Trip Report - 2/1/2020

[saltyant]

Just got back from Camelback, the True Mountain. In the house was @saltyant and a lot of Jerrys. Pulled into the Gaper lot at 1700 hours and stepped into my RTMs to ski to the waterslide lift. Made gnarly runs on Nile Mile, Cliffhanger, and the green trail. Sadly I'm starting to forget the names of the trails since I'm getting old (almost 32) and haven't skied at Camelback enough. Cliffhanger was chock full of ice and giant moguls. All black diamonds were icy AF and my RTMs were making loud scraping sounds.

Had some fun conversations on the lift. Talked to some cool older dude with a wolf hat he got in Utah in 1987, and told him his hat is older than myself and @AtomicSkier.  When he was younger he biked a loop from Indiana to Yellowstone, so we talked about our road cycling adventures. Also rode the lift with a giant toolbag jabroni who had a backpack full of beers but lost it somewhere, and was drunk as a skunk. We rode up with an Ernst & Young consultant from downtown Manhattan and had an interesting conversation about life. Overall a great night and made a lot of epic runs. I still really like Camelback and maybe will get a season pass there again. JADIP.

Edited February 2, 2020 by saltyant

[enjoralas]

Nice. Looking like I might not get a day at Camelback in for the first year since I started skiing. Gonna hit blue tomorrow?

[indiggio]

Where's the facemask?

 

[saltyant]

5 hours ago, enjoralas said:

Nice. Looking like I might not get a day at Camelback in for the first year since I started skiing. Gonna hit blue tomorrow?

Yep, I'll be at True Blue today.

24 minutes ago, indiggio said:

Where's the facemask?

Left it in my Sonic.

[eaf]

Well... I figured, I'd follow salty's footsteps and go to Camelback this Sunday, seeing how the 6-pack at Blue is having troubles...

The day started at about 8:10am with a closed CBK Lodge. Nobody's inside, no sign saying when it might be open. There were a few cars near it and a couple of people booting up in the parking lot, but all of them must've been pass-holders, for there was no way for them to get a ticket otherwise. So we got back in our car and drove toward the main lodge.

This is our first time at CB this year, so it was the first time we saw what they've done to the lodge entrance. In the past it was possible to go straight from Sullivan express to the doors, but now they've fenced the entrance off creating a large kinda terrace area, and so one has to zigzag toward the terrace entrance first and only then go back to where the lodge entrance is. Very annoying. Hardly surprising that many people prefer to just go through the ski shop instead of doing that stupid detour.

The snow varied, but varied between different grades of bad. Some trails with cookies, more with sugar, found literally only two trails that were in good shape. One was a green on the right side, the other one was Raceway. After Alps the contrast in skiability is especially striking.

Stevenson express was crowded from the get go. And the worst part is that they didn't care to start any other lifts. Raceway, The Glen, Marc Antony, Cleopatra lifts were all down. That made the entire left side of the mountain pretty much unavailable for skiing due to the bottleneck at Stevenson, which was especially unfortunate since snow on Raceway was better than average.

They're still not 100% open. Pharaon is closed, so is Basilisk, even Glen wasn't open. There might be more holes in the middle, we just tried sticking to the right to avoid lines. It was interesting to overhear red jacket's chat about how the new guns are so much better. Well, that might be so, if only they could groom it better.

All in all, the day was a disappointment.

Edited February 2, 2020 by eaf