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The 2014-2015 Ski Season Thread


Skivt2

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Occasionally you can find some on groupon...check local ski shops for deals on lift tickets (this used to be the old school way), obvious liftopia.com offers some discounts but they aren't always amazing unless it's an off-peak time like mid-week of a non-school vacation week. In March, you tend to find those liftopia discounts better in my experience.

 

Try the ski resorts themselves online...sometimes they have good deals. Sunday River has been notorious through the years for excellent ski and stay packages (Stratton offers some good ones too). I think Ginxy uses that package every March at SR...he goes during late season and mid-week and gets dirt-cheap rates. But the skiing is often the best all year during mid March.

 

I haven't tried the ski club thing, but I think Ryan does one from CT and gets great deals...and it's not expensive to belond to the ski clubs..like $10 or something.

craigslist is also a good medium to pick up tickets on the cheap especially as the season progresses. By March there's tons of good deals. I'm a member of a ski club that also affiliated with the CSC (CT Ski Council) great deals at many resorts. 

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I've been there once. Great hill. Really steep. Steepest in MA I think. Close by me too. How crowded is it on pow days where a foot fell overnight?(ie how long does pow last)

You gotta understand that 'busy' is a very relative term when at berkshire east. Even on busy weekends, there's never a line at any of the lifts.

You just gotta give it a try sometime. I guarantee that you'll be very pleasantly surprised.

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The plan was to give you a text and try to hit the slidebrook sidecountry together until we realized my buddy was without a helmet. That scrapped the plan for hitting the trees since I wasn't comfortable asking him to follow me into the woods without a helmet.

 

I'm hoping to be at the mountain again next weekend.  It depends on how much work I can get done during the week.

Probably wise. Next time.

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They reported 3 cement at base and 7-8 up top from MLK and probably got a little upslope monday...so could be pretty decent.

 

 

Yeah they got a period at the end when they flipped over with pretty good snow for a few hours...further east it wasn't quite as good.

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That's basically anywhere unless you're skiing the backcountry. You're not going to find untracked powder a few days after it's snowed at any major resort in north america(inbounds) that I know of personally. That's the thing that sucks about flying out west when you don't live there. You might fly all the way out there and get no deep powder at a resort. Living there is a completely different thing. Pow days are plentiful and amazing. 

 

I don't know you mean by the base being "slick". Heavy deep cement wet snow you won't sink to the bottom and scrape the hardpack if that's what you mean. Heavily tracked out wet snow is not what I would call "soft" snow. You need a stiff ski and good pair of knee joints to cut through that uneven moguled up/cut up crud. It's especially bad if it sits overnight after being slammed by skiers all day and then freezes up and isn't groomed. I hate that personally, but to each their own. 

 

 

I basically think of skiing as falling into two general categories:

 

1) I have to be concerned that my next turn may be on ice, rocks, roots, etc

2) I don't

 

For me, category two may take on many forms, but they're all great.  Category 1 also comes in several forms, and they're less great.  Most days fall somewhere in between where choosing good trails/lines will turn category one more into category two.

 

After a storm, if the fresh snow isn't deep/dense enough that previous surface won't be exposed when it gets pushed around, then the previous surface conditions come into play as soon as it gets pushed into piles by the other skiers.  If the previous surface was already soft, then being tracked up doesn't bother me at all.  If the underlying surface is hardpack or ice, then the experience may deteriorate rapidly with skier traffic.

 

I like moguls a lot, so I don't mind when wet snow gets pushed into piles.  I just switch from powder to mogul mode.  But as you say, to each their own.  I have a huge amount of respect for the folks who carve railroad tracks on hardpack.  I'm pretty mediocre at that.

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Downspout is always a problem on weekends - even after a big snowfall.  Its really the Achilles heal of the Lincoln Peak trail layout.  Its very high traffic, too steep for intermediates to navigate without snowplowing, and the upper trail ends at the heaven's gate lift line.  It really is the perfect storm for poor trail conditions.  I don't mind it personally but my wife hates it so much that she takes the traverse to get there instead even though its a much longer route to the bottom of the heaven's gate lift.  Its telling that even though there was a 48+" base (mostly rock hard packed powder) on that trail they were making snow on it all week leading up to the holiday weekend.  Stay to the far skiers right if you don't mind the bumps and you will have some better luck - especially past the slow sign near the HG lift line.

Other than that Waterfall, Spring fling, and, wierdly, Allyns traverse are the only trails that really suffer from skier traffic in my opinion.  

 

I actually like when waterfall is all scraped off though because it is good practice for tough conditions.  Its steep enough that it forces you to take some quick turns but really short so you can just practice turning on the very scraped off surface.

 

Sleeper is a personal favorite of mine by the way.  Moonshine is really similar and your family will enjoy it if they liked sleeper.  Note that some days Moonshine does get a little bumpy.  Cheers!

 

Too funny.  You've guessed the worst offenders perfectly, especially Downspout and Spring Fling.  Waterfall was actually in OK shape in the bumps to the left, at least.

 

We did ski Moonshine, and it was pretty good.  It was one of those days that if you skied the moguls up high and out of phase with the traditional zipper, you could avoid almost all the slick spots.  Lixie's is another favorite, but I didn't get a chance to ski it yesterday.  I'm very curious as to how my favorites off Heaven's Gate were (Spillsville and Paradise).

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Too funny.  You've guessed the worst offenders perfectly, especially Downspout and Spring Fling.  Waterfall was actually in OK shape in the bumps to the left, at least.

 

We did ski Moonshine, and it was pretty good.  It was one of those days that if you skied the moguls up high and out of phase with the traditional zipper, you could avoid almost all the slick spots.  Lixie's is another favorite, but I didn't get a chance to ski it yesterday.  I'm very curious as to how my favorites off Heaven's Gate were (Spillsville and Paradise).

Didn't do spillsville, but paradise and the woods were sublime. That being said, I was there before they got too tracked out.

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There is some awesome skiing out there right now.

 

The Stowe backcountry is in great shape for this time of year...solid base depths out there with almost 5 feet on the ground in the upper elevations.

 

IMG_7113_edited-2_zpsf9651095.jpg

 

IMG_7117_edited-2_zps9b3572e4.jpg

 

IMG_7123_edited-1_zpsf3b4b955.jpg

 

IMG_7092_edited-1_zps7e688319.jpg

 

Some tracks dropping off the summit.

 

IMG_7090_edited-1-1_zps4ff2a3f0.jpg

 

Almost filled in...one more storm plus some wind loading on the east side and it'll be good to go.

 

IMG_7088_edited-1_zps6468eccb.jpg

 

 

 

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There is some awesome skiing out there right now.

 

The Stowe backcountry is in great shape for this time of year...solid base depths out there with almost 5 feet on the ground in the upper elevations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IMG_7090_edited-1-1_zps4ff2a3f0.jpg

 

Almost filled in...one more storm plus some wind loading on the east side and it'll be good to go.

 

I wonder if stowe ever thought about putting a lift up there and clearing some rocks/boulders/trees and creating some of the best steep chutes and/or bowls on the east coast? Looks like a good setup for something like that. You could get a bulldozer/graders and do that still would leave plenty of backcountry untouched for people who also like that.

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I wonder if stowe ever thought about putting a lift up there and clearing some rocks/trees and creating some of the best steep chutes and/or bowls on the east coast? Looks like a good setup for something like that. You could get a bulldozer/graders and do that still would leave plenty of backcountry untouched for people who also like that.

Lol, you don't know much abou Vermont do you?
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I've never been to stowe. Looking at trail maps and knowing the top elevation of stowe, the lifts clearly don't go all the way up the mountain, correct?

Oh, it's not that.  PF works there and could give you a better idea of the infrastructure.  Politically, that type of work, on that mountain would be very tough to get through.  I'm not even sure that the ski area owns that part of the mountain.  Construction of any type above 2500' requires going through a pretty rigorous permitting process.  Add in the prominence of Vermont's highest peak, with a pretty large area of fragile alpine tundra and I think it would be nearly impossible to get a project like that through.

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I hit Bolton for some night runs last night and after the last system along with grooming they were in great shape on the core of the mountain! I practically had the place to myself and was able to really let it rip top to bottom.

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The Lake Tahoe region out west is suffering its 4th consecutive bad season:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Sierra-s-snow-economy-melting-in-the-midwinter-6031067.php

Yeah it's been a rough stretch out there lately...real rough. On the flip side, when it's not snowing it's absolutely beautiful out there.

I wonder if there's a connection to their dry January precipitation over the past 4 years, and a drop off in our January snowfall over the past several seasons.

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Superbowl weekend looks really good for the ski areas right now.  Couple the potential snowfall with a great base and cheap / discounted tickets on Superbowl Sunday and I'd recommend anyone who loves to ski should start making plans for somewhere to stay Saturday night.  Ski Saturday and Sunday until the early afternoon at a nice discount and then drive home and watch the game tired and happy.

 

I'm pretty jealous that I will be away and will miss the next few weekends.  This same thing happened to me last February when I was away the whole month and missed out on a nice stretch of winter weather.

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Yeah it's been a rough stretch out there lately...real rough. On the flip side, when it's not snowing it's absolutely beautiful out there.

I wonder if there's a connection to their dry January precipitation over the past 4 years, and a drop off in our January snowfall over the past several seasons.

 

That is a good question. Despite the lack of snow this month I hit Bolton again yesterday for 15 top to bottom runs and it was in solid shape all around. Far better than last year at this time with nearly 100% of the terrain open. I have to say the Timberline side is my favorite with some of the best trails and almost no people in near perfect conditions. I was able to let it rip and briefly broke 50 mph on one run according to my Trace Snow app (Max sustained 44 mph on that run).

session_sheet_1106268.jpg?h=928eef48

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