C1erArt

You just need narrower and sharper skis ;-). It skied great today. Was 24 degrees up near us. And everything was in great shape. Still blowing snow when we left at noon.

Everything seem to be in really good shape today. Nightmare Dream Weaver was my favorite today. They opened up Razors to the public just before I left, and my run down it was marginal. If I were a racer and had my druthers I’d much rather have raced on Challenge than Razors. Challenge was bulletproof like it was water injected. They were blowing snow like crazy on Razors Friday, and I don’t think there was enough time for the slope to set before the race. Will be out again tomorrow with my sweetie, probably not at opening though.

I plan on being there.

Bit the bullet and got a season pass for the rest of this year and next year. Was out today first thing and lapped Challenge, Nightweaver and Sudewinder until about 10:30. No real lift lines and the slopes were in great shape. Big FIS multistate race today, but no big effect on the crowds.

Was up from about 930 to 12:30. Run of the day was lazy mile. Nightmare and Dreamweaver river were also pretty good, as was Challenge. The only sketchy part was the last drop off of challenge.

Not for a few weeks, was at Sunday River week before last.

Great, my favorite part of Whiteface.

Anything happening with the mid mountain lodge that had that fire?

We were using JF A lift in December until they opened up Rivershot and the East Mountain lift was available.

IMHO when the grooming has been subpar this year it is because there is not enough base to dig deep enough to do a good grooming job. This is the worst year for warm temps and rain that I can remember. But still most trails at JF are in great shape, just the high traffic steeper ones are showing the strain. A couple of lifts had dirt showing today if you cut the corner getting off. I don’t think Epic has increased their traffic at all, if anything it is down over previous years, although I have the luxury of not skiing weekends anymore so I miss the busses and crowds. With the changing climate, putting in a 30 year investment into a new or refurbished lift is pretty sketchy economics. Glad that Saddleback in Maine found investors to fund their lift replacement. The Balsams ski area in Dixville NH is still trying to get funding.

Was out first thing this morning, Monday, February 3. Nice and sunny, with frozen cord. After it warmed up a little bit skiing was a lot easier. Rivershot was in pretty rough shape from all the traffic over the weekend, and I don’t think there is enough base to properly groom it out. but Floyd’s wasn’t too bad, and Challenge in great shape all day. They groomed out the fresh snow we got yesterday afternoon pretty much everywhere except the left side of Exhibition. That was the run of the day, with nice baby bumps on the first slope with fluff on top. Left about 1, and the temperature was in the low 50s. Spring skiing, but it never got slushy.

Could be a multi speed motor and one set of windings is shorted out.

Friday radio station day. Got there early so parking and getting my ticket wasn’t too bad. Headed over to East Mountain first thing. Snow was in great shape (at one point, from the lift, I heard someone yell “it’s like butter“). They had a corral set up and crowds weren’t too bad even when I left at 11:30, The second lift was ready but they never started loading it. The slope crowded up a little faster than usual, but on the plus side, Challenge was in great shape all morning. Some of the other slopes tended to get scraped off a little. Very little cover right now. Was up at Sunday River skiing there for the first time last week on the Ikon pass. The slopes were pretty nice but the glades and double blacks were in rough shape. Kind of an interesting set up with a lot of little mountains spread out. Also on the bright side, it looks like Saddleback is going to reopen next year. Think I’ll wait until the six pack is running before hitting up blue again.

The home mountain for my sister in Maine was Saddleback, and they shutdown a couple of years ago because they couldn’t afford to replace their main lift. Hopefully they will manage to get investors to continue operations. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

Hit the slopes right at eight and skied to 1030 when it started the crowd up. Personally I liked Challenge - they evened out the crossover a little bit so you could maintain some speed right to the challenge trail and it was pretty deserted. But Rivershot and Floyd’s were in good shape also. It was a real pretty scene, with sunshine coming through the trees behind me, but I just missed it by a few seconds when the clouds came in. The clouds cleared up, and it was sunny by the time I left. Nice skiing in the sunshine for a change. Rumor has it they found a crack in a chair on the Thunderbolt lift, and upon inspection they found a bunch of more chairs cracked. They may be looking at replacing all the chairs.

As well as the vacation home owners both at Jack Frost, big boulder, and in the area in general. and they did put a lot of effort into one park, there are some huge jumps with mountains of snow there Plus, a lot of the people on buses from New York City that get there later in the season never make it over to the eastern end of the mountain. Or at least they shouldn’t.

Waiting for a certain someone to step up and ask about Floyd’s but it looks like he dropped the ball. Floyd was in pretty good shape, good to have two runs on East Mountain open.

I think teaching the groomer crew how to groom snow would do it. Although, it’s probably they just don’t spend enough time grooming the larger mountain.

It was open for a couple of weeks in December, before the east mountain lift and river shot was open.

Out for a couple of hours before the rain. Actually had some sun first thing, then the clouds rolled in and it got foggy around 1130. They have the connector from East Mountain to challenge open, and without a headwind it was a lot easier skiing over today. All the slopes were in OK sugar snow shape, but there are some brown spots starting to show. The top started getting a little soft mid morning. Very quiet today, the biggest group was the Tuesday ladies class. Stopped on the way back and got my fresh roasted coffee beans and some supermarket sushi.

When I was working in Butte, we would fly out of Bozeman every Thursday night and go downtown for the street fair during the summer. Restaurants would be packed.

Some scary stories about the people who snow plow that road. We were at Ouray last year doing some keeping on the old mining roads.

Tried hitting it a couple of times last week but chickened out, hope the coverage increases soon.

I like to do nice GS carved turns on the flats using the speed built up off the head walls also. At its best, challenge glade is by far the best section of Jack Frost IMHO. You can ski among the trees from the edge of the trail pretty far back to the right, all the way down to the right of the race shack and out just before the east mountain lift. And about halfway down, there is a crossover going under the east mountain chair and out onto the run out from Rivershot, but that needs a couple of feet of snow. There is an old pipeline cleared path a ways in to the right that doesn’t need as much cover to make it runnable, but it is kind of narrow. Some people were on it last week, but I suspect the few inches of snow we had just hid the rocks. But if there is enough snow, the whole area from the trail edge to that path and beyond is skiable. Between the bumps on the head walls and weaving in and out of the trees on the flats you can get the adrenaline going pretty good.

Really no off trail stuff now. There used to be a lot of blow over from the challenge guns onto challenge glade, but the past couple years that hasn’t happened (there is almost no base on the trails now and they are not wasting the snow guns). I did see a blue coat run elevator glade last week, he sideslipped down the front lip next to the tower (where all the rocks are under the snow) did two huge jump turns and skied out among the trees. Looked pretty good doing it. Mad tree glade and risk it were non starters all year. And little cliff huck was bulldozed out. I did see a few people run elevator last year but it was just off the lip, down and parallel to the trail and then out on the trail lower down, not skiing straight down to the bottom and out the runout to Floyd’s. Last year was the first year since the good old days that I didn’t ski the complete length of challenge glade. Just wasn’t enough coverage all the way down. A few sections you could go in, ski a little bit and then out. But I didn’t ski a whole lot because I was working out west during the week. And if the race team was on challenge, then challenge glade it was closed also. And this year there are some trees down due to the ice storm we had a couple of weeks ago. But the old pipeline path deeper in the glade might be a possibility if we get more snow. I’m pretty careful about not messing up my bases and edges.