Schif

It's the last day, they probably don't care. That being said 730am frozen cord doesn't sound great. 830 or 9 might be better. I'll be rolling in around 8 or so.

This changes everything. Guess I'll be waking up really early Sunday and spending too much time in the car.

They actually turned on the guns. Here's a look for anyone who doesn't have access to the webcams this morning

Could also wind up on the cover of Lumber and Building Materials Journal

If Montage is open I'll probably wind up there. If not, take a week off and then head north

Did you buy them that car so that everyone in front of them will drive the speed limit or lower and absolutley not blow through red lights or stop signs? If so, that's a brilliant move and the best way to keep young drivers safe on the roads.

Last time I was out there I put in for a table at the red iguana, they said it was like an hour and a half, then went to a brewery a.d also put in for the red iguana 2. Turns out they use the same text system so I was getting messages from both, had no idea which one had a table ready and ran back and forth until the 2 finally sat me.

Love the Iguana. Was there a long wait?

There's that one, and one in Northeast Philly. From what I can tell though the KOP one and the Philly one are much smaller than some of the other ones. I've only been to one right outside of NYC and one in Tampa that were gigantic.

This is good to know, it might put Montage on the table next week. Also good for people with Indy passes to know they will likely be open next weekend.

Sunset is really nice tonight

Pending weather maybe I'll sign up for the Pond Skim. I've got one more Epic resort day to use and really want to do some uphill (Maybe Tuckermans). So who wants to plan a trip to Vermont/New Hampshire?

Stats should be super easy for Blue to keep track of and publish out. Would be cool if you got a little report at the end of each season telling you what you did that year. Part of me thinks they don't want to do that though because if you really dove into that data you would realize you were riding the same 3 lifts over and over and have pretty small per day totals. It's a fine line to walk between quality and quantity in the Poconos.

Behind on writing reports so here it goes. Friday 3/17 was our final day at Vail. Staying so close to the snow is such a game changer because it eliminates the need to use a car or a shuttle and just grabbing your skis/board in the lobby saves so much time too. All of those factors meant that we could sleep until well after 7 and still have time to pack up the room, check out, grab a coffee for the walk and get to the snow right around opening, there was no fresh snow so the need to be in line right at 8:30 wasn't there.We decided to start the day over on Gondola 1, so we sipped coffee on the bus across town and on the short walk across the covered bridge and arrived at the Gondola around 8:45. On the walk we ran into this guy who alerted us to the fact that Vail is taking away public grills in some spots. http://heyvailgocluckyourself.com/ The snow really wasn't great. The few inches from the day before had just set up pretty hard so it was the kind of day where I really appreciated the stellar grooming that Vail has to offer. This was the first day that I really focused on groomers and honestly it was super fun. Perfectly smooth trails, no ridges, no bumps, no cookies, just long, smooth groomers that you could really tear up. Trails that weren't groomed were just top to bottom bumps. Unfortunately, mid-morning we headed over to the Highline Express Lift on the recommendation of a bartender and wound up in a pod of diamond trails that were completely bumped. That ended up being a one and done. We went up to the top and headed to Two Elk Lodge to grab some water and check out the views that a mountain ambassador suggested to us. From there we dropped down the back side into China Bowl. @skiincy followed the cat track and I dropped down into Dragon's Teeth. The snow was hit or miss. You could get some semi fresh stuff, but you had to put up with crust to get there On the way up I saw a bunch of people in the trees under the Orient Express lift and decided to head down there. Skiincy wasn't really in the mood to risk the crusty old snow, so she headed back to the front side to lap Northstar, a perfectly groomed diamond that gave off Razor's Edge vibes for 1500 vertical feet. The trees were still holding some decent snow, but you also had to deal with tons of bumps when it opened up more. From there I went back to Blue Sky Basin solo and ran a few laps there through the trees under the Skyline Express lift as well as through the trees on Little Ollie/Heavy Metal. Headed back towards the front to meet back up with Skiincy and wound up doing a top to bottom run from the top of Teacup Express to Vail Village. I hit the lap button on my watch which showed that it was a 4-mile-long run. Headed back up Gondola 1 and met up with Skiincy and checked out the lodges at Mid Vail which were super nice, especially The 10th, a full-blown country club dining room perched 10,190 feet. The rest of the day was spent cruising groomers and enjoying the perfect sunshine and relatively warm temps. At the end of the day, we cruised down into Lionshead and headed to Bart and Yeti's for a big plate of nachos that were just OK before we walked back to the hotel, got changed, had one last cookie from the lobby and drove back to Denver. I don't usually track vert/stats but I really liked the Epic Mix App. Here is a quick snapshot of my 3 days

Update: it's raining at the base of Vail. Hopefully the rain/snow line is slightly above 8k feet.

Some pics

Here's my 2 cents on the happenings of the past few days. Saturday at Loveland was out of this world good. 15 inches minimum but definitely spots where it was knee deep. Face shots to be had for the majority of the day. Lots of hoots and hollers. Le Tits McGee for sure. The vibe from the minute we got there to the minute we left was so on point. Banjo music playing in the lodge while the stoke meter was at the point of bursting for all the hardcore people eating breakfast that got up at 430am. We started out along with everyone else on Chet's Dream and took a nice completely untracked blue cruiser. I made a wrong turn and wound up back at Chet's where I was in a decently long line when the rest of the crew made their way over to Chair 6. I was a little nervous after that first run. My legs were on fire and I was definitely breathing hard. That went away as fast as it came though and i felt great the rest of the day. I made my way down to 6 and caught up with them. Lapped 6 for a bit, untouched snow the whole time before we moved over to Chair 4. First run on that I forgot that there is a midstation so I got off early but it didn't matter. Fresh untouched snow was everywhere to be found. Back up 4 a few more times until the sign at the midstation said Chair 8 was open. I took Sunburst Bowl down to the Zip Trail got to 8. 8 might have been the most consistent fun laps of the day. There was just so much untracked snow to be had it was amazing. The woods below Hook em' Horns were super fun as was the wide open spaces above that. On my second run here I was carrying too much speed into the trail that funnels to the lift and got bounced on a bump and took a nice little tumble. People were having some pretty good crashes all over but the snow was so soft you just popped back up and kept on going. Around 12 or so we noticed that they were finally loading people on Chair 9 so we took the long catwalk traverse from 8 down to 4, up 4 and then more fantastic floaty, slashy, deep turns in beautiful snow to get to Chair 9. This one takes you up to the top of the ridge and is a slow quad with a defunct midstation. The weather up on the ridge was pretty terrible, as it usually is. Wind was really rough. Worth the trip though as we went a little way skiers right off of the top and dropped into Primer Bowl for some insanely good turns. Just being at the top like that takes a lot out of you since it's so cold and windy so the rest of the crew dropped back down below and I headed up 9 solo. I hiked the ridge for a while and dropped into Jelly Roll. It was around 1:30 at this point and the mountain was getting mostly skied off so I cruised all the way back down to the lodge to meet up with the rest of the gang. All in all this was a 15/10 day.

I was leaning towards Ikon next year and this solidifies it.

Must have been nice looking out in the distance and seeing snow and not just brown zinc hills.

Switchback was next level bad by 9am it was almost impressive. Between the Air Force buzzing the lot and the cavalry shooting up in the hills I'm just glad @JFskiDan stayed safe. Cool aerial pic too. You can tell that's actually us because even just as a pixel JLaw manages to exude swagger.

I'll be there. Goats you say? Still have broken boots until the replacement comes Monday so I'll be sliding real slow on skis.

Not sure this is the exact right spot for this but here it goes. Just an FYI to you indy pass people, it seems like if you use it at Montage this weekend you also get access to concerts to see Everclear, Lit, and Fuel.

Maybe the wire got bent? Not sure but the replacement kit is free and is shipping to me now. The laces are metal, which I like because they have less give than a standard lace and adjustments can be made in a second or two. My bike shoes have a boa with plastic laces which are really comfortable since they are much closer to my actual foot than on the snowboard boots. This is really the first issue I've had with BOA.

Has anyone ever had an issue with the Boa in their boots? The lower laces on my right boot would not release yesterday when I got off the snow. Some of you might have seen me struggling to get it off when I got back to the lot. I immediately hopped on the BOA website which goes through a lot of questions and then sends you a kit to fix it but I'm not sure what to expect from that process. I hope it's relatively easy to fix.