Schif

Waterparks are a tricky business, while they are huge in keeping the revenue stream going throughout the summer months, the day to day operating budget for one of these things is through the roof. I doubt you'll see any kind of undercutting price wise, maybe by a few bucks, but that'll be it.

It was a great weekend up there for sure. Glad I popped into the Lodge for a few drinks and got to hang out with NM ski for a while, always awesome to hang out with another PASR guy as that happens far too infrequently for me. I was planning on running back up on Sunday morning for some turns, but didn't get a chance to so it sucks that I didn't get to catch some runs with him, but there is always next time. The glades can be rough after a few days of people tracking in them, but they are still pretty good. The trails were not as good on Saturday or I'm sure Sunday as they could have been. I ran into a few slick spots that I wasn't expecting considering the snow and snowmaking, but I guess that's what happens when the place floods with a million people from Passaic NJ who go home and brag about doing a black diamond when in reality they slid sideways down Lower Runaway and created an ice sheet in a landing zone for me when I air off the headwall. Oh Well, there is always Tuesday. Once I get to work I'll post up an overdue TR about Friday night, which was pretty much the best night of the year so far.

Me too. Brown jacket. Green collar and hat. Swing by and say hi

I'm on the mountain now and might pop onto the bar soon.

A little over 6 inches at sno. Very dry stuff here. The mountain was awesome

I wonder which PA mountain is going to see the most out of all of this?

I should be around the mountain a lot this weekend with the fresh snow. I'll probably be getting there around 3:30 or 4:00 on Saturday.

Was that last night? If so, it was my buddy and he's fine. What happened is that he took the line on skiers left and I took the one on the right, I guess he ended up going head over heels at one point and taking a bit of a tumble. He recovered, but lost his hat and goggles in the process. He then took off his board and put it on a tree so he could hike up the hill and retrieve his stuff. While he's climbing with his hands as much as his feet thanks to the steepness of lightning, his board came loose from it's location and rocketed down the hill and nailed a snowgun pole. Surprisingly there was almost no damage to the board, just a little cosmetic nick on the nose. He hiked back down and we had quite the laugh on the lift ride back up. It was pretty funny to watch him up there from the bottom, it's not every day you see someone scooting around lightning like that.

My golf has been slacking lately. I find that the only way to really play well is to play all the time.

That is an awesome little bit of info that I did not know. If you look at the topographic map, as a whole the mountain looks amazingly skiable. I'll throw in a quick geology lesson on top of that. Generally speaking, when mountains have two peaks like that in Pennsylvania, it's caused by pockets of highly weather resistant sandstone at each of the peaks, and in between them was at one time a level surface comprised of weaker layers of rocks, possibly lesser sandstones, and most likely a number of shale layers which washed away over a period of time.

Yesterday was pretty rough, A lot of snow was lost, and there were some bare patches here and there. The snow was a weird hardpack that was I've honestly never seen before. The North Face held up pretty well though and while yesterday wasn't perfect, it wasn't terrible down there. Apparently they closed early yesterday and stayed closed until noon today to push some snow around and groom so it has to be better than yesterday. It's kind of crazy considering I was there 2 days ago and the place was in the best shape I've seen it in a long time, and it was totally different in 24 hours. Hopefully they get the guns on tonight and the weekend is awesome.

OK. I'm getting off phoebe now and I'll head to iron horse

Just got on phoebe

Yeah, brown jacket and a helmet with no goggles today. I'm doing a top to bottom run now and will be on the north face soon.

Just did boomer. So awesome today. Camera crew setting up at the top of north face lift. Get the cheesey local news grins on.

Just got here. Warm weather and the snow is great

This article is mostly citing sales of new snowboards, that can be a fairly misleading number when you think about how people buy gear. I have got two snowboards in my arsenal and that's pretty much all I feel that I need for different conditions and mountains and scenarios right now. On the flip side, you skiers out there have got piles and piles and piles of skis in your quiver. Fat skis, long skis, short skis, long radius, short radius, stiff, flexible. So a guy that goes out and buys a new snowboard every few years, is being offset by a guy buying a new pair of skis every year or when there is a sale someone picking up a few pair.

Will Long haul be running during the week too? My guess is no, but I won't be around this weekend to enjoy the top to bottom shred fest.

The guys at Montage use that when they are on the Northface. It's a 3 patroller job to get someone off of those trails.

Second this

Kind of upset I won't be around tomorrow, would have loved to take some runs with PASRs

You guys are going to have a great time tomorrow. I'm on the mountain now and they are blowing snow on every trail and the base area like crazy. The place is in great shape and it even looks like they are trying to open up the few trails that are still closed.

So I had nothing better to do tonight, and the weather was perfect so I hopped in the car and headed up to Sno Mountain at Montage, or whatever they happen to be calling it today. The weather was in the very high 50s around 4:30 when I pulled into the lot which was about halfway full. I put on a fleece over a t-shirt and then zipped on my shell and headed down to the window to pick up my ticket. Since I hadn't been up the Shuttle lift at all this year I decided to ride it up since I was right there and I went over to the terrain park from there. Park Crew was out doing their thing, raking and fixing lips, and they were doing a nice job on what they had closed, but it was obvious they were fighting an uphill battle. Soft Slushy snow and a ton of weekend warriors were doing a number on the park. I actually saw a girl pole her way up the ramp of one of the jumps, and then stop right on the lip and balance there for almost 30 seconds while she was waiting for someone behind her. Worst bit of smart style I have ever seen. There were some decent sized brown patches in the park and between the weather and the weekend traffic, it could use a rebuild. I was pretty much over the park after I took a spill on one of the boxes at the end and I finished the trail and made the right hand turn onto Lower Runaway, which was the most recent opening on the lower half of the mountain. The intersection of the trail was terrible, huge brown spots and very thin base, most of the rest of the trail was alright, but there were some small patches of dirt poking through every now and then. The little cutover to get back to Phoebe Snow lift was very bad, and I had to be very careful and ride on the very edge of the path to stay in the snow. I was downright hot when I got to the top of the lift, so I ran over to my car (about 20 yards away) and dropped the fleece and shell for a lightweight zip up hoodie. Definitely a good choice, I was very comfortable after that. The rest of the northface where I stayed after that was actually still really good. When you get on Phoebe Snow and you go over the creek it was roaring! The sound of the rushing water was actually louder than the music in my headphones. Usually it's a trickle this time of year I then cruised over to the top of Boomer which was really great hero snow. Half of it was fantastic bumps and the other half was smooth and super fast. I went through all the trails on the NorthFace one by one and none of them showed any major signs other than the soft snow or a major melt. No thin spots or rocks anywhere. The spillway before cannonball coming off of Phoebe Snow lift was a little brown, but nothing too terrible. The worst areas of melting I saw was a spot in the base area where the pavers were fully exposed, and the big gaping spots on the Park and lower runaway. Everything else seemed to be pretty well covered, at least I didn't notice any major damage to my board at the end of the night. As the night went on the crowd thinned out a lot, by 530 I didn't have to wait more than one or two chairs. Run of the Night was probably Boomer again because it was just super smooth and awesomely fast, Cannonball was seeing a lot of traffic and even though the snow was great, it was a little rutted up from people pushing it all around on the headwalls and you had to be really on your toes to stay upright and not catch any unintended air when you bombed the headwalls. White Lightning had a few spots on it that were much firmer than I expected them to be, and I slid a little on these spots but it wasn't too bad, that's the only reason it wasn't run of the night, but a very close second. All in all I cruised around for about 2 hours and headed home a little after 7. A fun session at the best mountain overlooking a Longhorn Steakhouse in the world. I've got some pics from friday, but I still never uploaded them so maybe I'll do that tomorrow. Hope whoever read this enjoyed it because it doesn't seem like we have very many Sno folks here anymore.

Any of those is good for me! Can't wait until some PASR's get up to Sno. In the past 9 years I can't remember hitting the slopes at Montage with anyone other than Ski999 a time or two.

It has been too calm. There aren't even a lot of trip reports coming up. Lets get this whole thing stepped up!