JFskiDan

if you buy now, you will most likely get this weekend and next at frost...would like to be more optimistic and think theres 3 weekends left at frost, but we all know ticket sales will dictate how long a mountain stays open. Boulder will be open until april most likely. you would also be able to take advantage of Camelbacks alien pass day, provided they do it as in years past. Frost and Boulder definetly dont have the most vert in PA for sure. i think tree skiing, snowmaking quality, grooming, and a very liberal "ski anywhere policy" make up for what they are lacking in vert. I think the crowds on the weekend are less than other mountains. Boulder usually opens first of all pocono mountains. Just my too sense worth.

looks kinda just like i remember it....awesome. ski it up. whats the weather/conditions like?

Powder days in the poconos makes the price of admission worth while. Nice pics....no pictures of food????

Steamboat is a really fun place...as is winter park, however i am a little more biased towards steamboat because we got 14" on the first day. Trees galore just all over the place. John is correct in saying the trail map can be tricky at times....looks like you should be able to ski from say morningside to the top of the gondola, (where we ate lunch) but you actually have to ski down to like elkhead to take that lift. Hotel Bristol is a high recommend. we had a "family room", which was 2 seperate bedrooms, each with its own shitter, joined by a shower in the middle. dont know what the single rooms are like. hot tub, and 2 common areas that are good for reading/drinking/posting TR's. there is also a locker room with lockers for your skis should you feel the need to bring them inside. Steamboat smokehouse like John said is a definete recommend. kind of your old time saloon, peanut shells go on the floor, and the food was outstanding. price for a meal is more than reasonable. If you stay in town somewhere be aware it kinda takes some time to actually get on the mountain. The parking we found had us taking a shuttle to the base of the mountain....which is no big deal at all, but plan accordingly. if you get snow, you will be joined by half the town or more, and they definely have getting first tracks figured out. the gondola opens at 8:30, but some of the other lifts dont open until 9 am, which is kinda strange....we past a lift that was loading people, in favor of one of the high speeds and we ended up waiting for a few agonizing minutes in -15 degree weather waiting for the lift to start loading. i saw 2 emails come through from steamboat, which i didnt read, but i believe one of them was a deal on lift tickets, so i think there should be something out there in the form of discounted tickets. Hope you get some nice fresh....this was my first time out west and found that Steamboat was some place that was hard to leave. Great skiing and a really cool town. Dont forget a camera. take pics.

i'll look for you tomorrow. i have no idea why you would want to leave the east coast for Colorado......

Met up with PA Ridge Racer about 9 am. skied east mountain with the mandatory elevator run. skiers right has just a little bit of powder on top of the ugly ice/sleet stuff. so its powder with crunch since its breaking away skiing on it. skiers left is basically ice. Elevator Glade is ok, little bit of powder with crunchy stuff mixed in. Challenge glade was decent at the top, but got more scratchy as you go down. Made tree glade was really the best thing we found today, poweder on top of a hard surface. The ice/snow/sleet/rain/snow weather pattern has left the off trail stuff skiable, but its nothing to get real excited about. I found the trails pretty nice, but definetly some icy spots around.

steamboat day 2 has come to a close. we made it until about 2 pm, before our legs were junk. this morning it was like 15 below. sun was up, so it quickly warmed up to about 5 degrees. nice bluebird day. cold, but managable. few fast groomers in the morning with some trees mixed in. pictures were pretty weak today as John and I got split up for a while. cell phone service was a little spotty on the mountain. found some decent powder on morningside, i belive. kinda wishing i checked it out yesterday, but it has some fairly steep stuff with a long runout that doesnt have alot of pitch to it....i think Nick or Glenn may have made mention of that at some point. both winter park and steamboat have tree runs galore, and had a great time with both, but steamboat really stands out, mostly because the luck we had with getting 14" for our first day. i felt the PE's might not be the most fabulous ski in left over powder runs and trees, so i got hooked up with a pair of K2 obsethed. Very cool ski. pics at a later date.

Powder day for sure. Listening to the radio this morning for ski reports...."and steamboat was the big winner with 14 inches overnight." Damn we got lucky. i struggled some in the afternoon on the trails on my snoops, they just dont blast through the piles like the PE's. i rode the lift with a local who said this was in the top 1 or 2 days for steamboat this year, and said half the town is here today. tomorrow will still be a great day in the trees, as we still found really nice tree runs late in the day.

INCLUDING THE CITY OF...STEAMBOAT SPRINGS AND VICINITY 701 PM MST MON FEB 7 2011 ...WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 AM MST TUESDAY... A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 AM MST TUESDAY. * TIMING...SNOW WILL CONTINUE THIS EVENING...POSSIBLY BECOMING HEAVY AT TIMES...AND CONTINUE PERIODICALLY THROUGH TUESDAY MORNING. * SNOW ACCUMULATION...6 TO 14 INCHES OF NEW SNOW BY NOON TUESDAY.

good stuff!

good ski day, not a great picture day. i have a few but it seems as though my computer and camera dont like one another. we checked out of the Best Western in town - nice place, breakfast stuff which is always a plus. got to winter park about 8:30, and got in line at the zephyr express and waited just a few short minutes for them to start loading. there was a nice coating of about 4 inches of fresh stuff on top of what they got yesterday. decided to run trails until things got tracked out, since there was ample goods to be had in the trees. started ducking into the trees about 9:30. theres tons of tree skiing here and we probably didnt even get to he best stuff. trees are deep in powder and Both John and I got hung up in one section when we landed in a creek. 2 lifts were closed, panoramic and eagle, which on the trail map it looks as both have some nice terrain, but there was still plenty off every other lift. skied lots of trails and lots of trees. dont remember names, my brain just doesnt work that way. rolled out about 3 pm for the drive to steamboat. things got real snowy around rabbit ears pass. pulled into the Bristol Hotel at 6 PM. really cool place. overnight forecast is for about 9 inches by morning.

our plans for getting a few late runs in today was foiled by Berthoud pass being closed. detour added about 2 hrs. we got our passes, and checked into the wonderful Best Western in town. Decent place....slow closer toilet seat and everything.

nope....starring at the plane. watching our skis and bags being molested, i mean being carefully loaded onto the plane.

tomorrow morning will be good for skiing, but the sleet/freezing rain could be a considerable amount - roads are gonna be a mess, really high potential for widespread power outages as well. we will get a good forecast when its all over. some people think it will be colder LV and north....wait and see kind of storm.

this storm has awesome potential to suck.

i think the air horn is an outstanding idea. Everyone i see on snowblades looks like they are completly out of control, so yes, i think you should go down the mountain beeping your horn at people to warn of impending danger.

Got to the mountain about 9 am. quickly noticed the parking lot was pretty crowded for 9 am, so i headed for "plan B parking area" which doesnt seem to the gem it used to be. lots of cars there, too. one park glade nice, still powdery with a few scraped off spots. spandex was all over challenge for some kind of race, so i never skied challenge glade, which may turn out to be a good thing for tomorrow since it got very light traffic today. met up with Barb and made a few runs down east mountain with her before she had to split for lunch. made a few more runs down the elevator and floyds before i started making my way to my car when i met up with PA RR. he had some time so we headed back to east and rode the elevator a few times. decent powder on the right side of the elevator. some powder in e-glade too. we headed to the lodge for some grub, and i vowed to never do that again on a day that was so busy. definetly a bit more crowded today than normal. east mountain was moving along nicely, but the other lifts were jammed. picture day is tomorrow. JAHHDIP

yes. at a pretty good clip too...hope it keeps up.

risk it is really best after a nice snowfall. the landing can be a tough one. i'm sure there will be a few that "risk it" tomorrow.

challenge glades definetly has more coverage than t-bolt glade. i've never had a lot of love for t-bolt glade. both challenge and one park glade did have some areas that were skied off right in the middle, that you needed to avoid, but they are most likely covered back up now.

good.

same....i'm planning like a 7:30 arrival, so if anyone wants to meet by the ticket window in the circle about 7:45 ish, we can head down then. we can meet the sleepy people at 9 am as well.

hopefully this little clipper gives us a little fresh saturday pm.

15" of cement. now, i like snow and everything, but this stuff sucks. not to mention what a complete waste it is for Philly to get more snow than LV and poconos.

with just a little bit of fresh snow, challenge glade is really nice. nice getting out on a weekday with powder, aint it?