Trail Report 1/12/08

[funkmaztafox]

Post-script edit: This is a very lengthy post. Those interested only in conditions, that material is bolded. The in-detail info is italicized

 

Woke up at 5:20, showered, headed up from the Del. Mem. Bridge at 6. Booted up at 8:15ish @ Jack Frost. Parking lot somewhat empty. Bought a snow pass and walked out into some VERY THICK, very granular crystallized snow. I dont know how you here explain the texture, but it's the kind of snow that looks like very very small diamonds. Real clear, real solid little dip'n'dots sized pellets.

 

The weather was perfect. Mid-High 30's. I was sporting the Hot Chilly's chest and legs, then the jacket shell and my pants. Was perfect for the conditions. I went and bought a Burton R.E.D. helmet at the Ski Bum yesterday (for a whopping $90). And I had my goggles. So I take to the eastern part of the mountain, making a quick run down Frosty and then Easy Rider. Still quite a bit of corduroy on the slopes. From there I took a Smartstyle scan run through One Park. Kickers looked like they were in pretty good condition. Snow was very thick there as opposed to the slopes where it was a little bit more of the thin layers of the crystal stuffs. After a quick run down One park I headed back up to hit a couple of the obstacles I thought I was capable of. Hit that little intro jump, then the real wide flat rail, and scoped out the jump and last rail once more for my next run....

 

The near finisher:

I've mentioned before I'm a beginner when it comes to terrain parks, that being...obstacles. So I hit the intro obstacle, hit the flat rail, hit the third jump (the shorter one) (cased it ) and then was about to head to the lift, when I saw the last two rails. One was a round rail and one was flat. Heading to the flat one I tried to slow down and get the right speed. I get up on the rail and TAKE OFF. It's the steel rail and I wasn't ready for it. Halfway through the rail something happened and I dont know what. The next thing I know is that i opened my eyes and my face was BURNING. MY goggles....shattered. They were fairly cheap Smiths, but shattered none the less. I am regular footed. I think my board slipped off to the left and I went down to the right, bellying the rail, except my face smacked the ground. It's a GOOD F*cking thing I had my brand new helmet cause if i wouldn't have that coulda been much worse. So I got up, shook it off. Made sure I could feel everything. Nothing felt broken, except my nose...but it's just cause it was numb. Literally I smacked face first into the ground without any cushioning....and i've already told you what this snow is like in these conditions. So I take my gloves off, check my nose fluids, some blood, not a lot. but my face was bleeding a little. I had about 20-30 hair-sized cuts from the snow on my nose/chin/cheeks. I also had a HUGE welp on my forarm right below my elbow. I guess that's where my arm landed on the rail. I was shook...bad. It destroyed most all confidence I had. I'm a strong believer in smartsytle and I thought I had the necessary precautions...how else are you supposed to learn steel rails other than going slow on flat rails? The chair ride up from that run was a very long one. I had to decide if I would continue riding or call it a day..afterall I was in pain..but it cleared up shortly thereafter.

 

So I put the broken-lensed pair of goggles in my coat, and was reluctant the accident wasn't worse. After going to the lodge to make sure I was ok (and there seeing all my facial cuts), I decided that I would at least ride the rest of the mountain to get an idea of the JF scene. I headed over to the western side of the mountain to all the blacks. I rode T-bolt glades then challenge, then lightning->river shot. Still the granular crystal stuff, but a thin layer. All the blacks were well groomed, and the entire morning at JF I only hit one noticeable spot of ice (which was still managable) to my suprise. The top part of Floyd's Folly was all moguls so i stayed off it. Telstar should only be a blue run, but I guess since the only way down from the end of it is a black it has to be a black. The diamonds were all very fun. I liked the down flat down flat down style that Lightning->rivershot had, thus it was my favorite run, but challenge was a close second.

 

After that I decided to hit One Park once more and just stick to the flat box rail and jump. Having a little bit of confidence back I was happy I hadn't called it a day, no matter how big the welp on my arm. It was around 11:45am, so I decided one or two runs down a blue i hadn't done would be good enough to call it a morning. Lift lines were non-existant..the..entire...morning. It was nice. There were also no brown spots with the orange poles in random spots on sides of trails.. Very nice snow coverage. My only complaint of Jack Frost was that the top part of the mountain is flat, not allowing boarders to cut across . Also, I noticed on the trail map the ticket booth gave me had a small terrain park (i guess for beginners) which is now Jane's Lane...why'd they do away with that? (because they have parks at BB?)

 

Noon-time, head to Arby's for the Pick 5. NO PICK 5?!?!?! Aww I immediately regret this decision, shoulda done mickey D's. But there was a cute girl at arby's so i stayed and was tired anyways. Ate and took off

 

Coming around the lake being able to see all of BB was super-fantastic. I also caught a guy do a 5 off one of the BB gap kickers when I turned my head to admire. It was the 'warmest' welcome of Bear/blue/jf/bb thus far (those are the only 3 i've been at since i got here 1 week ago) Booted up at BB at approximately at 1pm. The mud lot was about half-full. Sun was out, snow was a lot softer than when I had a face full of it, and BB was noticeably more crowded than JF per skiable area. Still, lift lines were non-existant except for Tannerbaum and Little-Boulder, which has very long lines. Temperature warmed up to high 30's low 40s. I caught the 2nd half of freedom park.. I really like their layout there. It's the nicest beginner park i've seen of BC/Blue/JF/BB. I did the smartsytle scan run and headed up the lift for a quick run. hit the first box flat rail and the first jump on the left, then the second jump on the left. By then, the snow had become much more slow, and the jumps you had to get a lot of speed for to clear the top. Still being slightly shaken from the fall earlier, I stayed off other obstacles and just stuck to the flat box rails. I then headed over and rode Tannenbaum. Snow was a little thicker here than over at the JF blacks, but like i said that's probably due to the weather warming up. Headed over to the blacks and rode Draufganger then Bunny's elbow, a few times each. Then back to the beginner terrain park. I stuck to working on jumps, and started doing some grabs, and even came real close to landing a 3 (I tried 3 times). Around 3 I called it a day. When I left, ticketing lines were long, but aside from Tannerbaum and Little-boulder, lift lines weren't a problem[/b]

 

Big Boulder seemed to have a lot more people just started out on the slopes than Jack Frost, which suprised me, but they never really got in my way.

 

What really grinds my gears: Why do people who have no business going over jumps go over them. Like people who RIDE over the top of them, then sit in the 'gully' where people can barely see them if they're a little kid. People also stop at the top of jumps all the time. ugh. I dont intend on hitting those jumps you dont see me diring over them like speed bumps or stnading at the top of them. I wish there was just a kind way to tell them not to do that without sounding like a jerk. Like I said some of the jumps they do that on I have no intention of hitting but I see this happen to other people all the time also. But if I'm only capable of hitting one or two jumps on an entire run full of obstacles, bet your tea kettle i'm going to get upset at the snowboarder who plows at the last second, not giving him enough speed, and using the kicker as a quarter pipe to come back INTO me.

 

Other than that and the spill in One Park, It was a fantastic day at JFBB. I'll admit i'm not a big fan of driving over to the adjacent park. I'm not against split parks they're obviously much different, but how about a shuttle so I dont have to unboot/reboot. Plus JF/BB would make more money doing that because people couldn't go to mickey d's or arby's for lunch

[funkmaztafox]

mod, please delete, duplicate post.