method9455

Unbelievable. I buy pretty much any video with Jeremy Jones in it to begin with, I will be getting that one as soon as it comes out.

I usually get Absinthe's and Mack Dawgs, but I think Mack Dawg isn't putting one out this year. I thought Double Decade was kind of, here is our sport over the last 20 years, thank you and goodbye. I might be wrong on that, thats just what I remember from last year. Good call Emuntz, I'm going to have to look into those 2.

1) Not important since it is not near you at all, from south east PA it is about 3+ hours north and east. 2) Not something I want to share. I don't work there much anymore except at big sales or holidays if they ask me for a favor, but in return they still hook me up with gear at the prices shop employees get and I don't want to burn that bridge. Talking specifically about brands and pricing is not something you want people outside the store to know whether they are customers who will have more leverage over the store or brands that are pissed you are talking about them in public. I am sure there are mom & pop stores like mine in PA that are near you, I just don't know who they are. Someone else would be able to better inform you. I drive south/west to get to the PA mountains so I don't go through any of the towns most people on PASR live in or know that area well.

Blue had the best park out of Camelback, Sno, and Blue. Beyond that everything is debatable. I'd put Bear and Mountain Creek over Blue. JFBB started out better but ended up worse than Blue. December/January I'd rather have been at JFBB than Blue, but by Feb/March JFBB was stale. When I hit up Bear in Feb/March it was great, and when I hit Mountain Creek in feb it was great but I'm sure it sucked hard in Dec/Jan.

I'm completely out of the loop for some reason this fall. What videos are coming out? Where are the trailers? I usually get 3-5 videos each year but so far this year I haven't seen any trailers other than Absinthe's.

I think it is just your local store. Most ski shops struggle in the summer and thrive in the winter. We had almost 75% of our revenue in the winter. Our inventory was all snowboards and skis. Thats where the deals come from, inventory that needs to get dumped for the 200 snowboards and 300 pairs of skis coming in late october/early novemeber. Any place that puts a blanket percentage when trying to liquidate last years stuff is not a shop that lives or dies on the sale of ski & snowboard gear, or is part of a chain and doesn't make purchasing decisions. You want a place that lives and dies on the sale of skiing & snowboarding gear. They will know so much more about the stuff than someone who works at a chain like Army/Navy and gets a shipment of gear determined by someone elsewhere based on bulk purchasing discounts. A little mom & pop shop lives or dies on the inventory they buy and the knowledge of their sales people. The shop I worked at is thriving while a bad local shop closed down and a ski shop chain went bankrupt in the same town. That is because we were nimble with our brands. When Soloman went off the deep end for 3 years, we dropped them. When they got better we picked them back up. Now Ride is fading a bit and every year the order gets smaller while GNU/Lib went from the brink of getting dropped to the hottest selling brand. The guys selling gear know why that is because they were involved in the decision and they have tried all the stuff. They will set the prices at the sales. We used to literally stand there with a roll of stickers and a sharpie putting prices on boards based on our experience, not some magic formula based on MSRP. You don't get that level of knowledge at a chain store where corporate sets a price for sale items. Put yourself in the shoes of a shop selling gear and think about how they price stuff: Most people that come into a shop are intermediate to advanced and want a medium stiffness board. Most people buying boards are in the 154-159cm range. Something like a Burton Custom, Ride Decade, Rome Anthem. That is your bread and butter sale. We would sell all of our boards under 156cm pretty much every year. 13 y/o buy up to 151/153 to grow into it. Older guys buy down to 154/156 for their park board. But nobody is buying 159/161/163 unless they are 170 lbs, good, and want to free ride. So for a large board (>159cm) or an "expert" board, expect better than 50%. Generally 150-299 for a 500-800 MSRP board would be a good deal. If you are looking for this kind of board and go to a sale and the sticker says $250, offer $200 and they will usually take it. Those boards just sit around and never sell, so to the store owner the MSRP of the board doesn't matter since they can't sell it. And this year's shipment has more of these boards coming so he needs to get rid of them. If you come in and are actually looking for a board like this they will make a deal. Since this is about the right size/level/type board for me I never this year's model and always chase the sales and always have great selection. For 151-157 park/freeride/all around boards, the pickings are a lot less. Usually no Burtons are left, so you are on the "lesser known" brands. That is not to say worse, I would prefer a GNU/Rome/Arbor/LibTech over a Burton/Ride. Those after the invention of Magne Traction, hard to find a GNU/Lib Tech board left over. These are about the same price, $250, but a lot of them originally sold for <500 so the deal isn't as good to the customer. To the store owner he knows a dozen more guys like you are going to come in after you and by the end of the sale he will be turning people away like you, so there won't be much negotiation or flexibility on price. There are deals, but some years it is tougher than others. I'm thinking of getting a park board in this size and I'll check the sales but I might end up just buying a 2010 if I don't find something good. For bindings, large sizes are hard to find. Everyone thinks their kid is going to grow from a size 9 boot to a size 11, despite the fact that he probably won't in the 3 years the binding lasts. So everyone always buys large bindings and medium ones sit on the shelf. I would never ever bank on finding large sized snowboard bindings at left-over sales. We used to buy manufacturer left overs in april in large expressly to sell at the annual sale, just price point bindings to go into boot/binding/board packages. You aren't going to be finding Cartels or high end Ride bindings in size 10+ a year later, so just buy these new if you need them. On the other hand, you can steal medium size bindings if you have a 7-9 sized foot. Boots are all over the place. It is so random as to me saying I have no tips on it. Try the sale but don't settle on something you don't love. For skis, a lot of the same things apply. Large/small sizes stick around for boots & skis. Bindings now are generally tied to the ski so not much to say there. Twin tips seem to be left over more than regular skis. I feel like we usually had fewer high end left over skis than snowboards, you have an older crowd with more money to buy stuff so it is a bigger mix of left over gear. For snowboards it is a lot of teenagers coming in begging mommy & daddy to buy them some gear so higher end stuff is likely to be left over. The ski buyers are getting what is right for them because $200-400 difference doesn't matter when you are flying out west or driving to Vermont every weekend. Also realize that the margins are built in with this inventory reduction in mind. Nobody in the industry is new. The cost of making the snowboard and shipping it to you is one thing, but the price is based on all of the costs of being a ski shop. Overhead, capital depreciation, labor, taxes, inventory write offs. All of that has to be paid for with the sale of the gear. So the shop knows at some point it is going to have to market down 15% of its initial purchase to 50-75% off to get rid of it. Don't be impressed by 50% off. At some point these boards are going to sell for a lot less than that because the store has already written them off and closed the books for last year. Everything you pay is pure cash for this year. We're ordering in February, the boards are made in Feb-Sept, we are paying/getting it delivered in October, selling them to customers in December, writing off left overs in June and selling left overs finally the next September.

Nope, the snowboarding industry does not work like that. Stores have all the leverage over the manufacturers, not the other way around. The average shop carries 3-8 brands of stuff. There are 15+ to choose from. So if one manufacturer starts undercutting the shops by selling direct to online stores, they will get dropped from brick & mortar stores. From the manufacturers perspective their customers are the snowboard shops, not you the snowboarder. It is a business to business relationship, which is a very different dynamic than a customer to a store relationship. So most of what you see online is liquidated from brick & mortar stores. Thats why a lot of it is last years stuff that a brick & mortar store had to sell off over the summer or even inventory a dying business bought and liquidated to a wholesaler. I would be shocked if you could get a better deal online for this year's stuff than you could walking into a store. I wouldn't be shocked if you could get 50% off last years stuff online, but then again 75% off was normal for last-season sales at my ski shop. So not that great of a deal.

We're talking about about Boulder when we say JFBB. JF won't open until December really no matter what the weather is. They roll out Boulder first.

Bad idea. The stuff is soft enough to cut an edge in and slick enough sure, but once you cut that edge it leaves a mark and you will catch that. Most places that do it use some kind of foam backed plastic carpet, often times wet. Camelback has been doing it right now so they are probably the ones with the most info. I used the green indoor/outdoor grass like carpet from home depot on my drop in ramp, can't really talk about its edge holding ability since you pretty much just went straight down it. But that would be a better choice than hard plastic i'm sure.

If BoardinNerd is still asking the question: How many times are you going to go? If you have a season pass for Bear, I'd rather take my $300 and go 2-4 days JFBB early & late. 1-2 days each at Camelback, Blue, and Sno midweek. You are going to see a lot more trails that way and then have an opinion on them all. Just play the discount days and you can go pretty much any where for ~$30.

I'm pretty sure my first day has been black friday the last 2 winters, so I'm hoping for that again. I'd almost expect that unless it is an unusually warm November, but based on this year so far I have high hopes it won't be. Economically, yea it's a down year but from what I've heard most companies think last year was the worst and by the time ski season is in full force in Jan/Feb/March it should be a hell of a lot better than last year. Plus, you have to make that snow whether you make it early or you make it later. Some of it will melt off for sure but if they beat every other mountain by 2 or 3 weeks they will have a lot of tickets sold in that time. It was packed up there both years they opened before everyone else. They really only make snow on 1-3 trails + tubing. Even if it all melts in the 1st week of december that isn't nearly as bad as when they make snow across the whole mountain for chrismas week and then the 1st week of January there is a nasty thaw - which happens about every other year anyway. GSS is right though, tiny chance of beating Nov 9. Nov 9th 2007 was a Friday, the equivalent this year is Nov 7th. I really doubt that. The 13th maybe 20%, 20th slightly higher if it is super cold so 30%, but probably 80% by the 27th. They really can make some money that weekend if they have some trails open and everybody is off from school/work & home from college. Though if I remember correctly, wasn't Camelback open for black friday last year? I went up there for a day with like 3 trails open and ran into a bunch of people from high school, all of which go to different colleges but we were all home on break so it was either thanksgiving or christmas.

Or the subaruforester forum, that is a great spot.

That is a really good tip. In my experience the most frustrating thing with a lot girls/women is that when they fall down they can't push themselves back up from both directions or can't make the flip to get to the easier direction for them, where as most guys can just do the push up either way. And you get cold quickly when floundering on the snow and that saps your strength even more.

When I worked at a store we had a matching set of Rossignol skis, jacket, pants with some designer label . It totaled around $3 or 4k. I sold it to some 25 y/o chick with her Dad's credit cards (and she even bounced the first 2 or 3 she tried). Great commission for me, awful purchase for him. Ugliest set of stuff I have ever seen. Moral of the story - there are some people who will buy ANYTHING just because it is "designer" and "unique". Also used to sell Bogner jackets at $1.5-2k a pop EASILY. People would come in asking for it. The level of money some people have is staggering. People racing sailboats have million dollar racing boats and they are replacing the sails every year at $150 to 200k a pop. These same guys won't blink at $20,000 skis. These are the guys buying new Ferraris and airplanes and whole floors for apartments in Manhattan. At some point you have so much money that you can't possibly spend it in a lifetime. I race on a boat I paid $2,000 for 6 years ago, a brand new one costs about $6,500. I've spent more on skiing vacations and gear and passes over that time. But at the same club we have a guy who DONATES his 50 foot boat every 5-10 years to the naval academy or the coast guard, because a $250,000 tax deduction is worthwhile for him. I can't fathom that, and we can laugh at them, but make a business that targets those guys and you can experience the great world of LUXURY MARGINS.

No I agree that they're not going to love Jeff & Doug, but at the same time Blue simply has more to lose from the situation. Its evident from some of the events so far this season that PASR does have some influence. 1) Jeff got his pass back 2) Bear Creek fired a patroller under similar circumstances earlier this season 3) JFBB gave PASR discounts & is restoring a trail people asked for Looking at our company's forum logs, lurkers out number posters 3 or 4 to 1, and ours is more of a help forum so people post at a greater rate asking for us to fix their problems I would think than here where its a lot of trip reports that people read and never comment on.

Why? What can Blue do to them? Ban them? Obviously people at the mountains understand marketing - there is a reason they give out free passes to people who influence large groups of people. I skied for free for years working in a shop because people would ask me where to go. The mountains gave me free passes, the companies gave us cheap gear, all to shape our answers to those questions. The opposite of that is that if the mountains piss off the guy who owns PASR and the guy who posts on it the most, a lot of people are going to hear about it and get turned off to Blue. That number is not a huge one, but it might be dozens or hundreds of tickets in a year. I can say they have lost 50+ lift tickets this year from the trip I organized and took to JFBB instead of Blue due to Blue's policies. Blue has a lot more to lose than these two. It's not like they can actually get charged for something.

dick

Its been a very good year for the mountains. For me personally it has been a great year, which surprises me since I hadnt planned anything like what the season has turned into. I wanted to go out west for the first time and then ride park a lot for the rest of the year. I ended up with season pass at Stowe, a pair of skis for the first time in 6 years, and almost 0 time in the park after 25 days at various mountains. Still one of the most fun years I've had in a long time.

I'm confused by the slow lift comment? The 6-pack is one of the faster lifts in the area. As for the trail turns, well that was true in the past but really there is only one bad turn now, right at the end of the jump line where the wall ride is gets pretty sketchy at times if a lot of people are sitting there and its icy. But parks don't have to be laser straight like they are at JFBB/Camelback/Bear, I guess I just grew up at Mountain Creek - but all the parks at MC have way more twists, turns, and splits than Blue and they had better parks than anyone else at the time. It is just a matter of how you set it up. The old line on from northern to indian at MC was a few jumps and jibs, uphill section, hard left turn, two big step downs, hard right turn, 35 foot table top, 40 foot single barrell rail, super hard left turn, 65 foot s rail, 50 foot rollercoaster rail. There was an intersection between the table and the 40 footer, and then between the 40 footer and the s rail, and a crossing to get to the bridge for the pipe. Compared to all that going on, Blue feels straight. Even today MC goes all over the place with their park. And what about Mount Snow, sure Blanco Gulch was straight in the past, but now the stuff on Carinthia weaves more than the stuff in PA, and that is still good. Truthfully Blue doesn't have a better trail for a park. You don't want it on razors or challenge because they are way too steep, you don't want it on paradise because thats you standard green, and the other side of the mountain has slow lifts. Maybe the only thing they can do is move the wall ride back a bit so that you have more time after the last big jump, but other than that its fine. Some of the stuff in the Blue park still makes me scratch my head, but I have to say this year its a lot of fun. The boxes are so wide it is a joke but the setups are better than they have been in the past. Conditions were fine the 3 times I've been there, so I can't complain.

Yea the rossi turntables where the shit, we stock piled them at our shop when they switched the heel piece, but finally ran out. The number of people hurt by setting their DIN too high is a lot greater than by pre-release - especially on the east coast, but for those truly concerned about pre-release it is a life or death thing. I can't think of too many lines on the east coast that if you pop out you will DIE, but they are out there. But I've had more than one person who we tried to get them to put a sane DIN setting on, come back on crutches.

Nice!

When I have my AWD car next year, I will take you for free. But for now I can't make it myself.

Blah the forecasts looks awful for this or park. 1/2" of rain in the 40s, then dropping to 20! I thought you know, if it dipped to 30 it wouldn't freeze up that bad, but at 20 its going to be solid. the groomers will fix the trails but this is probably not doable tomorrow, its not supposed to get above freezing until 3pm. Today would probably be the time to do it in the rain so you have a bit of grip.

Looks like the rain is all today, but if it rains a half inch today and freezes tonight, off trail might be a bit problematic. I'm going so long as its not pouring on saturday.

Change of plans, I'll be at JF around 9. I'm aiming for 8 but I'm sure by the time I get a ticket and everything, it will be 9. Want to meet somewhere around 10 or 11?