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Hey All, I’m back from another fun morning at Blue mountain the true mountain. I arrived at the lower lot at 830am and it was 30 degrees under mostly sunny sky’s but close to 40 on the upper mountain, mad inversion yo. In the house was Harold, Kumar, Atomic Jeff, Jimmy, Drew, Rodney, Oz, Tele Matt and many others. Only the quad was running, I started out on challenge which was super nice cord, a few ridges but solid 8 out of 10. Atomic Jeff said razors was awesome and it was and that was 9 out of 10 and lapped that a few times. Coming soon was very nice fast and smooth and even lower paradise was good. Main Street was as good as razors a bit more variable. After atomic Jeff I kept skiing with Drew and hit razors, challenge and coming soon again and ended with x-ing for the fresh cord. The last two turns of X-ing by the bumps was starting to corn up. All in all a fun session and much better snow than expected JADIP

First run was untracked powder...took a video that probably sucks. Second run was skiers right on milly lift. Incredible snow. Little chopped up in spots but really deep

Rolled into the lot at Brighton at 7 40...got about 45 minutes until things open up for the day.

Couple more runs off milly...on snake creek lift now. Did a long tree run (and hit a tree) but apparently I didn't turn on my ghetto go pro to record

Couple more pics...did a bunch of tree runs off snake creek...getting lunch then I'll do a few runs off great western and then back to milly lift. Cheesesteak pizza and a Moab ipa for lunch

Friday, March 17, 2023 Night out in Denver, CO ------- Vail was incredible. I’ve skied Vail a few times but it was years ago and on weekends. It was awesome to ski mid-week. After Bart & Yeti’s, we got to the car around 4pm. There was traffic eastbound, so we got to Denver around 7pm. On the way home, we stopped to check out the bison alongside I-70. We unloaded the car quickly and then went to return the Kyte car rental downtown. This was my first time renting with Kyte. I liked that you could specify AWD/4WD and know the type of car. I've had bad experiences with traditional Hertz, Enterprise, etc providing a front-wheel drive SUV, which always seems like an oxymoron to me. The car was pristine, perfect condition, and significantly cheaper than other options - if anyone needs a rental in CO .. check it out. We hung out at Union Staton near Terminal Bar. For a train station, there seemed to be more people hanging out than waiting for a train. Choo choo. Even for non-train lovers - it's a cool spot. This isn't my pic but you wanted to give you the vibe. Then, we went to Happy Camper in the Highlands area with my brother and his fiance. It had disco balls, light tunnels, campers, unique furniture, and groups of millennials taking 20 million selfies throughout. The four of us had the Mike Pizza with Italian sausage, sun-dried tomatoes, red onions, parmesan & spinach/ricotta sauce. It was a bit pricey but good. We hopped in the car and went to Bierstadt Lagerhaus in the RiNo neighborhood. It was St Pattys weekend so it was more interesting than usual. Bierstadt is a brewery with giant games. It has a giant game of beer pong that uses trash cans on rollers, corn hole where you toss a giant pillow-like bag, and a 7 ft connect four. There's old school Nintendo that plays as the backdrop for the DJ. And free pineball machines. Someone (cough me cough) got a high score. On our way out, there was a giant machine. Some of these buttons made me giggle. Maybe it's an old printing press? Only PASR people would know. To cap off the night, @Schif scooted to the car. It wasn't a Bleu parking lot scooter but it was still tons of fun. Since Friday started at 7am and we were nonstop until 2am, we crashed hard and slept in on Saturday. It...was...glorious. We packed. I met up with an old friend and then I showed Schif around my old 'hood. We drove by my old house which is now for sale. Denver real estate is mind-blowing. Our flight left at midnight and we got back to the Philly house around 7am. It was a whirlwind of a trip, so we ended up sleeping for about 90% of Sunday. Bummed we missed the End of Season Party but hoping to be back this weekend!

Phone was low on battery so didn't take many pictures after lunch. Left around 2...stopped at the Ogden river parkway trail and took a walk with the fly rod but couldn't find any fish, water is running really high and muddy. Brighton was awesome, hopefully should get a good day in at powder mountain tomorrow

Behind on writing reports so here it goes. Friday 3/17 was our final day at Vail. Staying so close to the snow is such a game changer because it eliminates the need to use a car or a shuttle and just grabbing your skis/board in the lobby saves so much time too. All of those factors meant that we could sleep until well after 7 and still have time to pack up the room, check out, grab a coffee for the walk and get to the snow right around opening, there was no fresh snow so the need to be in line right at 8:30 wasn't there.We decided to start the day over on Gondola 1, so we sipped coffee on the bus across town and on the short walk across the covered bridge and arrived at the Gondola around 8:45. On the walk we ran into this guy who alerted us to the fact that Vail is taking away public grills in some spots. http://heyvailgocluckyourself.com/ The snow really wasn't great. The few inches from the day before had just set up pretty hard so it was the kind of day where I really appreciated the stellar grooming that Vail has to offer. This was the first day that I really focused on groomers and honestly it was super fun. Perfectly smooth trails, no ridges, no bumps, no cookies, just long, smooth groomers that you could really tear up. Trails that weren't groomed were just top to bottom bumps. Unfortunately, mid-morning we headed over to the Highline Express Lift on the recommendation of a bartender and wound up in a pod of diamond trails that were completely bumped. That ended up being a one and done. We went up to the top and headed to Two Elk Lodge to grab some water and check out the views that a mountain ambassador suggested to us. From there we dropped down the back side into China Bowl. @skiincy followed the cat track and I dropped down into Dragon's Teeth. The snow was hit or miss. You could get some semi fresh stuff, but you had to put up with crust to get there On the way up I saw a bunch of people in the trees under the Orient Express lift and decided to head down there. Skiincy wasn't really in the mood to risk the crusty old snow, so she headed back to the front side to lap Northstar, a perfectly groomed diamond that gave off Razor's Edge vibes for 1500 vertical feet. The trees were still holding some decent snow, but you also had to deal with tons of bumps when it opened up more. From there I went back to Blue Sky Basin solo and ran a few laps there through the trees under the Skyline Express lift as well as through the trees on Little Ollie/Heavy Metal. Headed back towards the front to meet back up with Skiincy and wound up doing a top to bottom run from the top of Teacup Express to Vail Village. I hit the lap button on my watch which showed that it was a 4-mile-long run. Headed back up Gondola 1 and met up with Skiincy and checked out the lodges at Mid Vail which were super nice, especially The 10th, a full-blown country club dining room perched 10,190 feet. The rest of the day was spent cruising groomers and enjoying the perfect sunshine and relatively warm temps. At the end of the day, we cruised down into Lionshead and headed to Bart and Yeti's for a big plate of nachos that were just OK before we walked back to the hotel, got changed, had one last cookie from the lobby and drove back to Denver. I don't usually track vert/stats but I really liked the Epic Mix App. Here is a quick snapshot of my 3 days

Bluebird day at Blue! Great conditions this morning!

Tonight was amazing, the dreams that spring skiing are made of. We had a Tuesday night kids ski club Becky, Blake’s kids, and three generations of @enjoralas. Highlight of the night was heading down razors with munchkins plowing down the slope. Core memory was made tonight.

Just got home from a wonderful afternoon at Blue The True! Snow was mashed taters and slow in the flats but suprisingly good on Razors and Challenge. Only the Quad was spinning still. Got 10 runs in before calling it a day only to return again tomorrow! Greatful for this midweek given this season and the current weather. Pic from the top of the Nile Mile.

I was at Solitude today. I saw a posting that LCC was going to be closed overnight so header up here today. I think they reported 6” overnight. I guess he storm train is too much too keep up with. Half of Honeycomb was roped off. still had a fun day. At lunch it was sunny and then shortly thereafter the skies opened. heard a few booms but it wasn’t the same as Avy control During that heavy squall lightning hit at Snowbird

Inversion today…37 at the upper entrance, 30 in the valley and top of the quad probably feels like Santo Domingo.

Gonna do this again for next year. A no brainer at this price. The power pass is also out which includes Brian head and Purgatory. 749 for the unlimited I think. Two more feet coming this week btw

Total of 33 people on the flight, entire front row to myself. Should be a nice flight

Sorry @PSUFly I don’t want to poach your trip thread. The sun appeared fur like 30 minutes 1pm-ish and I took a little walk These two were digging out the magic carpet.

Yeah looks like I should get snow at powder mountain and Brighton, should be a good trip

Currently at PHL airport, flight leaves around 8 30. Having a roast pork sandwich and victory brotherly love ipa. Plan is Brighton tomorrow, powder mountain Wednesday and Thursday and snowbasin Friday. Flight lands at 1 am so getting up for a possible powder day and driving up should be interesting

Lake city is a cool little town. Lots of good hiking there.

Skiing into a backcountry hut in the San Juan’s Sunday. We specifically picked the last week of March because we thought the snowpack would be settled down. currently 5/5 extreme. Really hope it calms down in the next few days.

Still a decent base on Nile Mile and you know what toast says,”it’s all about the base”

What do you mean? I pick the week I want to go, take off from work and ski those days. Last trip i skied Wednesday , thurs and Fri. Next trip I’m skiing Thursday and Friday. 5 days at $169 = $33.80 a day. Works out.

On the way to Stowe I hiked up part of MRG and skied down.

Stats should be super easy for Blue to keep track of and publish out. Would be cool if you got a little report at the end of each season telling you what you did that year. Part of me thinks they don't want to do that though because if you really dove into that data you would realize you were riding the same 3 lifts over and over and have pretty small per day totals. It's a fine line to walk between quality and quantity in the Poconos.

My best season back when I used to put in long sessions.

JF, BB are both in Carbon County.

Excited for this trip report. My convo with Fly on sunday. "Hows the weather looking for your trip" "As of now its looking like snow, snow and.....snow" Lets hope that holds true!

Brighton just hot 700" for the year. Insane snow out there. Enjoy!

Got up late and dindu notin . Decided to hit the Bear for reminding few hours. Skiing better than I expected. Hitting the mud bumps on Sasquatch.

RIP Big Boulder Parks, that was a very special era in PA freestyle. 🥺

Looks fantastic...Trips like that are so good for the soul...

March 15, 2023 Vail, CO ——- On Tuesday night, Brian dropped @Schif and I off near Coors Field and we strolled downtown. I was blown away by McGregor Square. They had bars, stadium seating, and an arena style tv & surround sound- it felt as if you were in stadium. It was awesome. We had a rental car reservation through Kyte. It was significantly cheaper and I loved that we were able to specify AWD/4WD. On Tuesday night - We loaded up the Dodge Durango, watched some Ted Lasso with the gang, and went to bed. Wednesday, we woke up at 5:45 and we’re out of the house by 6:15am. No traffic to vail, so we checked in to the hotel mostly to get our parking pass at 8:30. I was surprised the room was already ready. We both had pretty low expectation for the Evergreen Lodge because it was the cheapest accommodations in Vail. But it’s great and so close. It’s next to the ice skating rink, library, and hospital near Lions head. We dropped our gear. Picked up a coffee and danish from the lobby and strolled to Lionshead. Eagle Bahn Gondola was closed so we took the lift to another lift to the top, then dipped into Game Creek. Snow was the best on the north facing slopes like the front and blue sky basin. We doodled around the entire mountain. We saw this area and I was reminded that @Johnny Law told us to pack pocket dogs to grill. We should have listened to him. But instead we stopped at the Dog Haus for a girthy dog with a Hot Mess Blonde Ale by Vail Brewing. We hit up Poppyfields which was fun then it felt like it funneled you into a natural half pipe. The tight gully can be seen in the white narrows. We skied about 50 miles, 30k vert and we’re both exhausted. We came back to the hotel and had some cookies, champagne, and beer. Appetizers of champions. We napped then hit up Vail Village for a couple of hours. We saw these ice skaters, and couldn’t help to think they were paid by Vail to ice skate - they were legit so good. … but maybe I’m just use to the shit show of an ice skating rink in Center City Philly. We stopped in Frost for a beer. Schif had a Coloradan IPA. One of my fav runs was off of Pete’s Express, so I had Pete’s Stash by Vail Brewing. Awesome day and went to bed excited to do it all again

Also @saltyant hasn’t checked PASR since Thursday. I guess he forgot to file a butthurt report.