Mount Snow & Stratton 1/7 - 1/10 2008

[method9455]

Brought my laptop all the way to vermont, then realized I had wiped the hard drive about a week before we left and never replaced it. Whoops. We're having a good time, I'll post a full TR later. Got lots of pictures. Mount Snow had melted down completely this week from 100% open to about 50% open with lots of dirt patches. Snowmaking weather rolls in tonight. We're going to Stratton unless the gondola is on wind hold tomorrow, if it is on wind hold we're going to Mount Snow. (See Camelback isn't the only one who does wind holds, Stratton cut off their gondola when gusts hit 50, reducing trail count to 28). Weather has been warm with spring like conditions, monday was overcast, tuesday was bluebird, today was rain/hail/then bluebird. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. Mt Snow's park is nasty, definitely better than Boulder's. I learned a bunch of new tricks but busted up my right knee yesterday. I took it really easy today and its doing a lot better. The hot tub helps. Hopefully PA didn't get slammed like they did up here. THe natural snow trails melted almost completely but the man made stuff is holding up so I have hope for PA.

[snorovr]

Mt Snow's park is nasty, definitely better than Boulder's.

 

 

Hmmm thanks for the tip. Might have to get up there at some point yet... Bummer about the weather this week. This is the week I was gonna go to VT/NH but decided not to cuz of the weather.

[romemadman]

hit up okemo the have 105 trials open out of 117 and 16 lifts running

[Papasteeze]

Mt Snow's park is nasty, definitely better than Boulder's.

 

 

 

uh huh.. BB's builder and Mt Snow's Builder are one and the same.

Edited January 11, 2008 by Papasteeze

[method9455]

Monday 1/7 - Left the house at 3:30 am, met the crew at Dunkin Donuts and hit the road at 4am. Got to the hotel at 8am, got our tickets and dumped the bags and beer in the rooms. Half the crew headed for breakfast and the hardcore ones (my girlfriend, myself, and one other guy) headed up and got first chair at 9, a couple oranges and granola bars was all the breakfast we needed. Did a few laps of Standard, Snowdance, off the Canyon express. Summit was covered in the fog thick enough that you couldn't see 20 feet, not worth heading up there. Overcast skys all day even though fog lifted eventually, around 35~40 degrees. Real spring skiing, grippy and soft but not slushy yet. Not much melting, great cover on anything man made, decent cover on natural trails, 100% trail count. After about 6 runs off Canyon Express I started lapping Un Blanco Gulch to get a feel for the features. With a 4.5 minute ride up and a 3 or 4 minute ride down 6-8 runs an hour was easy. Got about 4 or 5 park runs in from 10-10:45, then went to meet up with the coach for my park lesson from 11-1. Went up the gulch, worked on a few rails that I couldn't do at the start of the day (street style single barrel down rails), then went over to the mini park to start working on front 3's. Hiked a 10 foot jump for about an hour until I got front 3's for the first time. That was awesome. Went back to the gulch and worked on just small stuff there, I had too much weight on my heels on jumps which explains why I always seem to want to rotate frontside on my jumps. I was popping too late, could feel a big improvement there. Well worth the money, I learned a lot. Met up with the crew at 1 for a little lunch, then headed out and rode (9 of us) on Carinthia, the north face, the main face. Stayed until closing. Run of the day was One More Time, narrow and windy, a bunch of dirt patches that made it interesting, crazy with 9 of us trying to get through it and a glade area that had plenty of snow to screw around on. Ate at Deagan's tavern, mad good food. Where drunk by 7, hot tubbed it, played apples to apples, asleep by 11.

 

Tuesday 1/8 - Left the hotel at 8:15, hit the Cup and Saucer for some ham, egg, and cheese bagels. Brought PB&J and other snacks in a bag for lunch - free bag check means $0 for lunch. Bluebird day, mid 40s. I rode in just an underarmor shirt and boxers, with snow pants and was fine all day without a jacket. Snow melting very fast. Actually slushy today, a lot of trail closings and bare spots. You could see the dirt spots expanding as the day went on. Same schedule, hit up canyon express, warmed up on park. Had a lesson from 11-1. Learned 270 to front board for the first time. Started doing nollies on some things. 180 on to 50-50, first switch 50-50, started to doing shiftys and tail grabs, took a hard slam on a 270 but kept going. Again great lesson, definately worth it. Picked up a lot of little things in 2 hours and lots of new tricks that just open up options. Really brought my confidence back after last year so I feel like I'm progressing again. Went out with the crew, hit the north face harder. My gf took a good slam on one of the north face trails. We where gang riding again, I was leading, went over a headwall and there was slush bomb that just took me out. She hit it right behind me and backflipped/spun and landed on her head at pretty much full speed. She slid down and hit me and then we slid down pretty much the rest of the way. It screwed up her neck for the rest of the week but we kept riding. Hit the park at the end of the day to get some pictures/video. I was too confident on a 15 foot jump so hit it without checking it. The sun had gone down and the snow gotten faster, I took it and popped way out over the landing and dropped down a long long way. I knew it was going to be bad as soon as I left the lip. Screwed up my front (right) leg. It didn't hurt immediately so I hit another two rails and a jump for a nasty shifty over a 25 footer, but when I got to the bottom I was in a lot of pain. Took one last run, the guys did a no-shirt run right under canyon express because it was so hot, tryed to get a flying V coordinated but it was too hard. I tied my underarmor around my neck like a cape. A bunch of little kids on the lift yelled for us, the lifties laughed their ass off at the bottom. If it was camelback they would have taken our tickets but the Mount Snow guys thought it was funny. After that I could barely walk back to the car. Got some swelling in my knee and ankle, and my calf hurt all night. Tuesday night we knew wednesday night was a dud so it was a shit show, more drinking & apples to apples. Hot tub, pool, went to bed late.

 

Wednesday - woke up to hail, pouring rain, everything. Went up to the mountain and it looked haggard. Trail count dropped from 100 to 40. We got a voucher for another day, the customer service lady was really depressed about how much money they where losing, I felt kind of bad but there was no way I was riding in hail. I will ride in rain but not hail that is just dangerous. It actually cleared to be a bluebird day by 12. If my leg weren't fucked I would have gone but still couldn't really walk. I could stretch but as soon as I put weight on it it hurt like crazy. Kind of was thinking I had fractured it but it didn't hurt enough for that. One more night of partying with everyone, but not as hard. Still had a great time.

 

Thursday - everyone left in the morning. My gf and I stayed and went to stratton. My leg was feeling a lot better and her neck was getting back in shape. I switched my bindings from duck to race stance so I would use all different muscles and it helped a lot. Still couldn't do much, only hit greens & blues, got about 8 or 9 runs in over 6 hours. I had to stop every few hundred feet. Conditions were ok considering how bad wednesday weather was. Not many bare spots, they where pushing the snow around and had made some. Lots and lots of death cookies, the rattling sucked on my leg. Sugar in parts, bulletproof ice where the groomers missed, and slushy where the sun hit. Another blue bird day probably 35. Mount Snow was making snow when we passed, stratton was not. All the parks at Stratton were closed. If ever I was to be hurt on a day of riding, this was it. Didn't feel bad about going easy one bit. At least I got to see a new mountain and talk to a lot of people about mountains and riding, Stratton on the weekdays is ok but I would never want to go on the weekend. Yuppie as hell but the terrain is on par with Mount Snow. Head to head I can render a judgement because I didn't try the blacks, but I prefer the atmosphere at Mount Snow. The parks looked better at Snow as well. Still had lots of fun.

 

Pictures to come.

 

Note on the lessons - I had Andrew Santangelo at Mount Snow, and would highly recommend him. I've never had a lesson before but it taught me more than I could have imagined. I learned more in 4 hours than I thought I could learn in a week. 2 hours is about all you can do in a row, after that you are too tired, but 1 wouldn't be enough. So figure out how many 2 hour sessions you can afford and go with that. Tuesday was his day off but he came in anyway because he likes teaching park. It was entirely worth the money.

 

Note on the park - I really really liked the flow in Un Blanco Gulch. It is obviously longer than BB but it isn't much longer than Blue's Sidewinder or Mountain Creek's park. I like how it is right under a HS quad so you can lap it fast, I like that the lift runs over it so you can check people out the whole time, keeps your stoke up. I really like how few gapers there where. I loved their ramps on jumps. Very very smooth, they had good kick but a much longer transition so you have more time to pop. Their rails themselves are not up to par with Mountain Creek, JFBB, Sno, or Bear. They are about even with Blue's. Their setups are good though so it works out. The jumps are a bit better. It was the best I have seen the Gulch, in past years they put in too many features and you had to land and jump into a hard stop immediately to setup for the next, it just flowed so nice this year. The Vermonster is nasty but the jumps at BB are bigger gaps. The Vermonster landings are bigger so they are safer. Ramps are about the same. Jibs are about the same except for a big ass battleship box in the Vermonster. Slower lift over there though, I liked the gulch better. Grommet was the right size for a learning park, BB is kind of missing that this year but I hear Camelback has a good one.

 

Overall, a damn good week. We keep getting screwed this time of year in Vermont, but with a big crew it was so much fun. I don't regret my injuries at all I didn't miss much, and I'm healing already. A small price to pay for learning a dozen new things in the park. My friends who were intermediates have caught up with us so now I'm confident that next year we can take the whole crew to a bigger/harder mountain. Last year we had to split up and half did greens and half did blacks so now we're unified and doing blue/black all day. Some are even doing trees with me now. So I guess Jay is still out but Stowe could be in.

[method9455]

Put some pictures on Flickr.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22765548@N06/

 

I wanted to try it out, but they don't make it easy to hotlink thumbnails from the forum so back to imageshack I suppose.

[Erin808]

Great report and info. Thanks! Looking forward to my trip to Snow this weekend.