Schif

Where's everyody at? I've been lapping the north face for a while and I'm the only one here who isn't employed by the mountain.

JohnnyLaw, yep there is a Johnny Rockets right inside the lodge which I'm sure will lend for a quality lunch report from whoever heads in there for a bite. I'll be wearing a two toned brown jacket with an army green helmet.

I'll shoot for getting there around 8 or so for passholder first tracks. Then if I end up sleeping in I'll still be there by 830 or so.

I'll be up there. What time are you guys going up?

If I have to, I guess I could be persuaded to go to Montage on a Saturday morning.

I used to go through Split Rock until I got stuck at the toll booth one night with all my cash in my snowpants in the trunk and an awkward search for coins. Since then I go down 940 to the intersection of 115 and turn there. I think it actually is a bit faster since you don't have to slowly wind through a residential area, and it lets you hit up a Wawa which is nice.

White Lightning is skiing better tonight than yesterday if you guys can believe that. And everything else is insanely fast. Perfect night out here with next to no one on the trails. Edit: just went down boomer and they groomed out the bumps.

What is an average non VIP wait like at blue on the weekend?

The mountain was awesome today. Things started softening up around 10 or so and the north face, especially white lightning were skiing about as well as they ever have. Great snow, steep trails and parking lot beers made for a top notch day.

Oh Bob Costas, he says some interesting things sometimes, but at the end of the day he's still a really smart and genuine guy. I had the pleasure of meeting him and hanging out at the Baseball Hall of Fame a few years ago, really great to talk to. As for Curling? It's pretty much the coolest, and is the last hope a guy like me has of becoming an olympic athlete. I always say I want to sign up for the local league here, but never get around to it.

I guess this was on the Local news today, the place is getting completely lit up with snow guns right now. Impressive.

My office has just now cracked 56 degrees. It was 49 when I walked in this morning. Thankfully I keep my gear in the car and I grabbed my Northface to wear all day.

Today was fantastic. The complete lack of crowds kept the fresh stuff available for hours and hours. The trees on upper fast track were the place to be all day, even though they weren't running long haul. I was hitting fresh fluffy snow in there until I left. I have no idea where everyone was today, but I'm glad they went where they did, and I went to Montage.

Wish I checked this earlier, I was up from 9 to about 3. Fantastic day out there.

Beautiful sunny day here at montage. Everything is open including the elusive long haul lift. The trails serviced by long haul aka upper/Lowe runaway and upper/lower fast track are in perfect shape, it seems that all the tourists are sticking to all of the other lifts (decent sized lift lines) leaving this piece if the mountain for mostly pass holders

Great report, looks awesome out there.

Pretty disappointed I missed out on this.

This clipper storm was a joke, a dusting on the sidewalks up in the Wyoming Valley. Also, did anyone else see the big warm up coming this weekend? 60 and rain is bad news bears. I hope the weatherman is wrong.

It was pretty great out there this morning. The majority of the mountain was pushed out and groomed nonsense, but there were some fantastic pockets of actual snow if you knew where to go. The right hand side of both Smoke and Boomer off of the main part of the trail were probably just under a foot of fresh stuff this morning. As the day went on this area got bumped up with soft fluffy piles of snow, with no crud at all to be found. In some spots, namely on the actual trail, the good stuff was scraped down to ice between the bumps, but to the side next to the trees and where some tall grass was still poking through about an inch, it was all nice floatable stuff. There were a decent amount of people there this morning, about 1/4 full parking lot, and it seemed like everyone knew what they were doing considering the fact that all the good stuff was tracked out by 11. From being up there last night, it seemed that the way the wind was blowing on the Northface, it was pushing all of the falling snow across the trail and piling it up against the woods, that is what led to the good snow. I only ventured up top once today, and it was windy, the snowguns were on all over the place, and thanks to low clouds, very foggy. There wasn't nearly as much natural snow piled up on the sides up there, probably thanks to heavy winds.

The theme of the morning here at Montage is "float, slash, lift, repeat" lots of deep ungroomed natural snow for the taking.

Lights were great tonight, very bright, and really made the place shine. Much better than the old ones. They are also blowing snow absolutely everywhere. The firepower is pretty impressive right now, we should have some new terrain open by the weekend. White Lightning was crazy deep with whales, and was being blasted the whole time I was there.

Flurries Just started outside my office window in Wilkes-Barre. Schools and some businesses have already been closed for hours in anticipation of this Winter Storm of death. One to Two inches projected for up here. All I'm hoping for tonight at Montage is quiet snow, not the normal earsplitting sound of scraping and cutting through ice.

The lighting looks great from the base area, and it's super bright from the highway, but I haven't gotten a chance to ride under it yet.

They posted the trail map on their facebook today, as far as I know it's not on the website yet.

Just got back from my first day on the snow this year. I pulled into the lot at 9:55 Conditions were overall pretty good considering the rain last night. Nice grippy snow with a few ruts and a pretty small amount of cookies. Open trails included Mainline, Whistler (with terrain park features), the bunny slope, Cannonball, and Boomer. Cannonball was definitely the run of the day and I lapped it 3 times. The first time I was going to go down Cannonball, ski patrol stopped me and a few others at the top of the trail while a groomer came up the trail pulling a wheeled trailer. Kind of odd, but right behind it was another groomer laying down fresh cord behind it. Needless to say when they gave the all clear I moved ahead of the older lady who was chatting it up with ski patrol, and bombed this 20 foot wide strip of heaven, at the bottom I had to ask if there was a fire extinguisher in the lift shack because my hair caught on fire during the run I was going so fast. The park was set up pretty nice, with 2 decent sized jumps and a nice collection of rails and boxes, but on day 1 I wasn't quite ready to hit them yet. Not too many people out there today, mostly ski patrol guys doing training and getting their first day of turns in. Overall the mood was a pretty happy one from everyone there. There were probably 150 cars in the lot when I pulled in, and only about 170 when I left at noon, so it wasn't an overly crowded day, but it's still early season. I grabbed a swig of moonshine from a big mason jar, because I forgot to pack any beer, and cruised on home. Happy Ski Season Everyone!