to JFBB, Mountain Creek, and Bear park rats. Even the blue mountain riders take more pictures than you guys.

My instructor at Mount Snow had heard of Boulder. It is starting to gain some rep from the early opening and late closings. They took the killington play book and combined it with Bear Mountain, CA and are winning. I would love a pipe somewhere nothing even comes close but it needs to be done right. Boulder could do it right I'm sure except finding a spot. I think Snowdrift was moguls at one point but I'm not sure. We should move this to the boulder forum. Oh and do you know if they're putting the boarder cross features rollers/banked turns etc back on bunny schuss?

Does Nips go to a public high school or do one of those traveling school things? Have you ever looked at Mount Snow academy its high school + daily coaching I saw some of them practicing at Mount Snow this week and they looked really good.

good news that it is covered, bad news that it was empty. No snow in my backyard syndrome strikes again. Hopefully it will snap cold again soon and people will get back out there.

I dunno Boulder certainly could pull off the snow making required for it with their weather advantages, but where the F are they going to put it? I feel like the area where there used to be a pipe at JF is doable without too much tree cutting on Exhibition, but you would definately rather have it at Boulder to keep the "scene" intact. I mean a good super pipe is going to be about half the length of the mountain. I guess they could take out the tubing lanes nearest to freedom lift and regrade that, if I remember correctly there are already fan guns there. I feel like the far tubing lanes would be enough combined with the ones at JF to keep tubing people happy. I mean if you are tubing how much do you care? Maybe add a few lanes on the other side. But even then wouldn't you rather have it on the lake side by the plaza where everyone is hanging out to watch pipe riders? That is a SHOWCASE feature and hiding it out behind freedom would be dumb. I feel like putting it at the bottom of boulder park right above the lodge would be sweet where the plaza is but there is just not enough vert to do it without ruining boulder park. I think the two biggest factors are motivation and weather. The weather at Mountain Creek was too fickle for them to get it done with their snowmaking. If they had snowmaking equal to JFBB or Sno then maybe they could have. But they have all the motivation in the world. I see the motivation for Boulder, they are trying to usurp mountain creek as THE PLACE for park in our area. Sno might want to claim it but they just can't yet. The pipe would put them on the map for some people, but I don't think enough people would be drawn to it for it ever to pay off. I feel like Sno should aim for a solid park but focus more on the free riding more like Blue and Camelback than Boulder. If you look the places with worse terrain Bear, Boulder, Mountain Creek, are much better at park because they need it to stay competitive. Sno doesn't really need a giant pipe to be competitive, and a superpipe is one of those things that you need to bet the farm on or it won't be good. A half assed superpipe is worse than no superpipe because they just wasted a huge amount of snow that could be used elsewhere. Mountain Creek used to make snow on the pipe at the expense of almost everything else during crunch time because the Grand Prix was coming to town and it would be a disaster if they didn't get the pipe done in time - like last year. And now they lost the Grand Prix and all the publicity that came with it because they screwed up one year.

Its a problem I pick up way too many responsibilities and never have time left for snowboarding. I had this whole winter break free for snowboarding and then my internship in the city wanted me to work so I'm there now, not sure how often, but enough that it is putting a damper on my riding. I guess I'm just going to have to start going on weekends as much as I hate the crowds.

University of Delaware. It is in Newark, DE. I don't really know how far it is from the mountains but our ski club goes to Blue weekly. I know Bear is a bit closer. I live in northern NJ, work in NYC and ski Mountain Creek/JFBB/Camelback/Shawnee/Blue & head up to Hunter/Belleayre. JFBB is my favorite this year.

Put some pictures on Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/22765548@N06/ I wanted to try it out, but they don't make it easy to hotlink thumbnails from the forum so back to imageshack I suppose.

I'm a skeptic by nature, I must be wrong here sorry. I just found it odd that he repeats things like good good good and yes yes yes and what not, which is the ridiculous stereotype of Indian people. Never once have I heard one of my friends parents do that. And his equipment is listed as "rice and curry", again with the stereotype. And customer service rep, dunking donuts, its all so cliche that it caught my racism-o-meter. I haven't seen anything that would point to the contrary, except that GSS says he is legit and I believe GSS so if he knows him then he is legit.

thanks for the TR. Sad to hear about the park, it was good 2 years ago but then parkbuilder went north and the consensus was that it hasn't been the same sense. Parks are really about the people behind them and when you get a guy who knows what he is doing it all falls into place. It is a lot harder than it looks. How was the trail count?

I'm not sure when they are going to start using it. My class was the first to take it and all the schools I applied to explicitly said they would not use it for admission or scholarships, but some of the ivy's did take it as another thing to differentiate people. It is still out of 800 per section, so if someone asks what I got for the older score I just add the math and verbal scores, and the new score you add in the writing, you don't take your percent and adjust it for 1600 you just ignore the 3rd. This is also different than what the scoring was about 15 years ago. A 1600 in the 80s was nearly impossible, but now is certainly achievable. I got a 760/760/720 on the 3 sections which is about 4 questions wrong over the whole thing with 3 or 4 questions skipped, that would have landed me about about 50 points lower in each section under the old scoring. And for anyone who thinks the SATs are fair - look how much I know about gaming the system, you learn that from tutoring that rich parents can afford and poorer ones can't. Are the SAT scores of inner city kids lower because they have a worse education or because they didn't get the ubiquitous SAT tutoring that suburban kids get? My scores jumped about 200 points with the tutoring which landed me a full ride, a little investment goes a long way. Other people who can't make that investment don't get the scores and therefore don't get the scholarships. It is really unfair.

Pipe is great, it is the most intense of all features, the most technically demanding, and the most fun. Dropping into a perfectly shaped soft super pipe at full speed and just grabbing that big method off the first wall is the best feeling I have ever had snowboarding. (what you didn't think my name is method for nothing right?). But I voted that you guys should fill it in. My opinion - a bad pipe is worthless and dangerous. Either make it right, or don't do it. What does it take to make it right? 1) Anything less than a 11 foot pipe is a waste. You don't start getting the "feel" for it until you are at that size, a 13 or 15 is better but at that point just go all the way to 19. 19 is a "superpipe" but in reality it is a lot easier than a 13 foot pipe because the transition is bigger. I haven't hit a 22 foot pipe yet, but I imagine it is even better. Mini pipes are entirely different. a small wall means you can't pump the tranisition, and they aren't really going to be vert, and the landing is tiny, but they are great for hand plants, slashes, small spins, stalls, and a little air. But that is the kind of thing a cat could shape kind of on the spot without planning, take some snow, push it around, it doesn't need dirt underneith it for some fun mini pipe stuff. 2) Ok so now we agree to do it "right" you need at least an 11 or a 13 foot pipe. So you need all that snow, you have to of course make the snow, but to get the pipe right you have to push it up and down the hill "kneading" it like dough until all the air is out of if. And the water drains, it takes a week to knead it right. Then you have to shape it, then you have to cut it. It is extremely expensive and difficult to do. All that time, money, snow, diesel, cat driver time could be better thrown at the park. 3) Lets say that you do eventually get up this perfect 11 foot pipe, now you have to cut it so that it stays right. Great you bring in a good cutter and it is perfect. That nasty january thaw hits every year, hitting Bear harder than any other PA mountain, and your pipe half melts. What do you do? You can't blow snow on an opened pipe without ruining it or you have to start all over again kneading and pushing and cutting. You can't just "patch" a wall it just falls out again. Or you let it melt a bit and have people dodging dirt spots where the dirt has stuck through. At the end of the day all that time, money, snow, and cat time is better put into a better park. I would be suprised if even with a concerted effort you could get a pipe done right solely because of your weather. Pipes are the most fickle of all park features, the most difficult to maintain, and the most snow intensive. Because of that most of PA doesn't really have access to a good pipe. I guess Camelback has the best one and even at that it blows. Blue's is ok on occasion. JFBB doesn't even try. Roundtop had the super pipe for a while but it is gone now. Shawnee's is a joke. Sno has one but I haven't tried it but apparently it is ok. The only good one in our region WAS at Mountain Creek, and this will be their second year in a row without one. They had a beautiful superpipe, but they had hte Grand Prix coming to make it worth it, and one of the best cutters in the world coming to do it for that event. Even then, it was only open from late january to early march each year. And their weather is better than yours. Since there is no good pipe, there aren't many good pipe riders. Unless you travel, where do you practice? I learned at Tremblant, Mount Snow, and being a Mountain Creek local I got a dozen good days in theirs each year. Even at Mountain Creek which HAD a good pipe, there would only be a handful of guys on it each day. And then you turn your head and see dozens and dozens crowding the 8 features in the beginner park. We would hike all day and see a 15 guys who could get air, five of them could grab during it, and maybe two of them could spin. And I couldn't get air on my park board, only with my stiffer free ride board, I bet a lot of guys don't have the gear to do it and don't even know it. And then a lot of the jibbers in the park are skateboarders who transplanted, to be a good pipe rider it is a lot more like racing than jibbing. You are going faster than anything but a big jump, you need fine edge control, technique to pump the transitions, good control in the air, land well, hold a solid edge across at a fast pace, and do it again for 7 or 8 hits in a pipe. Most guys on noodly jib boards can't do that. You would see them get one good hit and then wash out their edge and fall in the middle of the pipe either because they couldn't handle the speed or their board was too soft to handle the speed. If you put in a line of short flat boxes it would get 5 times the number of users per day for 5% of the maintenance. If you took the snow and cat time the pipe needed you could build solid sized table tops. It would spread out crowds on other features, allow you to be more creative. Build a bordercross course with rollers and banked turns, with a mini pipe along the way and a quarter pipe at the bottom. more people will have fun with that than a pipe. There a lot of things you can do with the space and snow that will lead to more people being happy. If there is a pipe people will complain if it is not perfect. If it is perfect they will complain that is it full of noobs or not big enough, if there is not a pipe, people aren't going to complain too much. Where can they go if they are complaining? There is not one good pipe I can find south of Vermont. But add some more features and people will be happier.

Mountain Creek closed as well

Mount Snow took a month to open a superpipe during snowmaking temperatures, with dirt underneath. Mountain Creek used to take a similar time frame. I'm sorry but a 22' pipe without dirt underneath is just stupid in the amount of snow it will take. The Grand Prix made it worth it at MC but as soon as that was gone, the pipe was out. Roundtop had one and lost it. The cost is just too high and a thaw destroys them. With dirt underneith and concerted effort SNO might be able to swing one, but unless there is an event this year that is do or die without the pipe, I can't see it happening. I wish it did, pipe is my favorite discipline in the park. But if Mountain Creek couldn't make it worth with more money, park rats, exposure, and vistors than SNO ever will, I don't think SNO can. Sure it is colder but you are talking an even BIGGER pipe with no dirt underneith, and no event to make it worth it? No way.

This is on January 27th right? I'm feeling like I want to do it (boarderX for me)

damn that sucks a lot, the easy shit always kills you. GSS is right though even 8 weeks is only mid march, you should get 2 or 3 weeks at the end of the season to ride.

Thats true. I never really hit JFBB on weekends so I wouldn't know, although on the holiday week I went a couple days and Rivershot got skied off practically immediately. How much shorter is the East Mountain lift than the minimum? I feel like that lift could be pushed down and back at the base and up and forward at the top a bit if it needed to be longer. I wouldn't hate on faster laps mid week but I feel like if it was the only high speed lift it would attract too many people. If any of the lifts where to go to high speed, I would like to see it be Exhibition. I get much more antsy lapping the park than lapping East Mountain because the run is so much shorter in the park. On east mountain there are lots of turns, some time in the trees, and on the lift up its always more of the mind set, hmm which way should I go this time? It goes quickly. Over on exhibition it is just painful. Plus it serves more trails than the East mountain lift so it would keep a lot of people over there around it.

Sorry then, I just found it hard to believe anyone would list their equipment as "Rice and curry". Not hating on PA schools but at my college all the racists seem to come from Virginia and PA.

vail mid week and vail weekend are two different beasts

Monday 1/7 - Left the house at 3:30 am, met the crew at Dunkin Donuts and hit the road at 4am. Got to the hotel at 8am, got our tickets and dumped the bags and beer in the rooms. Half the crew headed for breakfast and the hardcore ones (my girlfriend, myself, and one other guy) headed up and got first chair at 9, a couple oranges and granola bars was all the breakfast we needed. Did a few laps of Standard, Snowdance, off the Canyon express. Summit was covered in the fog thick enough that you couldn't see 20 feet, not worth heading up there. Overcast skys all day even though fog lifted eventually, around 35~40 degrees. Real spring skiing, grippy and soft but not slushy yet. Not much melting, great cover on anything man made, decent cover on natural trails, 100% trail count. After about 6 runs off Canyon Express I started lapping Un Blanco Gulch to get a feel for the features. With a 4.5 minute ride up and a 3 or 4 minute ride down 6-8 runs an hour was easy. Got about 4 or 5 park runs in from 10-10:45, then went to meet up with the coach for my park lesson from 11-1. Went up the gulch, worked on a few rails that I couldn't do at the start of the day (street style single barrel down rails), then went over to the mini park to start working on front 3's. Hiked a 10 foot jump for about an hour until I got front 3's for the first time. That was awesome. Went back to the gulch and worked on just small stuff there, I had too much weight on my heels on jumps which explains why I always seem to want to rotate frontside on my jumps. I was popping too late, could feel a big improvement there. Well worth the money, I learned a lot. Met up with the crew at 1 for a little lunch, then headed out and rode (9 of us) on Carinthia, the north face, the main face. Stayed until closing. Run of the day was One More Time, narrow and windy, a bunch of dirt patches that made it interesting, crazy with 9 of us trying to get through it and a glade area that had plenty of snow to screw around on. Ate at Deagan's tavern, mad good food. Where drunk by 7, hot tubbed it, played apples to apples, asleep by 11. Tuesday 1/8 - Left the hotel at 8:15, hit the Cup and Saucer for some ham, egg, and cheese bagels. Brought PB&J and other snacks in a bag for lunch - free bag check means $0 for lunch. Bluebird day, mid 40s. I rode in just an underarmor shirt and boxers, with snow pants and was fine all day without a jacket. Snow melting very fast. Actually slushy today, a lot of trail closings and bare spots. You could see the dirt spots expanding as the day went on. Same schedule, hit up canyon express, warmed up on park. Had a lesson from 11-1. Learned 270 to front board for the first time. Started doing nollies on some things. 180 on to 50-50, first switch 50-50, started to doing shiftys and tail grabs, took a hard slam on a 270 but kept going. Again great lesson, definately worth it. Picked up a lot of little things in 2 hours and lots of new tricks that just open up options. Really brought my confidence back after last year so I feel like I'm progressing again. Went out with the crew, hit the north face harder. My gf took a good slam on one of the north face trails. We where gang riding again, I was leading, went over a headwall and there was slush bomb that just took me out. She hit it right behind me and backflipped/spun and landed on her head at pretty much full speed. She slid down and hit me and then we slid down pretty much the rest of the way. It screwed up her neck for the rest of the week but we kept riding. Hit the park at the end of the day to get some pictures/video. I was too confident on a 15 foot jump so hit it without checking it. The sun had gone down and the snow gotten faster, I took it and popped way out over the landing and dropped down a long long way. I knew it was going to be bad as soon as I left the lip. Screwed up my front (right) leg. It didn't hurt immediately so I hit another two rails and a jump for a nasty shifty over a 25 footer, but when I got to the bottom I was in a lot of pain. Took one last run, the guys did a no-shirt run right under canyon express because it was so hot, tryed to get a flying V coordinated but it was too hard. I tied my underarmor around my neck like a cape. A bunch of little kids on the lift yelled for us, the lifties laughed their ass off at the bottom. If it was camelback they would have taken our tickets but the Mount Snow guys thought it was funny. After that I could barely walk back to the car. Got some swelling in my knee and ankle, and my calf hurt all night. Tuesday night we knew wednesday night was a dud so it was a shit show, more drinking & apples to apples. Hot tub, pool, went to bed late. Wednesday - woke up to hail, pouring rain, everything. Went up to the mountain and it looked haggard. Trail count dropped from 100 to 40. We got a voucher for another day, the customer service lady was really depressed about how much money they where losing, I felt kind of bad but there was no way I was riding in hail. I will ride in rain but not hail that is just dangerous. It actually cleared to be a bluebird day by 12. If my leg weren't fucked I would have gone but still couldn't really walk. I could stretch but as soon as I put weight on it it hurt like crazy. Kind of was thinking I had fractured it but it didn't hurt enough for that. One more night of partying with everyone, but not as hard. Still had a great time. Thursday - everyone left in the morning. My gf and I stayed and went to stratton. My leg was feeling a lot better and her neck was getting back in shape. I switched my bindings from duck to race stance so I would use all different muscles and it helped a lot. Still couldn't do much, only hit greens & blues, got about 8 or 9 runs in over 6 hours. I had to stop every few hundred feet. Conditions were ok considering how bad wednesday weather was. Not many bare spots, they where pushing the snow around and had made some. Lots and lots of death cookies, the rattling sucked on my leg. Sugar in parts, bulletproof ice where the groomers missed, and slushy where the sun hit. Another blue bird day probably 35. Mount Snow was making snow when we passed, stratton was not. All the parks at Stratton were closed. If ever I was to be hurt on a day of riding, this was it. Didn't feel bad about going easy one bit. At least I got to see a new mountain and talk to a lot of people about mountains and riding, Stratton on the weekdays is ok but I would never want to go on the weekend. Yuppie as hell but the terrain is on par with Mount Snow. Head to head I can render a judgement because I didn't try the blacks, but I prefer the atmosphere at Mount Snow. The parks looked better at Snow as well. Still had lots of fun. Pictures to come. Note on the lessons - I had Andrew Santangelo at Mount Snow, and would highly recommend him. I've never had a lesson before but it taught me more than I could have imagined. I learned more in 4 hours than I thought I could learn in a week. 2 hours is about all you can do in a row, after that you are too tired, but 1 wouldn't be enough. So figure out how many 2 hour sessions you can afford and go with that. Tuesday was his day off but he came in anyway because he likes teaching park. It was entirely worth the money. Note on the park - I really really liked the flow in Un Blanco Gulch. It is obviously longer than BB but it isn't much longer than Blue's Sidewinder or Mountain Creek's park. I like how it is right under a HS quad so you can lap it fast, I like that the lift runs over it so you can check people out the whole time, keeps your stoke up. I really like how few gapers there where. I loved their ramps on jumps. Very very smooth, they had good kick but a much longer transition so you have more time to pop. Their rails themselves are not up to par with Mountain Creek, JFBB, Sno, or Bear. They are about even with Blue's. Their setups are good though so it works out. The jumps are a bit better. It was the best I have seen the Gulch, in past years they put in too many features and you had to land and jump into a hard stop immediately to setup for the next, it just flowed so nice this year. The Vermonster is nasty but the jumps at BB are bigger gaps. The Vermonster landings are bigger so they are safer. Ramps are about the same. Jibs are about the same except for a big ass battleship box in the Vermonster. Slower lift over there though, I liked the gulch better. Grommet was the right size for a learning park, BB is kind of missing that this year but I hear Camelback has a good one. Overall, a damn good week. We keep getting screwed this time of year in Vermont, but with a big crew it was so much fun. I don't regret my injuries at all I didn't miss much, and I'm healing already. A small price to pay for learning a dozen new things in the park. My friends who were intermediates have caught up with us so now I'm confident that next year we can take the whole crew to a bigger/harder mountain. Last year we had to split up and half did greens and half did blacks so now we're unified and doing blue/black all day. Some are even doing trees with me now. So I guess Jay is still out but Stowe could be in.