burton71

The bar / grill in BC is the best of any east coast PA mountain by far...its not even close. Great MT vibe, reasonably priced beer and quality food...can't really ask for anything more. There isn't much that BC needs to change from the last few seasons. Some new park features maybe, and having ski patrol actually go through the parks every now and then and get people that don't belong in there out.

Few vid cap images of the heli and rope chute.

LOL its a hard deal to pass up. 4 or 5 pretty damn good chicken fingers, fries, and apple sauce for like $8. Throw in a couple $2 beer specials and for under $15 you have a solid lunch. I have dropped more then I like to admit a few nights at the grille however.

The trails end kids menu is the best deal at BC, good amount of food for cheap. I always feel funny ordering the kids meal chicken fingers and a beer though lol.

I doubt it. The grill was more crowded this year than I ever remember it, which given the snow conditions is pretty weird. Definitely more non-skiing locals hanging out then in years past. And they really just took the occasional specials they had last year and made them permanent, like wings on Thursday nights.

Pretty much spot on. I love Jackson but man it gets tracked out faster than most mountains. Plus its expensive, I can usually get to Whistler for less and get untracked all day long on powder days.

No pictures for this yet, my buddy has my external drive with all my pics and vids. I'll post some later. Telluride: First day was awesome, they had gotten a couple inches the night we got there so we got some great early morning alpine powder runs down. Revelation Bowl was fun as hell but got tracked out quickly. Did a couple short hikes and hit some of the Gold Hill Chutes. Not sure which ones we dropped but it was definitely some of the best in bounds terrain within a 5 min hike of lift I have ever ridden. Second day it was crazy cold and windy over night so the alpine iced up solid for the morning. Ripped some groomers in the AM and then it got warm...very warm. It was about 52 by 11am. Decided to lap the park with the soft hero snow. Their large park had 4 increasing in size jumps from 25 - 50 feet. And then a show time 65 ft booter. Probably the best jump line I rode all season. Ducked into some lower mountain trees after the park and ripped some mushy, untracked till close. Next two days the weather was great, about 34 or so and not a cloud in the sky. Explored the entire mountain hunting for some left over powder. A couple more Gold Chutes opened up so we hit those. One had a forced 8ft drop over rocks to get into, fun as hell but scary. Did about a 25 min hike into Palmyra for some sweet bowl turns on soft but tracked snow, Telluride is really a tale of two towns. Mountain Village for the more ritzy, posh experience and downtown Telluride for the local vibe. Both were tons of fun with great food, drinks, and crowds. I'd definitely head out there again. Silverton Holy crap is it a small ass town. Winter is the off season so even though Red Bull was in town for the Cold Rush not that much was open. We rolled in around 11am our first day there. We decide to grab our boards and just drive out of town and find some BC to hike. 5 minutes out of town we found a really nice kicker, about 30-35feet with a pretty short hike. It was a bit bombed out but we hit it a couple of times and then headed out to find better snow. Another 10 mins down the road we found a great 10ft cliff drop with untracked, but slightly crusty powder. We took our chances and hit it up, good thing we did. Great time, got some cool video and had a blast. We packed up and headed for home after that. Day 1 Silverton. Definitely like nothing I have ever done before. Upon arrival you need to check in, rent you gear, and have a quick safety chat. After that you get grouped up in groups of 8 and head out with your guide. Our group of 4 got put together with a group of 4 skiers because we were the only ones signed up for heli drops...other then a bunch of the Red Bull staff who had booked entire day heli trips which made our day very interesting. We get off the lift and our guide informs us that our first run is going to be a heli run...which they don't normally do with quest they don't know because the want to evaluate your ability first. We grab our gear and hike over to the heli landing area. Heli comes flying in and lands like 3 feet away. Rotor wash is blowing snow every where. Its just awesome. We load in in groups of four and up we go. Total air time is about 3-4 minutes with some fun flying and diving. Then the pilot lands in, dumps us and we goes to get the rest of the group. Once the group is together we get some nasty, untracked turns down one of the steeper bowl runs I've ever done. Snow goes from fluffy powder, to heavy powder, to chunks and bumps by the bottom. Really had to stay on your toes. At the end of the run we had about a 15 minute hike to the service road where the bus picked us up and took us back to base. 2nd run, we had a 35 minute steep hike off the lift...which at altitude is hard as fuck...but got us a great look at the Cold Rush features. Nasty railroad rail, a few huge booters, and cool mine shaft drop. They had some avy issues the day before on that exposure so we had to drop before hiking all the way around. Still this was the longest run of the day, started with a fun chute drop out into a huge bowl and some fun trees. We were supposed to get another heli drop but we keep missing our window to meet with the heli. Since Red Bull had 20 people on all day trips were only had small windows to get drops when the heli was coming or going for fuel. So we only ended up getting 1 drop the first day...which sucked but the comp'd us a free drop the next day which was really cool of them. First day ended with 3 more lift / hike runs for a total of 5. I was worked after that. Second day we once again started with a heli run and got some great turns. 2nd run we ended up in a tracked out woods run were we had to use a rope to get down probably a 50 degree 100ft icy chute that was surrounded by rocks. Scary and fun at the same time...probably wouldn't want to do it again lol. 3rd run was our next heli drop which took us out much further than the first. Best snow of the trip. Our group split into two, 4 went down one chute and the other 4 went down another that opened into the same bowl. At the bottom of the bowl we had a long hike, probably 30-40 minutes to get over a ridge to drop back in a start riding down to the access road. We stopped for lunch and beer and then took two lift accessed short hike runs and then called it day. Over all it was a hell of trip with tons of riding, open to close every day at Telly and as much as our legs could take at Silverton. If I had to do it again, I would flip the trip and start at Silverton and end at Telluride. But other that it was great and I would recommend both. But if you go to Silverton be ready to work.

Food prices were just about the same as last year in both bars. Actually they had more specials and discounts this season then most that I remember.

Better pants, or they need to learn how to take care of their gear to keep it waterproof. When I'm out west I spend all day riding and hiking around in the side and backcountry and never get wet. You wanna wear a butt flap to stay warm go right ahead but you should never need to wear two pairs of pants.

They will have weather to blow snow starting Sat night, not sure if they will or not. Oh well they did a damn good job with the shit weather this season.

I think you just need some better pants. Last year I spent 6 days in a row riding open to close at Whistler while it dumped the entire time. 12+in every day, bottom less pow in the trees. I stayed dry as a bone in my burton AK gear.

You need a lift ticket which is $139. You also need avi gear so if you don't have a shovel, beacon and probe you have to rent those for $35. Then there are multiple options for heli riding. You can pay $159 per drop with access to less remote terrain. Or they have 2 packages. $320 for two drops plus access to remote areas of the mountain you can add more drops for $159 each. Or $999 for 6+ runs pretty much where ever you want in the 22k acre area. We aren't exactly sure what we want to do yet, but probably leaning towards the $320 package and adding a few more drops.

Definitely gonna have a ton of pics and vid from the entire trip. Probably not gonna post anything till I get back though.

Leaving on Sat. Riding Telluride Sun-Wednesday. Silverton Thur-Sat. Friday is the planned heli day. Not sure how much riding we'll get in on Thur because that is the travel day...might hit up Durango instead of Silverton for a 1/2 day session. Both Telly and Silverton are getting hammered with snow right now so it should be pretty damn nice when we get out there.

Spring fling has been moved to the 10th and 11th. Guess next weekend is it for them.

Glad you had a good time. Hope you got some tree runs in. My friend was there this weekend and said the trees were the best they have been all year.

Looks like they blew again last night. I guess they are pretty serious about trying to make it to at least the 17th.

Fun session this morning. Nice to see them still blowing, they definitely recovered a bit of snow from mid week.

Storm looks to bigger than first expected. K-Mart is expecting 15-23in. My weekend plans might have just changed...might go pow hunting.

Calling for 6-10in in Killington with this storm. That should definitely help out up there.

They could probably learn how to make good snow as well.

Conditions were awesome this morning. Definitely a few thin spots coming down into BB but other then that it wasn't bad. Snow got really sloppy around 1pm so I took off.

They have enough snow to get through the next couple of days. They might have to groom out some jumps but that will get them through the weekend, at least on the park runs. Doesn't look to bad weather wise after Friday, definitely some chances to blow more snow but at this point who knows if they will or not.

Snow or no snow it all comes down to if people show up. If it remains 50+ degrees durning the day no one is going to head up to ski / ride. Its going to be almost 60 tomorrow, I bet it will be a ghost town up there. I'm still crossing my fingers for a nice storm early march to get people back into the winter mood. I'd like to get a couple more days in at BC when I get back from Telluride and Silverton.

The next couple of days are going to hurt. If we don't get a cool down I don't think they will make the 17th either.