Trip Report - 1/13/2018

[saltyant]

I know everyone here is anxiously wondering what was up with my posts from Camelback earlier today regarding why I was waiting for the Stevenson Lift to open instead of skiing.  Some PASR posters, like MattEdge, were certainly thinking “what the heck is going on, has Salty lost it”? Well, fear not, because I have a completely logical explanation for today’s events.  However, because it’s complicated, I think it’s best to detail this trip report in chronological order.

5:50 am – Woke up to the alarm on Jitterbug to get ready for FirstTrax.  However, looked out the window and saw car encased in ice.  Checked CB Facebook post and saw notice of FirstTrax cancellation. Reset alarm to 6:50 am.

6:50 am – Woke up again and saw the interstates were treacherous. Decided to cancel skiing and went back to sleep.

8:12 am – Got up, had 2 cups of coffee, watched Gilligan’s Island rerun.

8:56 am – Watched ski lesson video on how to get out of the backseat; decided to possibly go skiing.

9:00 am – Visited skicamelback.com to check out the snow report for full list of trail and lift openings; saw that Stevenson Lift and nearby trails would definitely open at 12:00 PM sharp, meaning fresh cord and open parking spots! Decided to go skiing and started to get super stoked.

9:35 am – Asked Camelback on Facebook what time Stevenson Lift opens

10:00 am – Freed car from ice and started to prepare for some rad skiing.

12:01 pm – Arrived at Camelback. Parked near Stevenson Lift. Was baffled why lift was not running, despite website clearly stating it would be open at 12 o’clock sharp. Before even booting up, yelled to lift attendant asking what time lift would open; now it was scheduled for 1 o’clock sharp.

12:15 pm – Skied 3 runs on Rhododendron Glen, which was narrow, crowded, icy, ungroomed, and had death cookies.

12:59 pm – Headed over to Stevenson Lift just in time to it to open, and to get all the fresh cord. Saw them start to set up the queue ropes, so any second now!

1:00 pm – Was informed that lift would open in 10 more minutes.

1:10 pm – Was informed that lift would open in 10 more minutes.

1:20 pm – Was informed that lift would open in 10 more minutes; at this time, decide to sit by the fire and watch for the lift to open any minute now.

1:45 pm – Realized the lift wasn’t opening in 10 more minutes, so contemplated moving over to the Sullivan side, but realized that would require riding Pocono Raceway Lift, then bombing the run to get to Sunbowl Lift, then standing in line with gapers for 30 minutes to ride a slow fixed-grip lift, then walking uphill and going around a ridiculously unnecessarily long queue at Sullivan lift to ski some more garbage ungroomed conditions.  Ditched that idea to wait for the imminent opening of Stevenson Lift, and instead walked back over to Pocono Raceway Lift to ski some more garbage on Rhododendron Glen to watch for Stevenson lift to begin moving.

2:01 pm – Saw Stevenson Lift moving (!) finally and rushed down to wait for the imminent opening.

2:15 pm – Was informed that lift would open in 10 more minutes.

2:25 pm – Was informed that lift would open in 10 more minutes.

2:35 pm – Was informed that lift would open in 10 more minutes.

2:37 pm – Posted rant on PASR to complain.

2:38 pm – Started complaining to fellow patrons in line with me.

2:45 pm – Saw ski patrol go down Nile Mile; was informed that ski patrol needed to go down the hill at least a bazillion more times before they could open it.

2:55 pm – FINALLY! Lift attendant announced that Stevenson Lift is FINALLY OPEN! Only 2 hours and 55 minutes late, not bad!!!

After this, I made 6 runs on a freshly groomed Cliffhanger, 1 run on Nile Mile, and 1 run on Pharaoh, which was awful and had a large ice pool right in the middle of the trail. BUT overall, the wait was sort of worth it because Cliffhanger was really, really nice and exceeded my expectations.  I also made one run down Honeymoon to see how the Sullivan side was, and it was awful.

Overall, it was another rad day, but I was annoyed that how everyone kept telling us the Stevenson Lift would open “soon”, and then made us wait almost 3 hours.

 

  Very rad shot of 170 cm RTMs on fresh cord:

 

Waiting for Stevenson Lift to open any second now:

 

Icy pool of death right in the middle of Pharaoh:

Edited January 14, 2018 by saltyant

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Nice report. Surprised you waited so long for fresh cord on Stevenson. 

[saltyant]

22 minutes ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

Nice report. Surprised you waited so long for fresh cord on Stevenson. 

Thanks. It was because they kept making me think the opening was imminent by doing things such as setting up the queue lines, running empty chairs, telling me it was going to open at 12, 1, in 10 minutes, etc.

I think CB generally does a really good job managing the mountain, but I thought it was ridiculous that they kept 20-30 people waiting in line for a half hour, with the lift running, and couldn't at least have ski patrol clear Nile Mile and rope off Cliffhanger and Pharaoh until those two trails were ready. Nope, they had to have ski patrol clear every trail first, and it seemed to take an unnecessarily long time.

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Any snowmaking at Camelback?  

[saltyant]

1 minute ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

Any snowmaking at Camelback?  

They were blowing some snow on Upper Cleopatra and Honeymoon around the time I left. Honeymoon was in terrible shape, but it's the n00b trail so who cares.

I was hoping for some fresh snow tomorrow on the funner trails, but I don't see any snowmaking on the webcams.

[saltyant]

Omg wow I found free wifi at the hotel! Now I'll be able to post more live updates! Its nice to be able to load images again.

Edited January 14, 2018 by saltyant

[saltyant]

Lmao I should just sit here by the ski check all day listening to angry customers because ski check lost their poles.

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Salty you're wild today!!!  What's good at Camelback today?? Matt Edge was wondering 

[saltyant]

35 minutes ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

Salty you're wild today!!!  What's good at Camelback today?? Matt Edge was wondering 

Matt Edge should be wondering what wasn't good at Camelback, because everything was just so epic. Lots of fresh cord for FirstTrax and hardly any ice.

I stayed from 7:30 to 12:30 and then left right after a gaper caused me to plummet from the chairlift in almost the same exact way eaf got pushed off at Shawnee on 1/6.

I knew it was going to be packed today, and my plan to avoid standing in line worked flawlessly.

Edited January 14, 2018 by saltyant

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

3 hours ago, saltyant said:

Matt Edge should be wondering what wasn't good at Camelback, because everything was just so epic. Lots of fresh cord for FirstTrax and hardly any ice.

I stayed from 7:30 to 12:30 and then left right after a gaper caused me to plummet from the chairlift in almost the same exact way eaf got pushed off at Shawnee on 1/6.

I knew it was going to be packed today, and my plan to avoid standing in line worked flawlessly.

Wow are you ok??  You finally made it for first trax..wow wow wow

[saltyant]

9 minutes ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

Wow are you ok??  You finally made it for first trax..wow wow wow

Yeah I was fine. I paired up with 3 people in line to sit on the far left, then lined up at the loading line just like the last 600 lift rides this season. I looked back and a young kid sat down right when the lift made the turn, in my spot, and I assumed he would move over to the right. He didn't, so I was half on the lift and yelled for them to stop it. They did and I fell maybe 4 or 5 feet. Then I took my skis off and went home. It just happened so fast and was unexpected, but I wasn't hurt at all. It's scary how fast something like that can happen. If my ski would have hit the ground at a certain angle I could have had a very bad injury.

Next time, I guess I'll make sure I line up with people before moving forward in the lift line, just to make sure this doesn't happen again.

First Trax was very nice and well worth it. Conditions were great until around, then it started to get crappy out with sugary snow everywhere. Planning on going out again tomorrow for 3-4 hours.

 

Edited January 14, 2018 by saltyant

[guitar73]

love the detail shot of the 170 rtm's. mine are fully rockered and are a blast....i need to demo the newer version to see what i think of the camber.

[saltyant]

10 minutes ago, guitar73 said:

love the detail shot of the 170 rtm's. mine are fully rockered and are a blast....i need to demo the newer version to see what i think of the camber.

Thanks. That's not a bad picture for a jitterbug phone!

I've had a lot of fun skiing on them since buying them a few weeks ago. These are last year's model. The 2018 model has some 3D glass feature, but I think that's just marketing bogus.

Edited January 15, 2018 by saltyant

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

21 minutes ago, saltyant said:

Yeah I was fine. I paired up with 3 people in line to sit on the far left, then lined up at the loading line just like the last 600 lift rides this season. I looked back and a young kid sat down right when the lift made the turn, in my spot, and I assumed he would move over to the right. He didn't, so I was half on the lift and yelled for them to stop it. They did and I fell maybe 4 or 5 feet. Then I took my skis off and went home. It just happened so fast and was unexpected, but I wasn't hurt at all. It's scary how fast something like that can happen. If my ski would have hit the ground at a certain angle I could have had a very bad injury.

Next time, I guess I'll make sure I line up with people before moving forward in the lift line, just to make sure this doesn't happen again.

First Trax was very nice and well worth it. Conditions were great until around, then it started to get crappy out with sugary snow everywhere. Planning on going out again tomorrow for 3-4 hours.

 

3-4 hours?  Are you getting burnt out?

[saltyant]

2 minutes ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

3-4 hours?  Are you getting burnt out?

It's still fun but I no longer have ambition to ski open to close. Plus I've gotten spoiled with freshly groomed runs and no lines or people to dodge, so once it gets crowded I call it a day.

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

16 minutes ago, saltyant said:

It's still fun but I no longer have ambition to ski open to close. Plus I've gotten spoiled with freshly groomed runs and no lines or people to dodge, so once it gets crowded I call it a day.

Gotcha!!!  I was in the parking lot double as much as I skied today. Now I'm feeling farty. 

[saltyant]

3 minutes ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

Gotcha!!!  I was in the parking lot double as much as I skied today. Now I'm feeling farty. 

When you go to Jackson Hole, are you going to ski all day or call it quits after 2 hours?

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

2 minutes ago, saltyant said:

When you go to Jackson Hole, are you going to ski all day or call it quits after 2 hours?

Somewhere in between. 

[RootDKJ]

38 minutes ago, saltyant said:

It's still fun but I no longer have ambition to ski open to close. Plus I've gotten spoiled with freshly groomed runs and no lines or people to dodge, so once it gets crowded I call it a day.

Your indoctrination to pasr is moving along well. 

[eaf]

48 minutes ago, RootDKJ said:

Your indoctrination to pasr is moving along well. 

Still has a long way to go. If he had been one of pasr, he wouldn't have described the entire ordeal with the lift, he would've told the world how lucky he was to ski the best mountain on the planet that offers freshly groomed terrain in the middle of the day

[eaf]

Actually, yeah, I think you're losing your touch, salty.

Rather than giving us the timeline of how you were sitting instead of skiing, you should've taken a pic or two of that corduroy, and not macro, some bigger shots as well, and should've posted them as a proof of how awesome CB was.

That would've prompted an investigation of EXIF and what not, that would of course confirm your story, and imagine the look on the faces of pasr that had to retreat from BM at 10:30 while you were still shredding a freshly groomed terrain in the afternoon.

Oh well...

[saltyant]

24 minutes ago, eaf said:

Actually, yeah, I think you're losing your touch, salty.

Rather than giving us the timeline of how you were sitting instead of skiing, you should've taken a pic or two of that corduroy, and not macro, some bigger shots as well, and should've posted them as a proof of how awesome CB was.

That would've prompted an investigation of EXIF and what not, that would of course confirm your story, and imagine the look on the faces of pasr that had to retreat from BM at 10:30 while you were still shredding a freshly groomed terrain in the afternoon.

Oh well...

Oh don't worry, I figured that would happen and took this picture below to prove that Camelback performs mid-afternoon grooming. I'm 100% convinced that this picture along with its EXIF data will sell plenty of Camelback season passes for 2018-2019.

 

Edited January 15, 2018 by saltyant

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Wow that's awesome Salty!!!!  

[saltyant]

2 minutes ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

Wow that's awesome Salty!!!!  

I should have taken pictures of the groomers. I got to see some real live grooming action up close. Very cool! It always blows my mind thinking about how mountains groom every trail every single night, especially at the gigantic places like Killington.

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Just now, saltyant said:

I should have taken pictures of the groomers. I got to see some real live grooming action up close. Very cool! It always blows my mind thinking about how mountains groom every trail every single night, especially at the gigantic places like Killington.

The gigantic places dont groom all their terrain. You see this.