sibhusky

Second run, GS:

Hey, my brother tells me they're cancelling flights again down in Denver due to snow and MORE is supposed to be coming again in a few days. Colorado is the place to be jealous of. We're not even fully open yet.

I remember that ski boots bit from years ago. I also remember when they went from age to height. Since plenty of kids don't have photo ID's proving their age, I can see why they did that, unfair as it is. Siblet actually got an extra year's season pass off the deal, though, since she is such a pixie.

It was a picture perfect day today. Boots were perfect, OFF piste was good, blue sky, but unfortunately I was sick and there's too many people here this week. But I managed to take a few pictures. Christmas week at Big Mountain

I had a guy here tell me that they are IMPORTING help this winter because they hope to get people with a "work ethic", which apparently was lacking last year. I guess if you DON'T like the pay, don't TAKE the job if you don't want to DO the job.

So, basically what you are saying is that if you have enough extra cash, you get "special privileges", which are really no better than what other ski areas consider the norm. They wanted a price increase to the passes, decided to hit the rich people first, screw the poorer ones, and for what? Personally, I think that if enough people write articulate letters to management and suggest how to handle giving some OTHER perk to the rich guys (or refund them the difference) this can get changed. A similar silliness was proposed at CB years ago for the free kid passes. I wrote a letter about the hassle this was for little kids starting to ski and guess what, they wrote me back, told me it was a great letter and changed the policy back to what it had been. So, letters can work if they are well reasoned, etc. It probably WON'T work for getting the fired park guys back as that involves saving face, but as the crowds hit and that special window gets backed up and passholders are losing ski time, it's got to have some impact. As it is, if they can let the VIP passholders up the hill, if they trust the lifties to check THOSE passes, then why can't they trust them to inspect all the passes?

This routine sounds like a phenomenal pain in the butt. I mean the whole point of a season pass is to go directly to the slopes, skipping all this window carrying on. Sure there's a special window, but it ought to be enough to show your pass as you get on the chair. After all your picture is on it and if you hire decent help they should be looking at it. Basically, it sounds like BB didn't trust its lifties to do the job, so now it's the passholders' problem.

I have to add a little story here about Dr. D's wax. Last season you may remember we were offered some wax that had been loaned for use on a movie set and came back dinged up. Dr. D. offered this stuff at great prices. I got some for myself. Well, Monday night I slapped some on my skis. It was the green kind, which was only labeled as "cold" wax without any other info on the bars I got. I looked at my other brands, thought it might be a bit on the low end of what might be needed the next day, but I've been pretty cold at the mountain, so I ironed it on anyway. Left the skis to sit overnight, no scraping. Went out the next day which turned out to be MUCH warmer than I expected, naturally. Anyway, was skiing with the dad of Siblet's last boyfriend and we are running along an extended cat track on the mountain (quite long). I get a slight head start, but this man is also a former racer and normally tears down the hill. When I reached the cat track, I lean over a bit and extend my poles out behind me, not really in a tuck just more aerodynamic than standing up all the way down. On and on, on and on, this cat track is going. Finally, close to the end, up he comes, in a total racing tuck. Tells me I am a hard person to catch and I must have waxed up my skis because they are super fast. We get on the chair, he is asking me what I used, did I scrape, brush, etc. I told him I slapped on wax that was theoretically "wrong" for the day, didn't scrape, didn't brush, just left it on overnight and went to the mountain and started skiing. He couldn't believe it. How could it happen that he could hardly catch me when I just slapped the wax on, etc. He is one of these guys who makes a production of ski tuning. His son races and he always insists on doing the guy's skis, thinks he is a better ski tuner than most, etc. Then I told him the history of the wax. He was once again stunned that I wasn't using some "famous" wax and that this was bargain stuff dinged up after use on a movie set. He went back repeatedly making sure that he wasn't missing the key thing about my technique, i.e., I just left the wax on there, didn't remove it from the edges, etc., didn't scrape, didn't brush, nothing, and that I do this almost all the time. I told him I thought there was more to fast gliding than just wax, that I used to beat people on cat tracks when it had been months since I waxed, but he thinks it's the wax and the pair of skis. Anyway, I think I will be having to lend him some of Dr. D's wax to try. And this was just the plain non-race stuff, not the high end stuff.

I think K2 might be one of the biggest brands out here, probably because the skis USED to be made in the USA and that's a big deal out here. I'll have to look at skis a bit more here to decide if there is a close runner up or not.

While assuming that 62,000 feet is possible for SOMEONE, I'd say it's unlikely by 95% of this board, even though you are all close to being kids with tons of energy. First of all, you'd never have to stop and pee, which would presumably preclude a lot of hydrating as well, always bad for energy. Also, of course, there's the no lunch thing, but you could always snack on the tram. And of course, the tram would have to always zip up and down on schedule with no delays for any reason. Finally, you have to be in really TOP shape to do that many feet in a day. And frankly, if you did do it, chances are you'd be so beat that you'd call it quits earlier than normal the next day. I'm 55, so I lay no claim to boundless energy, but my 42k day last year was not too tough to do on the day I did it... I didn't start out the day planning to do it, it just happened. But the next day, if you look in the archives, I only did 21,810 feet. Partly that was due to rain, but mostly it was due to a lack of enthusiasm. So the combination of the two days was only 33-34k feet, lower than most other pairs of days at that time of the season. Actually, this topic comes up SO often, Atomic, that maybe we should have an "intro page" for people who are just using the stat manager for the first time. They get the intro page right before they enter the first stat, then they don't see it again later. Either that, or some directions off to the side of the data form when you are filling it in.

I always used to use Cat Trax when I had to walk on some asphalt from the condo to the mountain at CB. But now I pay for a seasonal locker and just carry my boots home at night. I change from ski boots to snow boots in the lodge, so the Cat Trax pretty much are retired.

They don't fly in here at all. They must be using someone else's planes. Billings has 25 to 30 flights a day for passenger planes. We have 12 to 15. Compare that to Newark and you will see that there is really not that much difference between Billings and here. There is a cheap flight coming up soon out of Newark: Total Air, Taxes & Fees $373.60 - 1Adult Flight - 1Round Trip Ticket Fri, Dec 08 Depart: Arrive 7:19am 1:31pm Newark,NJ (EWR) to Kalispell/Glacier,MT (FCA) Delta Air Lines Flight371 / Flight4005 Tue, Dec 12 Depart: Arrive 2:15pm 11:41pm Kalispell/Glacier,MT (FCA) to Newark,NJ (EWR) Delta Air Lines Flight4077 / Flight1404 Operated bySKYWEST AIRLINES

Northwest flies in full sized planes. Delta flies commuter planes in. Delta used to fly in full sized planes, but in spite of the fact that they had the biggest increase in Montana at this airport they downsized their operation here.

They had the annual Pray for Snow party here Saturday night and it worked. http://www.bigmtn.com/index.php?a=sod/main http://www.siberianrescue.com/other/Nov2006 We missed the traditional opening on Thanksgiving due to lack of snow. Siblet and her friend climbed up and skied down on Friday, but things were real sketchy. What a change! We open this next weekend. Temps between now and then will be in the single digits.

Well, the forecast has swung here from all partly cloudy, 20% chance of flurries to: Tonight: Rain. Probability of measurable precipitation 80 percent. South wind 18 mph. Low 31. Monday: Rain. Probability of measurable precipitation 70 percent. Southwest wind 15 mph. High 35. Monday Night: Snow. Snow accumulation 1 inch. Probability of measurable precipitation 60 percent. Southwest wind 15 mph. Low 25. Tuesday: Snow showers then snow. Snow accumulation 2 inches. Probability of measurable precipitation 90 percent. South wind 13 mph. High 29. Tuesday Night: Snow showers. Snow accumulation 3 inches. Probability of measurable precipitation 80 percent. Low 21. Wednesday: Snow showers. Snow accumulation 2 inches. Probability of measurable precipitation 90 percent. High 25. Wednesday Night: Snow showers. Snow accumulation 4 inches. Probability of measurable precipitation 80 percent. Low 20. Thursday: Mostly cloudy. Chance of snow showers. Probability of measurable precipitation 50 percent. High 25. Thursday Night: Mostly cloudy. Chance of snow showers. Probability of measurable precipitation 40 percent. Low 19. Friday: Mostly cloudy. Chance of snow showers. Probability of measurable precipitation 50 percent. High 25. Friday Night: Snow showers. Probability of measurable precipitation 70 percent. Low 20. Saturday: Snow showers. Probability of measurable precipitation 60 percent. High 27. Saturday Night: Snow showers. Probability of measurable precipitation 60 percent. Low 20. Sunday: Snow showers. Probability of measurable precipitation 60 percent. High 24.

Actually, there's a whole lotta nothing in eastern Wyoming.

I didn't think I could, either. But it turned out that with a 6 disk CD player, I could go 10 hours or so, with just stops for quick meals. Recently, I drove a truck from Denver back to home and it wasn't as bad as I expected (only had a radio). I think the big issue is the weather. If the weather is fine, it's not so bad. But one time I took 10 hours to go from Whitefish to Red Lodge in a blizzard. What a nightmare. It felt like months. I was terrified the last 50 miles and was counting down each .1 mile and recalculating how much longer it would be. The road was completely obliterated with windswept snow, there were no street lights, and no other cars on the road. All there were were mile markers. I kept aiming between each pair to find my way. It kept taking longer and longer. I've never been so happy to reach the end of a journey, EVER.

Brush gates are used by racers but could also be used by anyone wanting to practice running gates. Brushes aren't as scary to the neophyte as gates and allow you go practice on getting closer to the gate without the punishment of smacking the gate.

I think this will be good for CB in the long run. If they are building over on that side of the mountain, it probably means they will finally start expanding the trail offerings over there to balance the mountain relative to the hotel. Since the mountain has more "down" over there, it would even increase the vertical drop.

Big Mountain resort specials: http://www.bigmtn.com/index.php?a=content/specials Movie about Big Mountain: http://www.bigmtn.com/mod/media/promo.php

Dave S. used to be over on the CB board, but not to be confused with Dave Kulik of CB employee fame or Davey J, also of employee fame. There was another active "Dave" who was not a CB employee and I think this is the one.

It must be pretty distant for you to have only recently discovered this. Well, it certainly implies that the race team will have a hill to train on, but next they've got to get the right coach. What do you know about the coaching staff?

INCREDIBLE. Now why have they never gotten behind the race team like this?

Didn't think Montage had much of a team. Have they grown?

From the press release when they announced it was closing: "The Alpine Slide made its debut on Memorial Day Weekend of 1977, one of the first such attractions to open in North America."