method9455

Camelback - they have full vert and a good lift. Blue has full price tickets, less vert, slow double.

Just be careful with the small stuff if you are not 100% comfortable with your riding. A 16 foot rail with a 2" gap is not twice as hard as an 8 foot box that is ride on, it is about 50 times harder. A ride on box you basically sled in and out of it, and if you can ride in a straight line and bend your knees on the landing you are fine. But even the smallest hop on rail, you need to ride in under control, time the hop, land and balance, and be moving at a much greater speed. While you are doing all of that you have to be 100% comfortable with your riding because you are thinking about so many new things at once. But once you get that, the difference between a 2" gap and a 6" gap, a flat rail and a flat/down rail, is small. Because you will have the reflex to land, the reflex to ollie. It is that first one that is the worst. The same holds true for jump, the differnce between a 6 foot jump and a 15 foot jump is immense. But the difference between a 15 foot jump and 25 foot jump is tiny. So the pitfall is people think they can do an 8 foot rail, and then step up to the 16 foot rail without really improving any and they hurt themselves. I am a big believer in riding first, park second. You won't know that a jump is too big for you until you hit it, and when you come into the landing you are suddenly going faster than you have ever gone before, you lose control, catch and edge, and break an arm. If you have gone faster on a steeper hill comfortably than you will ever need for whatever it is you are about to do in the park, that is good. So if you are doing jumps, comfortably get down every black at full speed carving turns. For rails, not quite as fast, but certainly faster than youd think. Best hint I ever got - the faster you go, the less time you are on the rail. Your reflexes want you to go slow, but go fast and you won't fall.

That is fucking awesome. God I am so glad I decided to move my pass to JFBB. It is a longer drive and more money but every single thing they do is great. I try so hard to be a contrarian and the only thing I can complain about is that Boulder isn't open during the day midweek.

Wow, thats impressive.

Wow that picture is sick. Blue is going for depth > trail count which is the smart decision based on how our winters have been going lately. If the weather holds they will unroll some more trails real fast.

He is very right, the cost per hit on a pipe is huge compared to regular park features. I don't have numbers but lets say its 10,000 dollars for every 50 feet of pipe (about the amount of distance between hits) to build for snowmaking cost and initial construction. That makes a 300 foot pipe $50,000 in snow making and construction costs annually. I have no idea how accurate that is, but it doens' t matter. What we are talking about is a 13 foot/4 yard high pile of snow, about 18 feet/6 yard wide, and 50 feet/17 yard long, on both sides of the trail, or 13,000 cubic feet/400 cubic yards of snow. per 50 feet. Or 78000 cubic feet/1200 cubic yards of snow per half pipe. Plus the normal amount of snow under it. I'm assuming that there is no dirt under it, yes I know there is. But some snowmaking gets lots in the woods, some extra is needed to push around for the shape and the drop in, in the end lets call it 1200 cubic yards of snow. I don't know what it costs to make snow, but if it is $25 a cubic yard, you spend $30,000 on snow. It will take at least 40 hour week to construct it, between snowmaking time and pushing snow around and cutting it. That is $500 an hour, to pay for gas in a cat or two, salaries for a handful of guys, electricity for lights. The numbers sound right but the big assumption is that it is $25 a cubic yard, anyone have a better clue? Ok lets eliminate that entire thing but keep the assumption of $25 a cubic yard for snow and $500 an hour for the park crew to build stuff. A rail takes about 5-10 cubic yards for the ramp, build up the whole area under the rail with 20-40, and the landing with 20-40. We'll high ball it at 50 yards. I know you can do a crappy setup with only 3 yards for the ramp, but lets say we're building a nice plateau. So the snow is $1250, the rail is about the same price, and setup is about an hour. We are at $3000 for the feature. This is assuming 1) they build new rails for every single feature every single year. This is not the case. 2) that it takes THAT MUCH snow to put up a rail, obviously it doesn't, you can do it with very little, but lets say the terrain is really unsuitable for a rail so you have to level it out. A small/medium jump is about 30 feet/10 yards long, 15 feet/5 yards wide, and 9 feet/3 yards high. That is 150 cubic yards of snow. Lets say it takes 300 yards, then we have $7200, A bit of setup, probably the whole day, so maybe 8 hours? That is 4,000 so $11,200 for a jump. For the cost of the pipe you can put in 3 jumps and 10 rails on that trail. That gives you 13 features for 6 hits in the pipe. The actual numbers don't matter, just the ratios. If snow is $100 a cubic yard, then a pipe just that much more expensive, and if it is $1 a yard than the labor is the main factor, and again jumps/rails are a lot faster to setup than a pipe. And with rails - once you build it, you keep it for years. With a pipe it melts away in the spring. While pipes are nice, 90% of the park riders just aren't good enough to ride them. Whether it is their board being too de-tuned to keep an edge or their skill at high speed, most guys are jibbers first then jumps. The older you are the more likely you do jumps and pipe but in my high school there where two dozen guys who did jibs, 4 who did jumps, and 2 of us who did pipe. Is it worth sinking all that money in for 5% of the people? Pipe is my favorite thing, but I just don't think on the whole it is. Unless you are putting in a superpipe for a comp or you have a long season with a huge snowmaking budget and a great park already, it might not be worth it. It pains me to say it, but the jibs make more sense.

Can't go wrong when there is captain in the house.

Its not really a choice, UD is paying me to go to school. On one side I feel bad for the kids who didn't get the money because I did so I feel like I have to do well or I am wasting it. On the other side I don't want to slip below my minimum GPA, that would be a $40,000 mistake, so skiing waits 7 days, but when I leave school I have 0 debt, thats worth it.

Finals week next week I'll be locked in the library, but by next week I'll be up there all the time.

Do you really want double the amount of people on opening day anyway? Sure those people will show up but if it is super over crowded the negative experience is worse than having them show up at all. At this point they aren't showing off how early they are opening since everyone is open/is opening on the same day, so better to worry about the quality of everyone's experience.

The riding is good it is the filming i mean.

Another trash attack video on TWSnow.com from boulder. Glad they're getting exposure but jeez these guys the ones getting on there? There are so many better videos coming out of Boulder it kind of makes the mountain look bad. They only use 3 features, and easy ones at that. Nothing on the battleship box? The other 10 features. Same shot over and over? I dunno, they must know someone at TWSnow.com because they aren't getting in on merit.

I would be careful buying bindings without trying your boots in them at your size. Rome or Ride would be good. Burton's don't run very large I've noticed. I have mine pretty much maxed with a 12.5.

It's really not a big deal what the price is this weekend, they aren't opening any sooner than anyone else. If you have a pass, go. If you don't have a pass see has the most terrain and go there. Doug/AtomicSki - we'll figure it out once they get Paradise/Challenge/Razors open I'll be coming up a bit.

That may be true, I know camelback a lot better than blue. I've done camelback 20-30 times in my life and blue only a handful. Paradise is the best cruiser around, nice pitch the whole way through and some big turns. Razors and challenge are fast and steep but they're so straight, but I love the falls drop that is great for some air. I barely did the main street side, we hit the quad the entire time and I never made it out to Blue last year with the 6 pack. I'll be out a few times this year for sure. Do any of you guys go mid-week all day? I am trying to avoid going on weekend days, and I like to get out before the after school crowd too, I can rock the totally off peak hours it is amazing.

Camelback still has better terrain than blue it is just run like crap. Best combination in PA would be Camelback run by Peak. Then no one would go anywhere else. They would be open early, stay open late. While blue edges out Camelback on 2 trails of vert, Camelback has many more top to bottom runs than Blue, and much more natural terrain. If Peak where running it the parks would be legit, equal to or better than Boulders, all would be well in the world. Then what would blue have? A shitty park and only a few good trails. What would boulder and jf have? Less vert. What would bear have? An equal park but no vert. Shawnee would basically have nothing. And mountain creek would still have only a park. But until Peak buys Camelback, every resort will have one giant glaring flaw that prevents everyone from being happy. Frankly if Camelback could make a park like Boulder but still have the same length season, I would get a pass there and just buy lift tickets to boulder early and late. I would probably say the same for Blue, they have enough fast trails to keep me happy, a few more would be nice but the 3 (soon 4) that run under the quad/6 pack are enough. So make their park 20% better and I'd switch there. Mountain creek will probably never win me back unless their is a new owner, Intrawest is just so full of shit they will never get it together. But for now the early/late season and the park keep my pass at JFBB and I buy lift tickets to the others, I am just jealous of the vert and lifts at the other mountains. I'll be out at blue a bit this year thats for sure.

I dunno, say what they want I have helped plan the orders for the last 3 seasons and we never worried about a minimum. If there is one, it is so small it doesn't matter. We only order 1 of each size for about 6 mens models and 3 or 4 womens models and we just pick and choose which ones we want, they don't constrain you at all. Compared to the companies that sell hiking/camping gear they are really relaxed about it. So I dunno, I've never seen a minimum. Maybe if you call up Burton and say I want to buy 3 T6's they won't sell it to you, because it isn't worth their time. The rep invests a lot of hours per store, and selling 3 boards just wouldn't be worth it. Besides, we haven't had a burton board left for the last 3 seasons. Certainly can't say the same about Ride or K2. I'm just really taking offense to you ragging on Jake for marketing off it. Of course he is, but there is nothing wrong with that. It is a three way win with no losers. Burton makes more money. Riders have fun and could possibly make money. The resorts will make more money from the people visiting to poach, and from the rep they get with skiers for keeping snowboarders out - it just brings up their differentiation even more. And towns make money off visitors. No one is losing, it is a great idea.

What the fuck are you talking about? I've worked at a shop for 5 years through high school and college, met our rep every year, been to every clinic and demo day, if you go into a shop and they tell you you can't buy it one thing without the rest of the package - the shop is lieing to you. That shot all your creditability to hell because you just don't know what the hell you are saying. Stop being a burton-hater and advertising-hater. Burton does more for this sport than any other snowboard company, Burton boards are made in North America for the most part - only GNU/Lib Tech, Santa Cruz (I believe?) and Arbor can say that. They are one of the oldest companies, and they are still independent. They are nothing like Walmart. Sure their stuff is the most popular, but that is not without reason. And opening for new brands? Go look in a good shop, there is more choice now than ever. As Ride and K2 have faltered, GNU/Libtech, Arbor, Rome, Batteleon, 32, and Flow have started growing. There are more independents than ever.

No Boulder was definitely open earlier, I came home from school and went to Boulder on Dec 5th I believe, if Blue had been open I would rather have gone there.

Who is bitching about Boulder's prices now?

Thats alright, they will be inline with everyone else. By this weekend Blue, Shawnee, Camelback, Mountain Creek, JFBB will be open. I dunno about Elk and Sno but it seems like everyone will be out getting some.

Nice. This year everyone is opening on the weekend that JFBB opened last year, and last year we where all so stoked that JFBB was opening so "early". I love it. This season is starting a lot better than last, lets hope it stays that way. (I knocked on wood don't worry)

And for park riders worried that their park boards won't cut through ice after they de-tune the edges, if the ice is so bad you can't turn with the board - you are going to hurt yourself when you fall anyway. So long as you have a board dedicated to park only, I would dull the crap out of the edges. I have always used a file but I can't wait to try a grinder this winter it is going to be mad fun, I hate that board.

Yea but you don't need to buy a ticket. They just bought tickets for the sake of riding up the lifts. Obviously they got up there the night before on foot or snowmobile to plant the boards, the boards don't grow in the woods. So why not just hike up pre-dawn and snowboard down at some point? That is what 99% of people poaching Alta have done before. Go on TGR, people do it EVERY year, Burton hardly invented the idea. So bring your camera this year instead of not bringing it, you might win $5,000. And it IS pocket change to all involved - EXCEPT the riders who win. My store alone can sell $5,000 of Burton gear in a weekend during the peak season, it is nothing. And $5,000 to a ski resort is also nothing when the electricity bills are so outragous. But $5,000 for the local who filmed their normal annual poaching trip is a lot of money. There is nothing wrong with free marketing and publicity, so what? So what Burton gets their name thrown around, whats wrong with that? They came up with a fun contest, is it any different than the "show up for first chair and get free 686 gear" contests? Or the mountain dew vertical challenge contests? That doesn't cost them anything compared to how much mountain dew they sell, do you get pissed they are sponsoring the event? Are you mad that the pro snowboarders are covered in stickers for all the free marketing the companies get in exchange for paying them so little? Marketing is just that, leverage a little money and make a lot more in return. Good for Burton for making a cool contest with a good idea.

Damn it you are right, I looked up another place called 7 springs in PA last night - this is why I need to sleep more than 4 hours a night. When I put in the actual address of the mountain i'm screwed.