sibhusky

Since I never watched Seinfeld, I can only guess at why you said this, but Sam Newman was the last owner before the new guy took over. Well, he was the president, the place had a number of people with stock in it.

Well, the box is half gone, but it looks like 40 pair of Hot Hands-2 in the box. Works out to $.45 a pair. This was from Costco. This beats a place in Long Island that sells boxes of Grabber MyCoal for $36 for the equivalent amount. On Ebay, I see them for $33.50. Hot Hands also advertised elsewhere online for $29.95. The only price I can find comparable to the Costco price is this one on Ebay. Ha! I see the seller is from Kalispell. Probably got them from Costco. I'm not a Costco member, I just get someone else to buy them for me.

I got a case of them from CostCo at $18. Don't buy them except by the case, they cost too much.

I put handwarmers in my mittens when it gets below 10 degrees. Sometimes I'll just use one and move it back and forth as needed. I NEVER use the toe warmers as those packs need oxygen to work and I can't imagine there's a lot of oxygen in your boots.

You mean like Grabber MyCoal, HotHands, etc.? Never noticed any difference in warmth levels, only some STATED difference in expiration dates. The ones I have had, any brand, work much longer than the expiration dates. I buy a case like every other year or so.

Looked for this today. Still not on their site.

All season passholders are automatically enrolled. The prizes aren't much -- boot bags, ski bags, etc. The first two years those prizes went to the people in each category (adult, senior, junior, child) who had the most vertical that month. But it soon transpired that it was always the same people, so then they started giving it to the next one on the list. This year it was "random", supposedly your chances were weighted by the number of feet in the month, but if so there is one lady that should be playing the lottery because she won for her category with hardly any vertical feet. There is no gender differentiation, just the four categories I listed. No special lift lines, no food discounts anymore. We had over 300,000 skier visits this year, the highest ever. 57% of those were passholders. So, special lines wouldn't buy us much.

Well, I'd expected to get more skiing in, but a problem with my shoulder has sidelined me and my mountain closes today. Out of all the passholders, who are automatically enrolled in the vertical tracking database, I finished 36th of 7000 passholders (some of these people got in less than 10,000 feet for the whole season -- what the heck are they buying a pass for???). The top woman finished 14th. I don't know how I finished in relation to all the women, as they only post a list of the top 15 finishers, after that you have to plug in names. I know at least one women was between me and the top lady. The highest finisher, Fred Frost, logged 4.6 million. The next guy had 3.9 million. I and a friend figured that a quarter of the time we didn't get wanded unless we made a stink, so Fred MAY have actually skied even more unless he carried on about it (quite possible). Towards the end of the season, I admit I picked up the wand a few times when the liftie was too lazy to get up off his butt. As you can see in this picture, http://www.big-mountain.com/index.php?a=so...4&archiveid=247, we closed with plenty of snow. Since the majority of the area is part of the National Forest, we have to close due to environmental reasons. I think Siblet plans to hike up for a run when she gets home. I will make sure she brings her bear spray and I hope she gets a group together. Grizzlies have already been seen at lower elevations. By the way, our season passes are on sale now. If you thought you'd like to come here next year, buying a pass would have you break even between 6 and 10 days of skiing, depending on your age.

I won't gatekeep SL as I have too hard a time telling if they made it or not.

That is totally unfair to you and anyone else who made the gates.

You're telling me in a points race they were allowing people to miss gates???????? Excuse me, but WTF? The last race that Siblet was in that had a problem like that, all ten girls who'd run the course to the point that they decided there was an issue had to re-run the course after they fixed the problem. What bugged us was even the girls who DNF'd before they got to that point got to re-run the course.

This is extremely common. People don't seem to realize they are not black labs, and they let them off leash. Next thing you know, dog is gone.

I don't think Alta has this, but some mountains, including Big Mountain and Lake Louise, have "ambassadors" or "friends" or "hosts" to give you a free tour of the place. I'd definitely take advantage of this. I ski alone all the time, have done it for years. I'd stay in bounds, of course, since you won't be familiar with the area, but if you are skiing midweek, usually you can find a local at some point who might show you some other stuff. Don't be too "East Coast"/high pressure or gaperish on the lift.

Canon PowerShot S30. Has a metal body, so pretty sturdy. Small enough to fit in a pocket. Good battery life. Has an instruction book you need to read and it's pretty thick. No longer available as it's only 3 Megapixel, but its successors are available in higher resolutions. I haven't felt I needed anything more than this since I got it.

Due to "wildlife habitat", today was the last day for skiing Hellroaring Basin. Look at all the snow going to waste!! (I'd have taken more of the basin in particular, but they were about to close the lift and you have to hike out of here if you miss the last chair. I can take more pics of the snow in the basin from Chair 1 next week.)

Uh, some of that is posted twice, Borgata Boss. Also, I've found that the spray ons are just too tough to get evenly all over the garment. Inevitably, I've discovered I didn't get some section of the garment adequately covered with the spray. Hence the decision to switch to wash ins. Maybe it's best to use both.

Wash them with powder detergent, then wash them again with waterproofing like NikWax.

Let us know when it's posted. Otherwise, my mind will wander.

Hey, if anyone meets Jonna, tell her the lady in the store in Whitefish says "hi". Just in case she was recognized in other stores, I'm the one with the racing daughter.

Many people say that base cleaners dry out your bases and remove all the wonderful layers of wax you've been adding all season, which you don't want to do. Your skis should be getting better and better the longer you own them.

They want to put one in here when they expand the nice little out of the way place my locker is, into the main lodge this summer. The skiers are having as now if we ski the bottom part of the mountain we will have to take our skis off, get on this thing, then put them on for the next lift.

There's been a discussion of what area is the equivalent of Alta, but for snowboarders. It sounds like it may be Brighton. I thought many of you would be interested.

Lifetime ski days so far: 831

What I have also done is enter the lift number or an initial into the memo feature on my cell phone each time I sat on a lift. Then I sat down at night and took out the trail map for the mountain which showed the vertical rise (not length) of the lifts. Not all mountains make that information easy to get. I think that when Doug takes over stats, he needs to set up a database with the vertical rise of each of the PA lifts.

I have an altimeter watch. But, if you know the vertical RISE of each lift you use and keep track of the number of times up each of the lifts you use, it should come out to the same thing. You don't track mileage skied, just vertical. So, for instance, if you were at Camelback (my old mountain), Nile Mile would have the same vertical drop as Cliffhanger.