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I am planning on going up for a day once chair 2 or some glades open. Seems like you should have some pretty nice snow tomorrow. It is even accumulating in the woods on top of the stuff from last week way down south by me.

By the lodge the doubles line and the halfway double line almost converged at peak busyness but it was still only a 5min line over there max. Not bad at all for a holiday I thought Quad line may have been slightly longer but I was using the singles line so it wasn't bad either. Lift ticket line was kind of long maybe 15min, you can do RFID in advance online this year and print it out right to the quad if you plan ahead. Elk has almost all of their terrain open and definitely has a good product out right now. They said they are hiring but seem to have plenty of staff around other than 1 of the 5 ticket windows being unstaffed and west double not running (which I think was to conserve snow product and not indicative of a staff shortage anyway)

(Downhill) Ski day #1 of the new year for me, I didn't go last week because I had covid, oops. (Glad to get that out of the while I'm on break I guess) Absolute amateur hour on my part, I rolled into Montage bright and early for opening, tried to redeem my Indy pass, it's blacked out (duh 🙄) - well at this point at Montage I figured I am most of the way to Vermont so I just cruise up 81 to Elk, eating my crunchy bologna sandwich which had frozen solid because I left it in the car last night. Elk was busy but I probably didn't wait more than 5min for a lift, those lines move deceivingly fast. Trails were not crowded at all. Snow quality was great except the far west trails which were a bit slick. Line at the quad was a bit longer than at the lodge because they weren't running the double over there, I assume to keep those trails from become slicker since there were a few routes not open over there. It was warmer than I expected after driving up in 0 degrees this morning, it was 28 when I left but definitely had chilled after the clouds showed up. Beautiful day before then. Elk should be opening a few more trails soon that they blowing on today. Apparently it was deserted yesterday and last night due to the cold. I got one last run in perfectly timed, a good time to quit too as my legs were getting pretty tired from telemarking down the (not quite) 1000 feet of vertical excitement looking like a noob. I had a very large and very reasonably priced slice of pizza and coffee, got a personal elk wagon back to my car, and started cruising back down 81 towards Lancaster just in time to catch some nice wintry precipitarion. Well if I had been thinking I would have taken the northeast extension and 222 back but I was not, I pull off 81 in Pine Grove and soon come to the realization that I am on route 645 on top of Blue Mountain in my outback with all-season tires with several inches of fresh wintery mix in the dark. So I decended in 1st gear and 1 hour behind schedule finally roll into Lancaster after stopping at Turkey hill to clean the ice off my wipers. Anyway the skiing was great and I can't say the drive wasn't interesting.

Lancaster this morning. It isn't very thick and I had some trouble getting the right wax combo, the skiing on this should be better once it resolidifies tonight.

True but Bear Creek is less than half the driving and ticket price as Blue for me although night rates for Blue not looking too bad at all compared to the day ticket surge prices I need to ski Bear Creek first so I can truly appreciate the epicness of Blue when I am there! (Also my downhill skis are in the shop so I would not be able to rip those hot Blue blue laps as I will be limited to tele)

I might go up a night this weekend seeing as they plan on being mostly open by then Even though they are not very large, it is impressive since most places might still be around 50% open or less this weekend

Definitely aim to use both Montage days! I need to check out Blue Knob once they get a snow dump and I plan to haul it up to Greek Peak at least once also, haven't been there since I was a kid If I can pull it off I'm trying to do a spring break tour of like Cannon, Waterville, Jay, Saddleback, and/or Whiteface. I would love to check out Magic too sometime but good chance that doesn't happen this year. Too many really cool looking places on this pass

When the ticket price returns to double digits Probably spring I have to use up my totally radical Shawnee days first from my Indy Pass

I'll be rolling up to Blue in my new whip

Oops the beach skiing joke was already made Delaware is not 2 plate and their vehicle inspection is very lax I should register my car in Delaware

Southern Delaware got half a foot - anybody want to go xc skiing on the beach? At least it's cold now I was near Tussey today would have gone for 2hr but they are now closed because most of their snow is gone

I put my wiring up in smoke before... I had used too thin a wire gauge for the connection to the track, when the train derailed not enough current passed through to trip the circuit breaker and the insulation burned off of the wires

Shawnee is a very well run operation and has reasonable prices and above average snow quality

Park city the other day allegedly 90min line

Wilmington actually, where Mr. Joseph R Biden Jr flys in to bless us with the "Joe Jam" ramp freeze, no fly zone, and I95 closure as he rolls into his crib with his secret service Beast whip. Kind of cool though. Not sure if you mean DE air guard base ILG or the dover afb, not really in the loop what's going on down there Re: trains, tried to get the train working under the Christmas tree, I have really crappy track and transformer for that job and is going to be a massive headache figurung out what is shorting out... a problem for later

1st turns of the season here if you can call 'em turns. Full moon and 8" of snow in North Creek NY. The hill behind the Airbnb is big enough to do about 5 turns on the xc skis, I've done about a dozen laps so far. Will be at Gore tomorrow, very hyped, hoping they can get the summit open. Finally feels like winter after 60 degrees last week - driving up the thruway, no snow there, but cars coming southbound with snow on them. We pull off the northway and the car temp reading starts plummeting as you go up in elevation 22, 21, 18, 16, 11, 10, 6... very nice

No, without going into too much detail on the public forums, it's with general aviation down in Delaware That sounds like a cool job though!

I am actually doing some aircraft repair work with my internship, not aerospace in the truest sense, but still cool to be working with the things that go up in the air. The old warbirds that fly into the beautiful town of Reading every year are pretty neato. I like a nice heavy German lager. Yuengling especially the Black & Tan is pretty good. If you want something... interesting... try the Lancaster Brewing Co's Milk Stout. Heaviest thing I've had. MALVERN is a magical place I pass through sometimes when I'm on my way to park my car on the Schuylkill Distressway.

I took the train from Leipzig to Munich to Füssen and back. I got up at like 4:00am to take the first ICE train out, but it was delayed several hours, so impulsively decided to hop on the local "Trans-Thuringian Express" over an alternate route. which turned out to be anything but an express. No regrets though, the scenery was nice. Germany looks a lot like Pennsylvania.

To be honest I don't know whether or not they actually need to be upgraded but they claim that the old trainsets are worn out (they're only 20 years old, so idk, some of Amtrak's equipment is much older than that). The old trainsets were supposed to tilt when they go around corners but in their infinite wisdom they made them too wide to tilt around corners while maintaining clearance. The new ones are actually supposed to be able to tilt and go a little bit faster. The new trainsets are a lot lighter weight, the federal rules regarding crashworthiness were recently changed- they used to basically have to be heavy and remain rigid in a crash and as a result were all unique designs to North America. Now they define crumple zones or something but I guess that's what Europe does, and they can use European designs now. The main reason I think is that the new ones will look a lot flashier on the inside and outside for publicity. I will kind of miss the big stainless steel American designs though if the passenger trains around here all end up getting replaced with European designs.

I was on an ICE train in germany. It was pretty radical going 200mph on the ground Amtrak is retiring the current Acela trainsets next year and getting new French trainsets, they definitely have a much different style

somebody needs to fix the hudson river tubes, that is a big project If one of those breaks the entire northeast corridor including NJ transit is kaputt

I have not seen that one, I'll check it out!

It's crazy, State College is the exact geographic center of the state but there is hardly anyone north or west of it save erie way up one corner and the wyoming valley in the other. "Donut Hole" of the state Center of population is actually pretty close to Harrisburg

Lancaster so we say we are central PA but still are fairly far southeast. I am about equidistant from Roundtop and Bear Creek, but if Snow Peak were still around it would be just as close. 1400' vert, northern aspect, wide ridge, and water available for snowmaking directly out of the Juniata river. Blue Knob also has the potential to be much larger than it currently is. Here is what I could find on the Tunkhannock 1500'+ vert proposed area: https://www.dcski.com/lostareas/viewlostprofile.php?id=62