Friday 2/8/08

[method9455]

Anyone else going up? I will be there between 12 and 6 at South riding park. Red jacket, white helmet, grey pants, if you see me I'm looking for people to ride with all my friends went back to school.

 

-Kevin

[method9455]

Anyone else going up? I will be there between 12 and 6 at South riding park. Red jacket, white helmet, grey pants, if you see me I'm looking for people to ride with all my friends went back to school.

 

-Kevin

I went up today, they survived the warmth fine no bare spots anywhere and they were able to make snow last night. Bumpy at times because it was so soft the snow was getting thrown everywhere. Jesus christ $62 for a lift ticket? Since when did friday become part of the weekend? If you are going to charge weekend prices you better have weekend hours, I was sitting around this morning waiting to leave, sure its closer than PA but I could have gotten to one of the mountains that opened at 9 and rode for 3 hours before I could even start at Creek. Each individual park feature is great, but as a whole the park doesn't flow for me. It feels more like they took a map, called everything a park, and put 2 or 3 features on each trail. Its not a top to bottom park at all. South will always have that problem because the middle is flat, but Bear was kind of like that too. It feels more like you are free riding a mountain that has park shit thrown around than you are riding a park. I dunno, on Vernon it would be Great Northern, a 100 foot break until one of the 3 trails, drop down to the pipe or drop down to the show off rails, then roll right into Sugar, one long park run top to bottom no breaks. Today it was good from the top of South lift down jumping jack, then hit flying fox, take a long break, hit 2 things in exhibition, and then 1 spine later. Or you go left and its 3 jumps, 3 rails, and then a long flat run out with 2 more features at the bottom. No matter how you slice it, it is only 10 hits on the way down. That is no more than Boulder has and that place is 1/2 the height. It is 1/2 the number of hits as Blue on the way down. It is 1/3 the number of hits as you get on the way down at Mount Snow. I'd rather they where able to have all the features on 3 runs instead of 6 but you get twice as many features on the way down. That said, lots of cool things around you don't see else where. The log rainbow rail? Mad fun. Bringing back the rollercoaster rail, I missed that thing. The super high rainbow after is just glorious. The 5 tables on Flying Fox and Red Tail are the best table jumps I've seen all year. Oh yea, and the guys at mountain creek rip harder than anywhere else, I forgot about that. I love that one short step down under the lift as you go up south, I saw people spinning on it all day and it is just gets you stoked before you get off.

 

Overall I hated the price, the hours, and how long it took to open, but loved the park itself. Unique features, perfect setups despite the weather, park crew out all day fixing it, jibs that no one can touch for quality, no gaper problem, fast lifts, plenty of variety to choose from and lots of variety for progression from ride on stuff to big rails (though no big jumps). It comes back to the park crew is second to no one on the east coast, but the management blows. Simple things - why do they have corals setup for the lifts when there is NO ONE there? That is just a dick move. How hard is it to open it up and when the crowd gets big close it? I never once waiting in line but I had to go down and back every time. Its just stupidity. I won't complain about the snowmaking becuz there are no barespots, but damn it is precarious, they need to make 2 feet of base inbetween the features or one more warm spell like this and they will be done. It was like you had a jump, and the area in between was 6". In PA they still have 4+ foot bases right now. And no southern sojourn open? It doesn't effect me but what happens when ski club drops all the kids off at vernon, is there is a shuttle?

 

Overall I would rate it as a better park than anywhere in PA, but not as good as Mount Snow. Boulder is good, but it is short and they don't have nearly as much variety of features. Plus their hours and prices suck too. Blue has good flow but bad features. Camelback is laughable, as is Hunter, Belleayre, and Shawnee. The only place I've seen better this year was Snow, but that is Vermont so their weather makes it a lot easier.

[fluffy]

I was at Mount Snow last week and I thought their parks totally sucked. The jumps in them are nice, but the features are weak. There is too much wasted space in there...they need more features and more normal ones at that. They just had to much crazy stuff in the vermonster...and a box made out of skate-lite? Who does that? I did like the mini-park at Sundance. That was fun. Going to Creek tomorrow for the first time so I'll see what they've got.

[method9455]

I was at Mount Snow last week and I thought their parks totally sucked. The jumps in them are nice, but the features are weak. There is too much wasted space in there...they need more features and more normal ones at that. They just had to much crazy stuff in the vermonster...and a box made out of skate-lite? Who does that? I did like the mini-park at Sundance. That was fun. Going to Creek tomorrow for the first time so I'll see what they've got.

 

I dunno, when I was there, it was early january, and the park had just been built. I thought the opposite, there wasn't a single circusy thing there, and the jumps were gorgeous. The flow was second to none. I haven't seen the new build though. Their jibs themselves aren't as nice as a boulder or a mountain creek jib, but their setups are solid. And the vermonster is meant to be crazy as hell, Un Blanco Gulch is their "normal" park.