Ride Delaware ?
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Posts posted by Ride Delaware ?
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I had some work to do in the morning, but the leg felt pretty good after yesterday, so I decided to stick to the plan and do a couple lower mountain runs followed by some mid mountain runs to ease back into it. I got out on snow about 1 today and went about an hour and a half to 2 hours on 7 runs. Mostly went off of Bravo and Gatehouse lifts. Only 7 degrees colder today than yesterday, but a huge difference in snow consistency. Yesterday was corn and today was more sugary. There were plenty of sugar piles and icy spots to be had, but for not having any natural snow in a week plus, I thought the conditions were standard for February in New England. There was a good crowd for a Monday.
Trails of the day surprisingly were Downspout/Domino Chute and Valley House Traverse. The traverse, while relatively flat, was pitched well with snowmaking this year and wasn’t skied off due to the pitch. I stopped in the middle of it and still made it across with plenty of speed. Quite an enjoyable little section with a great view. All in all, a great day, and tomorrow I’ll try to make it to the top and test the leg out on some t2b runs. I guess I’ll stick with the PT and home PT. It’s made a huge difference so far. Pics below:
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It’s been a tough year on the snow so far. Lots going on personally, and I’ve been dealing with a nagging injury that finally de-compensated and required PT. We had some water damage this summer to our place in VT that I had to come address, and the leg was feeling better, so I decided to get out on the snow a little while I was here.
We split the drive over 2 days, so we didn’t get into Sugarbush yesterday until around 3 PM. It’s been 6 weeks since I rode last and I hadn’t tested the leg, so I figured getting out on snow for a few runs on the lower mountain would be a good test. I pulled a Joey move and threw the snow pants on over the jeans, went with the old PLB, and got on the Village Lift at about 3:15. It was the end of the day so most of the crowds had dispersed. 42 degrees at the base and an early corn harvest. I did one run each of the “distinct” runs off the Village lift for 3 runs total. The leg felt pretty good overall. It was good to be back out. The goal is to get out today after lunch for a couple hours and at least get to mid mountain for a few runs. Here’s some pics:
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I’ve never been a huge fan of Hunter, but I did appreciate it for early season. They can really blast that mountain and they know how to dial those guns in. Every time early season was under the guns and they were dry and soft. Fantastic snow. I don’t know if they’ve evolved since being bought by Vail, but I always loved how easy it was to “accidentally poach” there. They never roped off closed trails. They had this small sign in the middle of the trail, which was always covered in snowmaking snow that said “closed”. By the time you were close enough to read it, you were already too committed to go back uphill.
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On 12/5/2023 at 7:26 PM, EdBacon said:
Abandoned gondola in New Hampshire. 1300 feet of vert. Legit steeps. Gorgeous views north to the White Mtns. They never had any chairlifts, just the gondola to access the summit and three t-bars on the bottom mountain.
The last owner ran an Italian restaurant in Conway, NH.
Only gondola I’ve ever ridden in NH is Loon’s old 4 seater. I think it’s still in use. I think Bretton Woods has one now too. Not too many in NH…
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Throwback thread. Whatever happened to Robert2?
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19 minutes ago, C1erArt said:
Missed the rope drop at 8. Waiting to get my pass working
Looks like you weren’t the only one…
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My guess on that one would have been Highmount next door to Belleayre. I’d really like to make it to Bell this year. I haven’t been in over 10 years and haven’t experienced any of the improvements ORDA has done, including the ski bridge and gondola. I don’t know about build out, but I know they acquired the old Highmount ski area years ago, and this approved plan does show that it is part of the future plans. It would be rather large and add another base area to split up the crowds if they ever completed it. ORDA has had a quantifiable impact. Since 2015/2016 to 2022/2023 skier visits have gone from 72k to 237k.
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16 hours ago, NMSKI said:
@Ride Delaware ? I have a question about Sugarbush that has been bothering me. When they open up castle rock hikers only, what is the route to get there? Hike up from north lynx or over from heavens gate?
You ski down Paradise off of Heaven’s Gate and before the trail turns to the right, there’s a sign and a path that leads to the left and puts you on the Long Trail. If you’re on a snowboard, you’re hiking 90% of it. If you are on skis and adept at duck walking or whatever skiers call it, uphill, then you can keep the skis on, as there are a decent amount of downhill sections. There isn’t any type of trail between North Lynx, and the elevation change is much more drastic. When the lift isn’t open, we don’t run a fixed patrol station at Castlerock, so patrollers rotate every hour or two, and therefore, I know the hike rather well.
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4 hours ago, toast21602 said:
Damn that looks mid-winter up there. WTGAI
Very elevation dependent. On the main road before the access road, there wasn’t any snow outside of what the plows had pushed a few days earlier. Up on the hill there was probably about 10”. The guy I rode the lift with told me it had snowed on and off for about 2” the day before. It was groomed in nicely. Nowhere near enough to open anything on natural.
On the flip side, Sugarbush was reporting 20” and counting in 4 days from some upslope, and being the most aggressive resort at opening terrain I know, was opening natural trails left and right.
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I think I’m going to be pretty happy with the Ikon Pass this year, and I hope to get a day or two at Blue this year, but I did just see the Northeast Epic Pass, and it seems like a really good deal…
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I’m sure somebody could sleuth it if they want, but I can’t even take a guess at the last time I wrote a trip report. Maybe 2019?
It’s a little weird not patrolling this year. For the first time in 15 years I bought a season pass for my home mountain, Sugarbush, which happens to be an Ikon Pass. I am up in northern NH (near the shuttered Balsams) visiting family for the holiday, so I decided to use one of my days on the Ikon Pass today for my first day of the season.
Since it snowed most of the night last night here, but not SR, and was a weekday, I decided to go over for an afternoon session so the roads could clear up a bit. I left about 10:50 and rolled in about 12:30. Temp was 24. The roads were clear in the tire tracks and I never saw anyone on my side of the road.
Sunday River is replacing the Barker Quad this season, which along with the Locke Triple, is their early season terrain. Subsequently, they decided on a very unique opening plan this year. Last year they replaced the Jordan Quad with New England’s only 8 person bubble chairlift, so they decided to open t2b in Jordan. It’s an interesting play because services are limited, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and the trails are long and wide, so they require a lot of snow. After they opened in Jordan, they went back to the Locke Triple, and opened Upper Sunday Punch to Cascades, making sure to avoid going under the Barker lift during construction. Since connecting those two trail pods would require going underneath the Barker Six Pack, they are operating as islands and you can’t ski/ride between the two. They have started expanding from Jordan towards South Ridge, and have some terrain open in Aurora, but they still have a long way to go.
Since I was getting there late, and wanted to maximize my runs/enjoyment, I decided to go to Jordan and lap the high speed 8. The parking lot had about 50 cars in it when I got there, and there were still an equal amount of people arriving and leaving at 12:30. I had to do some work in the car, and by the time I booted up and got on the snow it was 1 PM. I went down to the base of the lift and was immediately impressed with size and scope of the terminal. It is massive and entirely enclosed. They even had a temporary customer service area for lift ticket issues inside to the left of the terminal. I scanned through the RFID without incident, and noticed the lift used a conveyor belt system. Since I first used one at Okemo 20 years ago, they have become more prevalent. We’ve got one now at Sugarbush, so I leaned up against the gate and loaded without incident. For a standard chairlift, the chair is luxurious to say the least. All the seats are designated with dividers, there’s molded padding for each seat, and the safety bar locks and automatically lifts at the top. The bubble is heated, but despite the colder temperatures, they had the bubbles locked open and not in use. The lift ride is probably about 5 minutes and was very smooth. They even have an automated PA system that updates you when the lift unexpectedly stops.
There were four runs open off the top. Lollapalooza, Excalibur, and Rogue Angel are all separate t2b runs with no crossovers. The final trail was Kansas (connector to the rest of the mountain and very flat) to Northern Lights, to Firestar. Firestar hasn’t been groomed yet this year, and it was under snowmaking, so I opted to skip the bumps for the first day of the year. I hit Lollapalooza 5 times, Rogue Angel 3 times, and Excalibur 3 times. Lolla was by far the run of the day. It’s a couple miles long, has a nice steady pitch, and due to the pitch, wasn’t scraped off. It held a great edge all day. It is a wide trail, but since the snow guns are on skiers left, only about 60% of the trail width was covered and groomed. The snow was stellar. Rogue and Excal are steeper and straighter down to the lift. The top parts of both trails are the steep parts, so they were a little scraped off, but once it flattened out, snow conditions were very similar to Lollapalooza. Those trails were basically groomed wall to wall because they are generally less wide than Lolla. There were so few people that I never had to dodge anyone and only had to pass a single person on all 11 runs.
Since the parking lot isn’t at the base of the Jordan Bowl, the last run of the day has to be Lollapalooza so that you can take the side trail over to the parking lot and avoid hiking uphill. The only food at the Jordan Hotel is the Northern Lights Cafe (assuming it hasn’t been renamed since I worked there), so to avoid getting swamped, there were a couple food trucks they brought in just outside the hotel to feed the early season crowds, and I was told from someone on the lift (9 of my lift rides were solo), that this weekend was a madhouse. Apparently there were a lot of upset patrons because the hotel isn’t setup as a lodge, so they weren’t allowing people to boot up inside. Doesn’t affect me since I always boot up in the parking lot, but I can see the downside to starting the season in Jordan. However, I can say that the early season offering there was absolutely stellar. I don’t think I could have had much better of a first day. When I got back to the parking lot at 3 PM, there were only 6 or 7 cars left. My legs were tired and I was getting cold. I warmed up in the car and headed back towards the in-laws. The roads were clear until the last 15 minutes.Overall, I logged 11 runs in 2 hours. That’s about 11 minutes a run round trip. Each run was about 1,250 feet of nice consistent vertical. The drive was easy and the snow was incredible. Well worth using one of my 5 Sunday River Ikon Pass days for the year. It was good to finally get out.
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As a Christmas present a few years ago, I converted all our family home videos to digital, but I had to buy a “new” VHS player in order to do it. So while I had it out, I figured I might as well watch one of my favorites on VHS, and it helped refresh my memory.
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All time favorite Pizza Hut ad. Only seen on the OG TMNT VHS before the movie started.
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I think the one in Rutland is still a standalone. I used to grab one there every once in awhile on my way up to Sugarbush because a family member is GF. If I’m rolling solo, I’m just driving through at the Little Caesar’s. Pizza Pizza.
I used to hit up the buffet all the time in college. Couldn’t beat it…
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Edit: I’ve only ever gotten powder that deep at Steamboat, and that was 16 years ago. I’ve had some other knee deep days at Vail/Breck/Beaver Creek and a handful in VT and Quebec. Powder is elusive and I don’t do the best at going after it either…
I’m just generally curious. It’s been 4 years since I’ve gone anywhere outside of VT except for a 1 day excursion to CB during Covid. I wouldn’t give you crap about Elk. Your complaints are well documented, and honestly, if I were traveling to Elk from where you are, I’d probably just go to Bell. It’s only a half hour further. I think?
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31 minutes ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:
I’m laughing lol…he was busy raking leaves but seriously from now on let’s make this a day of kindness @saltyant thanks for keeping your stats up to date..
At least I have the weather thread. Nothing like being an ignorant post college grad to start the most posted on thread of all time.
Also, I’m not sure I’ve ever raked leaves in my life…
When was your last trip to NY?
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1 minute ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:
Ride can hate hate hate cause I usually take a second trip out west instead of going to Vermont in the spring…sheesh I Thought this was a day of kindness..RideDE you haven’t post a report in a couple years…I do you some hugs because I read somewhere that you’re supposed to hug a ski patroller
No hate here. I just didn’t think you had been to NY lately. When was your last trip up there?
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5 minutes ago, DiMe said:
Ive been there a handful of times. Once or twice met the legendary @GrilledSteezeSandwichfor either some early or late seasons turns and a few times with other friends and solo. Never was disappointed in the short trip to elongate a season on one end or the other.
That must have been a hot minute. Steeze hardly leaves Blue or Jackson Hole nowadays…
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10 hours ago, DiMe said:
Bellayre lit up 😇
I love that it’s closer, but doesn’t help me out. I’ve been to Bell three times and enjoyed it every time, but that was before the new trail and gondola. Not sure what that adds, but I’m sure it’s nice enough. All my gear is in VT. Heading up that way for Thanksgiving and I’ll bring it home. Might make it even possible to hit Blue this year.
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8 hours ago, saltyant said:
I traveled down to Whitehall to claim my Buckmans gift card, bought my boots, then journeyed to Blue Mountain (The True Mt.) to see if they finally paved the parking lot so my new boots won't get all muddied up. Unfortunately it is still muddy and looks like spilled Yoo-Hoo after rain.
I’ve been told that it isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. Once Sugarbush paved the main parking areas, there was an exponential increase in “soles” being replaced on ski boots. Lots of people complaining about it. Us snowboarders don’t have that problem…
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4 hours ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:
Nice have fun.
I’m not crazy enough to deal with that mayhem. Probably wait a week or so for it to die down and then hit it during the next snowmaking blitz.
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It’s official. Ski season starts in the East on Friday. Killington opens at 10 for pass holders. Opening to the public Saturday. Walking both ways on the Led Zeppelin Musical Walkway…
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They don’t show any Warren Miller down here in the first state, but the production Killington is getting on top of NR is looking really good. Very top near the bottom of the screen looks a little thin, but I think an opening tomorrow is possible unless they have the temps to run throughout the day and open on Friday with a solid groomed base. They’ve got 5 days of above freezing temps, and they hate opening and then closing, so they may want those extra production hours without any skiers.
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One gun back on at the top of Reason, but nothing yet on Rime. Probably working their way down.
Seriously, WTF is with this Weather?
in General Chat
Posted
Wait, what? Papasteeze died?
Also, what’s your totals looking like there? Just flurries here in Vermont.