volklyokel

Today, I added shots from Snowbasin, including a couple from the Grizzly Downhill Run which was used for the Men's Downhill at the 2002 Olympics. I have a totally new appreciation for top-flight downhillers. I can't imagine pointing one's skis straight down these runs. This is like NOTHING at the PA resorts. NOTHING...

I've completed two days of Utah skiing. Spent yesterday at Brighton and today at The Canyons. I'll take the weekend off (to do things with the Utah family) and then get up to Snowbasin Monday. Here is a link to my web collection of photos. Check back for the next seven days as I'll be adding more each time I head out. Including Snowbasin, I'll head over to Snowbird (Tues), Solitude (Wed) and maybe a return trip to Brighton (Fri) to round out the week. Conditions are "early spring" like. The early runs are great, and then things get a little chunky and wet by noon. My ski jacket is overkill for warmth (too warm, even with pit zippers open). I am also not liking my P50 178's. After having ridden on the 168 six stars this season, the P50's wants to rocket, but lacks any interest in off piste runs (which I wanted to get into). I talked to a couple of the local shops and no one seems interested in "trade-ups" because I'd be interested in getting something with more side cut and a wider waist for out here. Ugh! So I've been acting like one of those dreaded east-coast groomer riders. But, on the other hand, no fresh snow is falling and the powder bowls are all tracked out and mogully. So it ain't a "perfect" trip out, but I'm managing to have a good time anyway. At the Canyons, I found I really liked the runs called Sidewinder (double blue) and a short but fun run called The Drop (black), which lives up to it's name. Cheers to you all back in the land of cold air.

White Lightning is, no doubt, a steep hill. But in a good PA snow year, you ought to have a look and a run at Blue Knob's "Extrovert." The problem is, the Knob can't seem to get it open this year. Right now it's a walk down for everybody!

I'm not sure, but it may not be the equipment/wax at all, it might just be the nature of powder itself. 8 inches isn't a whole lot, but it might be enough to feel "suction-like," at least until you build up enough speed. Mark Elling, in his All Mountain Skier book says it this way: "Skiing powder incorrectly makes the snow feel like cement, but skiing it well makes the snow feel like feathers. The key is to plane on top of the snow the way a water-skier does on water." and "Ineffective powder skiers fail to float on top of the snow and remain bogged down in the deep snow the same way a water-skier might plow through the water behind an underpowered boat." In the rare times I've enjoyed powder, I found that I had to get my speed up, and I had to really shift away from the whole footwork blend that I'm used to on groomed and hard surface runs. The whole effort becomes much more subtle, tips up slightly, lifting your inside ski ever so slightly and leaning gently, without so much hip-angle, to maintain float throughout a turn. It gets "sticky" if you're not going fast enough. Once you get the hang of it, it's like floating on heavenly clouds, it is sooo smooth! No ski chatter at all!

Bummer about the dry spell. It's been dry for several years now. I'm heading out on March 2nd for ten days. Hope to hit all four of the Big & Little Cottonwood Canyon resorts, and I want to to visit (for my first time) The Canyons and Snowbasin. Since I'm staying with family, I will probably only be on the slopes for six of those ten days. Hope I am as lucky this year as I was last year, in getting something like the four feet of new snow over the course of the week, like we did last year. When that happens, I rent fat skis; and let the P50's rest at my family's place. Here's the plan: 3/3: Brighton 3/4: The Canyons 3/7: Snowbasin 3/8: Solitude 3/9: Snowbird/Alta (dual ticket) 3/11: Brighton (I love Brighton, the overlooked resort.) Some day, I'll have to try the Colorado resorts (and Whistler in BC), but none of my family lives in those places and I hate paying through the nose for accommodations and rental cars and dining out... BTW, Ski999, wouldn't you say that those "groomed blues," out west, are about equivalent in difficulty to the groomed black diamonds: Lower Runaway, Lower Fastrack or Canonball, at Montage?

That pretty much says it all. All the skiing I do in PA is just warm-up exercise for the *real* stuff out west. But at the same time, I DO find the skiing in PA fun too, crappy hills, lodges and otherwise. It could be worse. Skiing in Iowa is totally unimpressive.

Nah, we don't do that down here. We are friendly and welcome all tourists. Part of our southern hospitality. I hope Montage sells soon, so that it's new owners can set a more conciliatory tone. I'd like to come back and ski the rest of Montage's runs, but I deplore skiing on snow with the consistency of mashed potatos.

I never recommended the fries. I ate a "bag of chips," I don't risk fries for fear of what happened to your pooch could happen to me. Leaving brown lines in the snow is not a good thing either. And what's the deal with Montage opening at noon on weekdays? Is it supposed to be better to ski/ride on snow that's been blasted by the sun for four hours? Or is the apres-ski/nightlife so good in Minooka that no one gets up before 11:30am? The best thing about CB is that it opens at 8am, when it's still cold and the snow is good. VolklYokel

Food: I almost always buy the same food when I ski. Here's the menu: Cheeseburger, bag of chips and a large coke. (looking for protein, a little salt and fluids). At Roundtop, this costs around $9.25. "Cheap" in this instance means anywhere from six to seven bucks, which is what I found at most of the places I visited. Thus, Zaldon, if you should ever visit Roundtop, Liberty or Whitetail, be prepared to pay the BIG bucks for lunch! Run Ratings: It's well known that the ratings of runs varies from hill to hill. What is called a double black diamond at Blue Mountain is more akin to a blue-black at Blue Knob. Razor's Edge was no more difficult than the Knob's sustained steep run called "Deer Run." A double black diamond at Blue Knob is a run that most skiers, even experts, will fall on at least once on the way down. For example, Blue Knob's "Extrovert" knocks most everybody over, unless you have ample experience riding steeps with bumps as big as volkswagons. Generally, I don't call falling down, "fun." The Razor's Edge at Blue Mtn was groomed smooth as glass. It has a couple of fairly long, steep sections, long enough to make a couple of nice big GS type of turns or lots of little slalom hops. The reason why it was fun-fun-fun was that it was wide, smooth and hosts a variety of slope angles. I like hills that are long enough to change it up with lessor steeps mixed in with bigger steeps. Don't get me wrong, Razor's Edge is no beginner's run, but it is no where near the difficulty of Blue Knob's Extrovert. The Razor's Edge reminded me of Deer Valley's (Utah) run called "Big Stick" which is rated double blue. Hope this helps to clarify what I meant. If you're an advanced intermediate, you probably won't fall on the Razor's Edge, but, at this level of ability, you will fall if you attempt Blue Knob's Extrovert. Favorite Hill: Basically, I have two, of the four I visited last week. For a nice half day of skiing, I'd choose Blue Mtn. For an all day, "hey let's explore everything, but at a leisurely pace" kind of place, I'd go to Elk Mountain. Here's my order from favorite to least favored: Elk, Blue, CB and Montage. How do they rate with my home southern PA hills? Hard to assess, as each has their own personality. CB with two high speed quads seemed considerably more frenetic, perhaps a drawing point for younger skiers and boarders. Elk and Blue seemed a little more family oriented. Roundtop is a small family and friendly kind of place, you don't encounter too many big egos there, just folks who love to ski. In the Poconos, a fair number of lift passengers I talked to seemed to be out to prove something. Perhaps its the personality of the region, I don't know. VolklYokel

Got a big charge out of the undergarment tree. Was told by some one sharing the lift with me that her son had bought a big 48" bra to hang on the tree but that it got folded when he tossed it and can't be fully appreciated! One good and not so good thing I experienced at my first and only visit to CB last week, was that the ticket police didn't like the fact that I put my ticket on my thermometer clip instead of the teeny-tiny hole in my jacket zipper itself. They told me that I'd have to replace the lift ticket. Blue, Montage and Elk didn't seem to care about how and where the ticket is placed, only CB had a kiniption fit about it! On the "plus" side, they were cool about it. Not having a replacement ticket at the lift, they told me to continue skiing and that they'd replace it once they had a ticket for me. If they had wanted to be real a-holes, they could have made me go back to square one (the ticket office) and get a replacement. After a couple of hours, they pulled me aside and clipped my inappropriately attached ticket and gave me a new one. Since I ski mostly with a season pass, this isn't a big issue for me, but I found it interesting that only CB seemed most concerned about the attachment of the ticket itself. They must need every dollar! Also it makes me wonder about the kinds of folks that ski CB, if this is such a big issue for the management and ticket police... VolklYokel

Got back today from a week of checking out four resorts in the Poconos. These were my first visits to all four of these resorts. Since this CB message board seems to get the most traffic, I thought I'd give the whole report here, in one piece. It was a great week, weatherwise, probably the best week so far this season, so I was darn lucky in that regard. I kept an eye open for PSAR stickers but didn't see any. Too bad. Had mine on. I would have liked to have met some of you regulars on PSAR. Here it is, in chronological order: January 31: Blue Mountain. Day totals: 18,540 feet in 19 runs. Best runs: Raceway-Midway-Main Street; Switchback, upper & lower; Razor?s Edge. Lazy Mile is a nice easy run. Double black diamonds are overrated. Razor's Edge is fun-fun-fun! Lodge: lackluster, functional. Food was edible, but not that good. Lockers were 50

Sorry - slow on the return, 999. I was at Roundtop on Friday 1/21, but not Saturday. Woulda been good, as were most places, I'm sure. Here's the itinerary for the coming ski week: Blue Knob this Friday (if they get Deer Run going) Whitetail this Sat Blue Mtn on Monday, 1/31 CB on Tues, 2/1 Montage on Wed, 2/2 Then Elk on Thurs & Fri. Please, please, please, let it stay cold!

This is good to know. I'll be skiing at Montage on Groundhog's Day (2/2). Are other resorts doing this? I'll have to flash my Roundtop pass at Blue, CB and Elk too. Can't hurt to try... VolklYokel

Sorry AB, that I didn't catch your post sooner. I can only imagine that the Knob was running only minimally last weekend. Here it is, Friday 1/21 and they still are struggling to get runs open with only 11 going today. Nothing black is open yet (according to the web page). Two years ago, I held a season pass to the Knob and made about a 15 trips there. Last season, I spent a week at the Knob. For this year's eastern ski week,, I hope to be up at Blue, CB, Montage and two days at Elk. [1/31 thru 2/4] As Shearer said, Blue Knob rates as a more advanced hill. Although they have a ski school for absolute beginners, and a pretty gentle and broad place for them to learn, once you step up to the next big hill-level, and attempt Upper and Lower Mambo, you'd have to be a pretty courageous beginner. Blue Knob is best for intermediates and above. And when conditions are "great," which is pretty rare, the glades are a blast to cruise through. The Blue-Black rated Deer Run (one of my favorites there) is broad and pretty steep. It would rate a solid black at the other southern PA resorts (Liberty, Roundtop, Whitetail). Many of the trails are pretty narrow, so you have to be pretty quick in the turn department to negotiate black-rated runs like Stembogen, Lower High Hopes or Lower Shortway. There is a huge bowl to enter Stembogen, which can be a lot of fun, especially if you decide to drop-in early (instead of cruising the trail to the right). Shearer mentioned Extrovert, and to be honest, I'm not sure I'd even be interested in walking down the sides of that run! Its gnarly and you get a good view of it on either of the double lifts that run from the bottom of the hill. When it's open, you'll rarely see anyone make it down without crunching somewhere! No thanks... I've been down everything at the Knob except the double black diamonds. Go for it, kids! If conditions improve over this next week, I'm hoping to get to the Knob on Friday 1/28. "Party on Garth!" VolklYokel

Just got back in from a fine afternoon and early evening of packed powder skiing at RT. No crowds, happy lift ops, a few families (and a good number of foreigners, and I mean non-English speaking foreigners, but they were cordial) - all was good. Carving was a blast--just lay it over and push, edges would grip and you'd get thrown into the next turn. Just awesome. The snow machines were blasting all day with temps below freezing. Fun stuff. I really thought it wouldn't be that good given all the rain we had a couple of days ago. Two blacks were open today. No double blacks yet. Management hopes to open another blue and a green tomorrow. If so, they'll have about 65-70% of the trails open. I really give them high marks for their efforts, considering that Mother Nature hasn't helped much down here, yet. It really pisses me off that Ohio gets two feet of snow and, crikey, they don't have squat for ski hills. VokelYokel.

Hey, I know what you mean. In my report on Roundtop, I blamed "pasty snow" as my reason for quitting today. That's partly true, but the other part of that truth is that my legs were kaput! I got to about 8 runs or 5,000 feet of vert and I was feeling it in my legs. I shoulda ridden that doggone bike more this year! Those last few runs I made today were really wussy! I did manage to hit 410 feet/min, while I was still fresh, on my fourth or fifth descent of a stupid blue square run (black runs not open yet at RT). All in all, it felt good to be out there. Worth the 9 month wait! VolklYokel

First day at Roundtop started off great. Not exactly a deep base, maybe 12-15 inches, and only about 5 runs were open. But things were covered sufficiently well to enjoy working out-of-season and under-used ski muscles. A couple of the bunny slopes were open and, of anything more challenging than that, only blue-rated Minuteman was open. None of the black runs were open. At lunch time, someone on staff was handing out $5 off discounts for another visit to those who paid for a lift ticket. I was there from 9am (opening) to just past noon. Did about a "half day" - i.e., half of one of my normal ski days, only clocking about 8,000 feet of vert. Temp passed 40 around noon and the snow got pasty, so I got out of there. If you're going to your favorite hill tomorrow, go early and enjoy the good snow before the air temp gets too high. And have fun! VolklYokel

Roundtop reports today (12/15) that they'll be open on Friday, 12/17. See you there. I don't expect great conditions and only about five runs will be open, but that's five more than are open today! VolklYokel

I won't be there for NASTAR, but I hope to get up there for a pre-Christmas ski day. This is a sight I've been waiting to see at Roundtop: VolklYokel

For the last couple of seasons, I've been wearing a Suunto X-Lander "wrist top computer" (i.e., AKA a "watch"). It features a digital altimeter with a capability to record the number of ascents and descents you make as well as cumulative elevation changes (up and down). For you snow geeks that have almost every other imaginable piece of gear, this one is worth having. Last year, I tracked all 21 mountain visits and accumulated over 300,000 feet of vertical descents. My max single day was 22,600 feet at Blue Knob on 29 descents. Check one of these out. Click on the word "Suunto" in the paragraph above. These watches have come down in price since I bought one, and there are several models to suit your style. Available at REIs and various other outdoor outfitters. Also, these watches will report a 10 sec averaged descent rate in feet per minute. I've reached 650 FPM from time to time, but then the hill runs out! Going to try to hit 700 this year. If you've been good, ask Santa to bring you one. VolklYokel

Yeah baby yeah! National Weather Service is showing a week's worth of sub freezing nights across all of PA. If the resorts can blow 4-6 inches per night we might have a 10-15 inch base by next weekend! But then I'm probably dreaming. Snow dreams, guys, snow dreams... I always love skiing before Christmas. BTW, Blue Knob has updated their web site. Better than last year's, but still quirky. Kinda like the resort itself. Quirky clubhouse, but awesome slopes! Volkyokel

Congrats Joe! I'll bet you'll be pleased. I gather that you resolved the concerns about the bindings. Did you just take your boots in and let the techs set everything up for you? Come'on - let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! I want to go look for Joe on those blue trackers. If I see anyone six foot three, anywhere, skiing on a pair of SX7s, I'm yelling "Hey Joe!" VolklYokel

This is a GREAT attitude, Joe! The shaped skis are going to knock your socks off. Just lean 'em over, steer with your toes and they'll carve right where you want them to go! The side-cut on the SX7's is the same as the SX9's. The SX7's will be a great cruising ski, and besides, that cobalt blue top is mighty sexy. Hope you have a blue ski jacket to match! Best wishes if you decide to shop this weekend. ...best wishes anyway! VolklYokel

If there is a "they all suck" category, maybe there should be a "they're all great" category. That's the one I'd vote for. I've had season tickets for Rountop for the last couple of years. A season ticket at any one of these ski areas is accepted at the other two, with substantial discounts if you head north to Windham in NY state (also owned by Snow Time Inc.). Whitetail has the best vertical drop at about 900 feet, but it suffers in that most of the slopes face ESE and tend to get a little like mashed potatoes on sunny days with temps above freezing. Liberty and Roundtop have smaller vertical drops (on the order of 600 feet) and, basically, are good exercise hills. Both Liberty and Roundtop's "double black diamond runs" are very short, a couple hundred feet of drop at most, but there is some interesting terrain at both places. I classify all three of these ski areas as nice family places. I rank their snow making and grooming to be on par with the best resorts. Lodges are nice, but especially so at Whitetail. Both Whitetail and Liberty feature a few high-speed lifts. No high speed lifts are found at Roundtop. Of the three, Roundtop is perhaps the least crowded, especially on week days (the Harrisburg school crowd shows up around 3pm), and it can get kind of tight on weekends and evenings when conditions are good. I ski Roundtop the most, mainly because of it's ease of access from the Baltimore area. Runs like Upper Lafayette's Leap, Ramrod and Gunbarrel will give short adrenaline rushes. Roundtop is a mellow place with friendly skiers. I always have a good time there. Come to Roundtop on a Friday and say "hi." I'll be the guy riding Supersport six-stars. VolklYokel Links: Roundtop | Liberty | Whitetail

Skidude, the Elan SLX garnered "powerful, fun and dynamic" comments from the review in this year's Ski Mag buyers guide. Once we finally get out there, I'll be interested in your initial thoughts, especially in how they ride, compared with the V