Schif

I guess when you make 11.2 Billion dollars you have enough to spend on a fun toy train.

I heard people here like trains. PXL_20260706_152656165.LS.mp4

This is the biggest thing for me. My brother lives directly across from the station that it's going to in Pittston so I'm planning on camping out on his front porch for a while on that Sunday. Would be very cool to see it alongside of the trail and I think the coolest thing would be to see it in motion rather than just parked. Do we have any idea how fast it's going to be moving? I'm going to assume no one will be able to catch up to it on a bike if you get to a trail late. I would guess the best chance you would have would be to park upwards of 10 miles away and bike the trail to find it. Today is also new bike day for me so I'm ready to get it up to Jim Thorpe and scope this whole thing out.

This seems like a perfect excuse for a bike ride. I would love to see this thing moving and not just sitting in Steamtown or here in Philly, though there is a good chance the tracks will be near my place down here at some point.

Anyone going to be at CB tomorrow? Considering making a run up

This was last week, I'm just slow on writing reports, especially since no one in the PASR world has an Epic this year and would be going anywhere I was at. As much as I do enjoy Stowe I think I'm done with Epic though. I only bought the pack that I did so I could use it on a Colorado trip with my brother in law, but since that didn't pan out it was mostly a waste.

Wildwood? Camelback is more in the NYC market. I'm thinking more of a trashy Atlantic City vibe. Sneakers in the sand, a lot of "Do you know who my uncle is?" kind of vibe. Yankees hats, Staten Island fake chains, GTL kind of people who skip the G part a little too often.

I've been slacking on getting this finished. Day 2 - Stowe Woke up and headed back to Stowe for a slightly warmer and less windy day. It was still freezing at the top of the Four Runner but fairly mild down at the base. They reported between 1 and 2 inches of fresh snow on the mountain and you could really feel the difference from day to day. More trails were groomed which meant more were open and that was nice. Still some slick spots to be found but not nearly as many. They finally opened some of the diamond trails but still not the natural snow double diamonds that they couldn't groom. By the afternoon though the slick spots were coming back out and trails like Hayride were putting on a show of people losing their edges and sliding out. Everything was riding great in the morning though. I took the 2 mile cruise back to the car for a lunch meeting again and wound up finding the Stowe Chapel which was cool. It was open and there were a few people inside. I remember seeing it from a distance years ago but had never actually checked it out. Instead of taking the Toll House lift back up I opted to hop on the shuttle bus which honestly took as long as the lift so not sure if that was a time savings, but it dropped me off at the Spruce Peak Village which looks like a complete lift and shift of Vail Village, just smaller. I was looking longingly at the rolling racks for the hotel/condo ski valet and wishing I was on a western trip, but instead I was simply up in Vermont with the people who don't have jobs. The Spruce side was actually really fun and was the closest to spring skiing I had encountered on this whole trip. Soft and slushy but not too bad. It even got enough sun that the trees were in play in a few areas which I took advantage of. The most annoying thing about Spruce Peak is that Vail decided to shut off the chair that gets you all the way to the summit over there due to low ridership. There was more than enough snow everywhere so it was disappointing to only be able to lap the same vert there as Blue, but the trails are honestly pretty fun and that side shouldn't be slept on. A trip across the transfer gondola and a few more runs off of the Gondola and 4 Runner and I called it a day and took the slow cruise back to the car. I stopped at The Alchemist again, tried some new stuff and got a few cans to go and then headed into downtown Stowe. I was hoping to go to the Lower Bar for some food, but quickly realized that pretty much everything in town was closed since it was Sunday. I hopped on the road and drove down to White River Junction where I got a hotel that was pretty centrally located to get to a different mountain the next day. I drove across into Lebanon, NH to go to a great pub I've been to before, the Salt Hill Pub, but it was so crowded there was a line out the door and not a single seat to be found at the bar. That was disappointing so I ended up with the next best thing which was sitting at the bar at Chilis. Can't win them all, not every ski trip can be amazing I guess.

After I left Stowe I drove down towards town and stopped at The Alchemist. Extremely funky building and it was absolutely packed. Tried some new to me beers and both were phenomenal. Right when I got on the road I noticed a sign for Von Trapp Brewing. Big beautiful building with plenty of animals on the walls. Beer was all german styles and was just OK.

Like many people I talked to over the weekend I bought a few Epic pass days at the end of summer expecting a trip to Vail/Beaver Creek this year but that turned out to be a bad idea. I wanted to get the experience of skiing Elk, but with the drive, so I headed to Vermont. I wrapped a meeting on Friday afternoon and got on the road a little before 2:30. Powered up to my hotel in Williston with only a brief stop for gas. I was tired after that so I just grabbed a pizza and went to sleep. Day 1. Sunshine and Singing the Blues Woke up the next morning and was the first person in the lobby to grab a quick breakfast and drove the 35 minutes down the road to Stowe where they reported a dusting of new snow overnight. As I got close to the resort there were big flashing signs telling me that the notch was closed, but more importantly Paid Parking was in effect. Since it was just me I pulled into the parking lot at the Toll House area and booted up. There were some solid vibes in the lot and it was clear that the people that park here aren't the wallets who drive the rest of the way up the access road. A few uphillers getting their skins on too. Not that many people really hanging around and I got right on the Toll House double and headed up. This is a painfully slow 1.2 mile 15 minute ride on a fixed grip double but it drops you off at a point where you can get down to the main base area. I kept hanging a left and got down to the base area and hopped on the Gondola to go up to the top. The singles line was empty and I walked right on. First lap down Perry Merril on the suggestion of the people I was riding with and it was pretty fun, a nice cruiser to start the day. The sun was shining and it was a gorgeous day but still really cold. Snow was OK. I did 2 more gondola laps doing Gondolier and Switchback and then took Cliff Trail to Nosedive and went to the Four Runner Quad. It was a lot colder and windier at the top of Four runner, low teens to single digits. I did two laps here and then hung a little too far of a right and ended up at the Sunrise Six chair. Got caught in a loop of doing this chair 3 times and then took a quick break in the Mansfield Base lodge to take a work call. After that I headed back up Sunrise Six and went back over to the Four Runner. At this point I decided to take the only black diamond trail open that day, Hayride. It was in rough shape. Very scraped down to boilerplate and not great. Stuck to Blues the rest of the day. A little more over on the Gondola Side and it was time for lunch. One of the outcomes of my work call was that we could cancel the afternoon one, but I could only get that done from my laptop so instead of getting something to eat at the Mansfield Lodge I took the long ride down Lord to Jakes Ride and then Easy mile and got back to the car. There are essentially no services at the Toll House area so I sat in an empty conference center and had some food I had in the car and some water while I worked for 15 minutes. I was planning on grabbing the shuttle bus back to the base, but it came and went as I was packing the car back up so I just went for the ride on the Toll House again. Everything was getting really skied off and slick at this point so I took the Over Easy gondola to Spruce Peak where that snow had been in the sun all day and fared better. After an hour or so if lapping Spruce I headed back to Mansfield and at this point most trails were a minefield of frozen crud and pure ice. Took a long cruise down Toll Road, which is not nearly as flat as I remember, and back to the car. From talking to people up there it seems like they had a thaw last week and some rain before it snapped back to frigid temps so essentially anything overly steep and ungroomed was closed so it was a full day of nothing but Blues.

You say pie, wrong sir. Old Forge serves trays of pizza No Lightning is sad

It's been years since we've had warm weather for a closing day party. I'll have to start thinking about what to wear.

Good little morning out there today. Snow held up, fun times were had. Thanks again for the amazing meats. Second session the sun was out and the snow was still pretty solid. I think I got some sun for sure, but overall a great day.

There was a lot of cloud talk on the lifts today. Thanks for capturing it Ben. Also I was chatting with some patrollers today and they have been getting tons of complaints about coming soon. Apparently the winch cat is broken which is why they haven't groomed that in a week. The patroller today was saying he saw a fairly competent teenage skier just give up on the middle of the TCS headwall and just lay down and slide 50 feet.

Showed up around 9 this morning. Hit snooze a few times and figured an hour to warm up wouldn't be the worst thing. Snow was bad but not horrible. Stayed out until 10:30 or so when I got crashed into by a guy on Midway. Was able to stiff arm him away and stay on my feet thankfully but him and his pointy skis went down. Called it at that point and it seemed like everyone else left.