method9455

Agree with what romemadman said about hunter. It is a great place to take someone on their first day, but from then on until they can do blacks/double blacks and enjoy it, all day, it is not the place. Hotshots love it because it has the gnarliest trails south of Vermont, but aside from Belt Parkway there is nothing for intermediates. I assume you are talking your child who is probably an intermediate/blue skier, so it wouldn't be the place. As for Stratton, its a good fit for a trip but the US Open that week will make it more crowded/expensive than usual. Okemo or Mount Snow or Bromely are probably better choices. I'm staying at Mount Snow next week for 5 days and we all have the free stratton tickets too so we're just going to drive from our place at Snow over for a day at Stratton to mix it up, and then just go back to Snow that afternoon. I think its like a 40 minute drive each way which is no big deal. I have done Mount Snow and Okemo but not Bromely. I like them for a trip with intermediates a lot, plenty of trails but not too much that is over their head. I personally thing Mount Snow is a bit better for a mixed group than Okemo becuase Okemo is kind of all intermediate, while Mount Snow does have some more challenging stuff, and a better park. But you can't really go wrong with either. Going up farther for Killington/Stowe/Jay all the normal recomendations isn't worth it until you are bored by the blacks in southern vermont, unless you are interested in the town of Stowe which is the nicest in vermont.

True they should take the picnic table out of the plaza and put it at the bottom of freedom, and put in the long down rail in the plaza. it would fit better, the picnic table would get very used by the kids in freedom.

I think people suck at measuring jumps by eye because they have no experience measuring things that size by eye. Unless you are a boater and are used to saying that boat is 24' that one is 46' that one is 30', what do people measure in that size? People are good at measuring small stuff because we use inches, and yards from a football field, and thats about it. Think this, its 90 feet from homeplate to 1st base on a baseball field, is it that far from the lip to the knuckle? I've never seen a jump that big in my whole life, and one that half that is big enough to park a full sized bus on - thats a 45 footer. So when people are talking about a 70 foot jump, you are talking a jump that a full school bus and an SUV can be parked easily on top of the deck. Not often seen. I have seen one legit that size at Mount Snow 3 years ago, and it scared the crap out of me from the lift just looking at it.

It is certainly easier to tweak a ramp than the landing, it shouldn't be too hard to fix with a little cat work.

In jumps it was, rails it was debatable. I'm not hating on it at all the two jumps where fun with big landings I'm just looking forward to having it really built up we all know that was just filler while they waited for a cold snap. I'm all for that, but last year it was great so I'm excited to see it again. Especially since boulder park is a bit too big for me except for the first jump and the plaza, but freedom is a little too small. Love park is the sweet spot for a guy riding like me.

No he is right, the rebuild on the jumps in freedom sucks hard. They are too tall for their length. You have a 10 foot high ramp with a 3 foot gap, and then one just as high with 0 gap, and then you have a 10 foot step down that is impossible to get speed for and drops you hard. Make the first one 6 feet high with a 5 foot gap, same thing for the second one, and make the last one a bit shorter but same drop and it would be good. Right now you burn so much speed going into the 2nd jump because you can't air high (since the gap is 0 it is basically a spine) that you can't flow any speed into the last one. If it was a normal table you could keep speed up for it would be doable. They where fine last year, it is just the most recent rebuild that has them wierd. I know they want to make it easy - but for an easy jump look at the first one on the right at JF. What they have now does not teach people anything about jumps because they are such weird proportions.

I'm going up to Mount Snow monday-wednesday and Stratton on Thursday. I'm going to do Stowe or Jay later in the year too. The way the snow is coming this year, probably Jay. They have been getting dumped on all season.

I don't even understand how they get off calling that last thing a ledge. Its just a double barrel flat rail I don't care what its made out of and what its painted to look like.

Until you've ridden Mountain Creek's superpipe at night (which looks like might not happen again this year), you haven't experianced good light. They have it setup for with "TV lighting" which basically just means a giant pile of white stadium lights, and it is actually more contrast than during the day. It would be impossible to do that across the whole mountain, but damn is it nice. I think for lighting number of lights is more important than color, as soon as you start getting areas in shadow you are asking for trouble.

Saw on jfbb.com they have taken down Love park so they can rebuild it. Sounds good, it was pretty sparse, but with the temperature this week they should get some serious snow made on it. Any word on whats going up?

I'm waiting for Elevator too, I wish they would trim the damn bushes during the summer it would be skiable now if it were not for that.

Its new for this year. As for moving all the park riders to south, I always though South was over rated for free riding anyway. You have decent pitch for a blue square up top, then it flattens out to a crawl, and then it is blue again. No matter what they rated it, thats what it was. Bear was good but it was always closed for racing when I was there. So they didn't lose much, and you gain 3 blues on Vernon - and the reality is most of the people who go to Mountain Creek are blue skiers at best. It should get the load off Horizon, and make Vernon kind of the beginner/intermediate area, Granite the advanced area, and South/Bear the park area. It makes a lot of sense despite the grumbling. The only one who gets really screwed are those who liked the blacks on bear - but the reality is the hardcore skier makes up a much much smaller segment of the population there than park rats, while the intermediate crowd is the bulk of their crowd. Most of the hardcore skiers have season passes and go for 3-4 hours in the morning on the weekends before the crowds show up, I think you could still hit bear before the crowds show up anyway. Its funny to look at the trail map now though, it looks a lot smaller than it used to be, if you lop south/bear off and look at how many trails are left on Vernon and Granite it looks pretty weak, I guess it is just psychological.

A step up is a nice change of pace, I have been hitting a lot of step downs lately because I haven't seen too many good tables this year. I guess thats the nature of december/january, until they have enough snow made tables are impossible.

Yea I was really disappointed by the crowds, had it been a normal monday I would have been getting untracked all day but it was the most crowded I have ever seen JF. Good for them money wise, and a girl I met in the parking lot said the day before was even busier. It was somewhat disappointing but no body was doing the stuff off the trails so it was still doable but I got a lot more rock scrapes this time than last, this was a lot fluffier. If we hadn't had that warm up in between it would be amazing. I loved the dirty looks a lot of people where giving me from the lifts, some guy actually yelled at me from the lift when I went onto floyds (not a patroller). Meanwhile on my ride up I saw a patroller riding below the lift line on east mountain. Ah open domain policy, it is so nice. You said it on Alpinezone, but I agree, it makes the mountain feel so much bigger than it is. I'm faster than the kid I was riding with but he was consistantly beating me to the bottom by a good margin because when you go in the trees it forces you to make so many turns it slows you down. The only part that sucked was at one point I tried to get deeper into the woods coming off the top of the east mountain lift to the right and I ended up in a patch of thorn bushes, which scraped up my pants a bit but no rips so it was ok.

Boards get stolen all the time, I have no comparison at other mountains because I only ride with my crew when I go to PA and we don't put our boards down, but on high school ski club trips to MC we would usually have 3-4 boards stolen over the course of the year, out of about 100 people going up for 6 trips. It seemed really high to me. Personally I have a lock but most of the time I never let go of my gear. Hit the bathroom beforehand they don't care if you bring gear in that is dry, ride all night, and then someone watch it outside while we grabbed food for the bus home. Never had a problem.

Well if you are more interested in the learning part and not the experiance of summer camp part did you look at South Shore Soldiers? It is spring break instead of summer, at Heavenly, it is cheaper, and it is aimed at an older crowd. I bet it is more "serious" about instruction too but I don't know anyone who has gone. I'm thinking about going eventually, I'm not sure if you have to be 18 or 21 to go.

Its true I'll sit in a lane and do 80 or 90 on my cruise control with no one in front of me and its much safer than someone doing 50 in slow traffic and weaving. Most the accidents I see are people trying to go too fast in traffic and when they hit their brakes its too late. New Jersey driving laws are super harsh because we have so many accidents. We're #1 or #2 in the country for accidents per capita and car insurance premiums, it sucks.

Went up today, got there early about 8:30ish. Headed straight down challenge and took the east mountain lift up. They had groomed most of the mountain but there was plenty of untracked to be had. Rivershot turned to shit almost immediately, 6" of powder on top of ice is bad when there is a holiday crush of gapers snowplowing it around. The trees are ok, they where better after the last storm, this one was a lot dryer it didn't hold as well. If we didn't have that warm up in between it would be amazing, but I would say its about 90% of what it was 2 weeks ago. Another 6" would seal the deal, I got a few rock hits but not much. The run of the day was Floyd's. It wasn't open but I saw two guys get the first poach and I rolled right in behind them. They have made a lot of snow on it there are huge whales, but really tight together so it is almost like a pillow line, as close as you are going to get on the east coast anyway. And with 6" of untracked, it was probably the best half dozen runs of the year I've taken. Then we wanted to try something else. Looking back we probably should have just lapped that all day. The only lame part was the bottom, the whales where so high on the run out that it was hard to get through unless you went to the low side, but they had tripod guns setup and I didn't want to damage the hoses so we hiked out each time rather than risk cutting them. We like the snowmakers, no reason to make their work more difficult. I bet it will open real soon it just needs to be flatened out - my friend couldn't handle the pillows that well, they are basically vertical on the back side I got air off almost every one. Really something to try but by tomorrow it might be beat, by 10:30 it was pretty tracked. By 11 the powder had been chewed up on every open trail, still some in trees and near the edges but it was piling on the ones they hadn't groomed and it was getting nasty with ice in between. It should groom out well tonight though. We head to the park since it was soft. Lots and lots of gapers, probably a 5:1 gaper to park rider ratio, maybe higher, There where only about 10 guys landing anything other than the two flat boxes. I only think I saw one other person land the flat-down clean all day besides myself and the guy I was with. That rail was better. They should setup another flat box before it, right now there is this bump that is a jump that only throws you like 5 feet high, it is basically and ollie pad. It used to have the blue barrel bonk but they pulled that out. The first jump was trashed for some reason, I couldn't put my finger on it. It was like gaper central with people standing on the knuckle, and the ramp was bumping and the landing was a little too steep and pot holed. That could have used another pass with the groomer. The second and third jumps are butter, one is about 10 feet and the other about 15, great for building confidence. You get some good height. Then I followed the flat box into upslope rail line. THe other side has two down slope rails, one looked good but one didn't. I didn't try them though, I have a love affair with that upslope rail, it slides so nice and not many people hit it. I think all the good riders where at Boulder so the park was empty of people trying to hit stuff. I had a few run ins with the gapers but with a loud enough drop in call before each feature people move. I love the panic in peoples eyes between the 1st and 2nd jump and between the 2nd and 3rd jump. You land at a good clip, yell drop and straight line in a tuck to the next to get enough speed, and they're doing the pizza and fries as you zoom in and they freak out like OH SHIT I SHOULDN"T BE HERE. I rarely saw gapers in twice after they realized, but there where just so many of them. I saved one kid from decapitation he was laying on the knuckle and you couldn't see him so I waved off the guy coming in behind me, I had a bad feeling rolling in to the jump for some reason and when I came around I saw him like making snow angles on the landing. I told his parents they should probably keep him out of hte park if they weren't going to supervise. The mom was like "thanks for the warning", I guess she couldn't read the signs.

well, it didn't snow at all here. hopefully it did a bit there. I'm leaving now, I'll be there at 8.

It is different state to state, I don't know PA's system. In new jersey if you have over 3 points during your provisional license period it gets taken away. My speeding ticket was 5 points. The speed limit was 55, I was doing 65~70. There is a corner that has a sign that says 35, which I usually thought was just a recommendation, but the cop nailed me at the sign doing 70 and said I was doing 70 in a 35. It wasn't even in the turn yet I was braking for it. That was a 5 point ticket I had to get a lawyer and the lawyer argued that the signage was not clear. Truthfully when I looked again there was a sign that said "speed limit reduces ahead" or something like that, but at the time I was just going to take the corner at like 45-50 as usual. It got knocked down to a 2 point ticket with a $150 fine, but I owed the lawyer like $600 or something like that, and then I took a defensive driving class to get rid of the last 2 points for like $100 and my insurance didn't go up and I kept the license. It really sucked but it stopped me from speeding so much. Now that I drive to school down the turnpike often, I am a lot more careful. The turnpike has few cops and you can do 80 without a problem, but I've seen SO many horrible accidents that I know its not worth driving so aggressively. Its seems like I see a car totaled every other time I go down the turnpike.

I'll be there for 1st chair at JF. Is it at 8 or 9 though? Normally JF opens on 9 on a monday, but tomorrow BB is opening at 8, so I think it is 8 at JF as well. I'm thinking of leaving here to get there at 8:30 and split the difference. Best case I'm too early and I can get 1 run before the lifts open since you start at the top anyway. Worst case, a couple people got tracks before me. It should be a mad house by mid day since it is going to snow tonight and everyone and their mother will be there. I look like this: My name is Kevin, I'll be with two asian kids who are intermediate-ish I guess. I have not snowboarded with them in like 6 years so it will be interesting.

Well I'm sure someone who knows something about computers was involved, even if at 6 they could read and write, would they be able to do the signature? My point was more who is letting their six year old read PASR, it makes me want to swear less fucking often. Hopefully they censor some of it for the kid. I'd be really creeped out if it was someone pretending to be a 6 year old girl than if it was an actual six year old girl and the mom was typing you know?

yea careful as a new driver on the roads that lead to mountains. how many of us have gotten speeding tickets on those damn roads? the local cops are dicks they give skiers and snowboarders a lot of tickets to bring money into the town budgets, especially near hunter and mountain creek. I got a ticket my first year driving and it cost me $900 because you have the provisional license so one speeding ticket and you lose it. I had to pay a lawyer to really fight it so I could keep my license so I could keep my job. It was really lame.

Is anyone else concerned this means a 6 year old girl is posting here? I'm assuming your parents know about this right. I had no idea parents allowed kids that young on the internet.