Robert2

Just poking around weather.com for Monday's temps and I find that Palmerton forecast is warmer than Blakeslee on Monday. Seems the overnight low for JF BB will dip to hardpack temps in the 20s while Blue temps stay at slush temps. Even if the daytime high climbs to 36 it looks real good for BB after sunset because 6PM will dip back down to hardpack temps. Palmerton PA 6 AM 33 degrees 3PM 42 degrees 6 PM 38 degrees Blakeslee PA 6 AM 27 degrees 3 PM 36 degrees 6PM 32 degrees This was another reason I bought a JFBB season pass. I'm the same distance from Blue as I am from JFBB and I figured JFBB would be open earlier and longer than Blue.

No wally world. We boycott Walmart here. My bib snowpants this year came from a local hunting clothes shop in Palmerton. I just say Kmart to give an idea of how simple this bibpants is. Just basic nylon I think. I've never had a problem with cold legs when wearing a standard Kmart $22 bibpants with one or two base layers of silkweight capilene and merino wool leggings. Those two base layers plus the kmart bibpants cost a grand total of $100. They wick sweat, retain heat, and stay dry. Insulated snowboarding pants cost $200. Since my local shops never carry anything that fits me I never got the chance to try out " some quality outwear" pants. Anyone who can not afford to drop $200 on snowpants and $300 on a snowboarding jacket can still play in 10 degree snow by layering up the base layers and get away with spending $200 on just the washable base layers. I've got snowboarding jackets... vents and all.... but they are shells...just lots of pockets...not a lot of thick insulation.. so I wear 3 thin high tech base layers under the shell. Layer one wicks sweat, layer two holds heat, layer 3 stops cold from making it from the shell side to the layer 2. I've had water bottles freeze inside shell pockets so that gives some kind of indication of how well the base layers are working. If the outer shell never gets warm then the warmth is staying inside the base layers, not leaking to the outer shell. Layers 1 and 2 get washed and never get worn twice without washing. The outer shells are treated with water repellents and are not supposed to be washed daily so there are advantages to layering washable base layers instead of wearing one thick heavy snow jacket. You wouldn't wear the same clothes to a gym every day so the same goes for snow clothes. The high tech base layers can be name brands like padagonia capilene or pay half as much for HOT CHILLY's and MARMOT bases layers. I didn't have anything available to me for years except capilene so finding replacement products like MARMOT and HOT CHILLY's were a welcome surprise this year for me. I tried a few other name brand but froze wearing UnderArmor and NIKE warm sports layers. When I say dress like an astronaut I am just saying it gets cold here so figure out for yourself what works for you. Anyone who ever met me knows I'm not dressing to impress anyone. I'm just staying warm and dry. I've been outside every weekday for 3 years kayaking or snowboarding. YOU don't have to listen to a word I say here about the weather or dressing for the cold. BUT the one kid or parent that reads this and buys enough warm clothes WILL play outside in the 10 degrees and not cut short his day because he was too cold.

Hey, that epic post was a fun post. I thought I was pretty clear about how it does get cold here and then the first week of BB and JF opening having 17 degree air temps and wet snowblowing and all the posts by the riders who froze their asses off made it clear that I was legit. You never said what your snow pants and jacket were so for all we know you wear the most expensive high tech jacket and snowpants. My jacket is a shell and my pants are $22 Kmart snowpants. I stay warm with high tech base layers, not the jacket or pants. They don't make snowboarding pants for old men shaped like me. OR I haven' t found any that fit me in my local stores. Seems they only carry products for wirey thin kids. Monday the wind chill was below -20 and the lift operators couldn't stay warm enough. Dress warm people. It will make your day a good day.

Nice riding today. Lots of powder. Lift lines were very short for a holiday. Never really had to wait. Weatherman said 3pm rain but nope..... blue sky and sunshine at 4 PM . Just another day in paradise.

Looks like weather forecast for Blakeslee Friday morning is clear and 22 degrees. BB and JF have enough base now to survive this short warm spell so Friday should be prime riding. I couldn't go today cuz they canceled the Timmy bus on account of 1/4 inch ice coating black ice everywhere on the mountain.

The were talking about how they would blow all this snow while its cold to lay a good base so when the warm spell hits there would be no bald spots. I'd say go no matter what the temp or what is falling from the sky. If they are open I'll be there unless someone else dies.

Remember this post? When you stand at the edge of the abyss ready to go downhill in 8 degree air temperature with howling wind pushing UPHILL and the ground up hardpack ice tick tick ticking away like a sandblaster louder than your MP3 player on your goggles...... you have to dress like an astronaut. Well...today was THAT day. JF is taking advantage of the 12 degree air temps and blowing snow everywhere. There's 10 foot mounds of snow on the closed hills and the open hills have blowing snowguns (tiny ice actually) so you can add this to the howling winds and already 10 degree air temperature. Wear goggles and be prepared to get wet. This ice mist will soak you if you hang in it too long and you are warmer than the mist. It formed a hard turtle like shell on my jacket in the time it takes to strap into a snowboard. Today riding conditions were sticky deep new snow.... and that made for slow riding. Tomorrow is supposed to be the same. It wasn't real crowded for a holiday week. No lift lines at all. Other than the really cold temperature it was the kind of day everyone dreams of finding at JF. Just another day in paradise for me. I was dressed warm enough.

It does have its advantages to have screwy vision. I can go to Walmart and the toothless in stretchpants look good to me.

I said my vision is impaired and I haven't driven on a highway in 8 years. My vision scrambled 8 years ago and everything looks crushed and twisted to me like funhouse mirrors. I can walk around without falling in a manhole or snowboard on a wide hill without knocking anyone over. I can thread a needle using one of those wire helpers and magnifier glasses. Just because I don't see well doesn't mean I won't try to do things. Sewing a button or a windshield wiper isn't tailoring a suit. Its just an ugly quick fix. Its sort of the same as driving in the dark or heavy rain. You see just enough to drive but you don't see everything.

I couldn't tell the picture was blurry on the tiny camera screen I took the picture with and by the time I got it on the PC , uploaded and in the forum I just gave up making anything prettier. I showed the wiper blade sewn on the mitten to show that yes...its that simple to do it and anyone with an old wiper blade, needle and thread, could do it too. I have to figure out a better way to take pictures. My cell phone died so I no longer carry that camera phone anymore. Maybe that's a good thing. My lake pictures were pretty shabby also. I may get a new phone from Santa.

Yes... of course.... we all want to play in powder.... all I was saying was that we do not have the luxury of powder every day so I am resolved to the fact that hard ice groomed hardpack is the mainstay staple of Poconoe skiing.... so learn to ride it and enjoy every ride instead of missing out on snow time because the weather wasn't perfect bringing soft snow to the hill. I've never considered boiler plate riding to be anything like "getting into a brawl with it". Its just another type of riding to learn to love. Since I don't jump or grind rails I'm not putting myself in harms way , I'm just riding very fast. Thats my adrenaline rush. Speed.

As a daily rider I can assure you that the only soft snow you will ever find in the Poconoes is going to be during a good dumping snowstorm. We have nicknames for the surface at JFBB like Poconoe hardpack and boiler plate and groomed cord because we rarely get much soft snow here any deeper than 6 inches in a storm. Once or twice a winter we get something nuts like a foot or 2 but thats not all that often. Todays storm JUST changed over, no more fluffy flakes, now its freezing rain so we are not going to see much than this 6 inches depth here in Jim Thorpe....25 minutes down 903 from BB. This does not mean BB and JF are getting rain now, they are on top of the mountain. As far as figuring how often we do get a big snowfall goes...... my bus ride will not take me if they think the roads are too bad and they canceled my trips no more than 4 times in the last 2 years. That's not a lot of snowstorms. Since we do not get great fluff snow from the sky we have to rely on grooming to give us a rideable surface on a daily basis. Groomed cord is all I need to have good speed and control on a snowboard but a lot of people think soft snow is the only good ride cuz they never learned how to ride blue ice. Learn to ride blue ice and no surface will send you home complaining about conditions. We have a name for fluffy deep snow. We call it Super Hero Snow. Because you can pop off a headwall , fly like superman, and crash into a 3 foot snowdrift face first and get up , shake it off, and ride away with no broken bones. Same thing for grinding rails, tripping, falling , crashing....... in 3 feet of snow you just don't get hurt but those same falls would have you fly out in a medovac when its boiler plate solid ice. So yes, most park riders who don't get out that often will always have much better times playing in fresh heavy snowfall and less chance of injuries. At the end of the season the surface gets slushy and that's not bad to fall on either in March but most riders in March are really just the hard core riders that have been going all winter so they know how to ride all surfaces by then. I'd suggest that anyone making travel plans to forget snowfall and just come up and ride wearing as much armor you can muster. If you need soft snow to attract you to play then maybe wearing armor will fix that need for soft snow and you will get to ride without getting hurt by the hardpack. I always wear roller blade knee pads, wrist guards, and a snowboarding helmet regardless of conditions.

I guess my ears were burning...someone was talking about me so I signed into the forum tonight. My wife was rushed by ambulance to the ER Wednesday morning for chest pains so I have not been snowboarding at JF since Tuesday. They set her free tonight. I'll be back at JF on Monday.

Yea...it was sick to try longboarding. I figured it was the closest I could get to the motion of carving on a snowboard in the off season and did just fine on flat blacktop for 2 weeks while my wife walked the dog in the Lehigh Gorge. I just blasted ribbons of S turns on the blacktop for 2 miles ...then found a hill and the parking lot with gravel.... sort of looked like sliding into home plate.... but on 2 inch size sharp gravel. I just couldn't believe it took most of 2 months to heal. That sucked. I lost most of April and May from that one fall.

The helmet cam has certain weather limitations. Its an Oregon Scientific ATC 2k and the instructions state specificly to not use it in extreme cold without a special camera case. I didn't get the case for it yet. I haven't been using it yet because the temperature at night definitely has been too cold for the camera. Also a wee dark at BB. I'll get video at JF in the daytime. I've also had very little incentive to share video after the response I got last March when I posted HELMETCAM, JF 3-06-08 movies http://www.paskiandride.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11248 I'm not looking for any awards for great video here. I just posted what conditions look like midweek in March at JF. Great condtitions. No crowds. I've seen the various "edits" of park tricks and am totally unimpressed by video of people walking up hills and bonking real slow on rails. I never learned how to grind rails with a skateboard so maybe its just me but I just don't see where the excitement, adrenaline rush, joy?, comes from sliding real slow to a rail, bunny hopping the rail, then grinding the rail for 10 feet, just to stop and walk up the hill to do that again. To each their own. If its fun for those who do it then have at it. Its just not for me at my age. I got an arm full of stitches on a longboard skateboard last year and it took 6 weeks to heal so I swore off all summer blacktop rolling sports forever and took up kayaking as my off snow daily exercise.

It helps to wear 4.0 diopter reading glasses. I get them at a dollar store. They are as powerful as the machinist magnifier visor headband glasses but weigh no more than a pair of glasses. IF you want to really learn how to sew to become a doctor you can slice a grape in half and try to sew it back together. Grape skin and pulp is real close to human flesh in the way it sews back together.

Why? What reasons? It sort of looks like a Christmas ornament after a month or two and I cut it off and start another one. Here's one from last year.

Well that's 6 days at BB for me and I'm done there until JF closes. Someone asked for a picture of the car windshield wiper blade I sewed to my mitten so I snapped it next to the lift tickets from this week. Today the groomers came out to play at 2PM and there was fresh snowfall everywhere. Nothing as far as you could see was not covered in a thin film of snow. The sun broke through the clouds and I saw blue sky for the first in many days. The hardpack was pretty darn screwed up by the 2 days of rain but 80 percent of the hill was intact and a fine ride to be had again. and again. and again. Thanks BB for a great week!

I've been posting daily trail reports because nobody else was and I don't want to sound like the forum pimp here but nobody has much to say about the ski resorts....just a lot of other stuff. I'm sure that will change once the weather conditions get cold and dry and somebody else actually gets to ski. I figured there's people coming to BB now so maybe somebody else would do a trail report. Did you go this week at all and can you post a trail report? Not asking for where you bought your coffee.... just a short blurb about what you liked or disliked about where you played on the snow. I got a midweek season pass for $330 and today makes day 6 on the snow so I'd say I'll get my moneys worth out of a season pass.

OK....cool... so does anyone go on week days besides me?

Anyone going to boulder on Friday? I'm just wondering if I'm the only PASR member that goes to BB. It WILL be my last day at BB. Frost is open on Monday.

It poured for a while but turned to light drizzle so it really wasn't all that bad. Night skiing never is "pretty"....cuz its dark with scattered lights so it doesn't even appear to be dingy like a normal rainy day that would get you down. I wear a kmart rain suit pants and snowboard jacket so I don't even get wet when I sit on the puddles on the lift. I sewed a 2 inch chunk of a windshield wiper onto my mitten thumb so I can clear my goggles of rain drops. You can buy gloves now with goggle wipers but I haven't found anything like my 13 year old Burton mittens.

I can't really know for sure. Maybe someone else can answer that. I live in Jim Thorpe at 600 foot sea level??? BB is something like 1800 foot above sea level. It has ALWAYS rained here in Jim Thorpe during Halloween and Thanksgiving while the mountain top outside of Jim Thorpe 15 miles up route 903 got snow or ice. And last year we were snowboarding the last week in March while flowers were popping up in my wife's garden. Its very misleading. I just go every day and forget about the weather report. I call ahead and ask if the lifts are running and if they say YES then I go. Like yesterday.... rained all day...looked like shit the entire bus ride there.....then the rain stopped at 2PM and the riding was "priceless". Same thing today. Like I said. Just another day in paradise.

BB STILL running lifts, even in the rain. They could not groom at all Wednesday night but STILL had great riding surface tonight. Yesterday's glasslike boiler plate hardpack held its cord form into today even with all that rain. It created a very wet mashed potato surface that you could step 3 inches into it when you walked. There was an ice storm around noon so trees, shrubs, lifts, had a thin ice coating. I can only assume this ice created a seal on the hardpack that shed the rain water later. Riding was fast. Nothing sticky about this surface. Just another day in paradise.