Recent content by da-bum

My belated pictures of the eclipse from a boat off Isla Socorro in Mexico. The whole sky shot during totality was taken with action cam that had no exposure control, thus the eclipsed sun was way overexposed, and with its miniature display, can't judge if the totality was captured. The coolest...

Vail/Peak focuses on utilizing the North to reduce the crowd in the main mountain because it offers green, blue and black trails. Without those variety of trails for the West, it will always have the lowest priority. I remember when I use to ski Windham way back and their North peak only had...

From riding the Zephyr, I don't see any obvious double fall line. The last time I skied Westway when it was groomed edge to edge was a very long time ago, where I could ski it at tremendous speed with turns so large and I didn't notice any tendency to pull me toward the trees. Maybe its...

I don't know Westway being so dangerous as to lead to fatalities. People are unlikely to slide into the woods on it due to its width, unless they are skiing fast on the edge of the trail. Unlike Anapurna where people regularly slide into the trees, or Twilight with its dual fall line right on...

I think reviving the local ski town is opposite of Vail's objective. Their idea was always to create destinations where your whole experience is Vail affiliated. They have stopped promoting local places to stay, or have those places offer discounts with a seasons pass, or provide discount lift...

Claire was great, but its such a pain to get there without the Zephyr, especially with the crowd at the Flyer. Can't really lap it, maybe feasable as a passageway to get to the North. Twilight has these rollers on the left that forces skiers to head even more rightward of its double fall line...

On Thur, they were snowmaking on Twilight, looks like the North won't be a one trial hill.

I use to ski Windham a long while ago on weekends. The line were insane, so most of my time was on the east mountain where the lift line was non-existent. The snow was always blown off and had to ski on ice regularly. If I was to ski on the main mountain, I usually ride the wheelchair triple...

I was the exact opposite of that with my wife. She started when she was a young teenager when she would go on ski vacations with her family, while I started in college when a bunch of guys decided to try it for kicks. It seems like they go because its a vacation makes then treat it more as a...

Had a friend's POS ski poles get stolen when we were in the Bear lodge in killington. She was going to go without poles the whole day, I though why do that, just 'borrow' someone else's generic ski poles. They will just continue the cycle. As with the Goode carbon poles, when I got mine when...

Skipped out on Senior class trip in HS to the poconos since I wasn't a school activity kind of guy. But when in college, my JHS fight buddy (always talking about fighting each other in the school yard after school, but never agreed on a place) met someone a few years older that skies regularly...

Maybe make one last trip on friday, just hope tomorrow and thursday's bad weather doesn't expose so much rocks, given that the new owners were never keen on making much snow while they had the chance. Judging from the cams, it looks like big patches of bare spots and lots of brown snow. I...

This coming monday doesn't look too bad, but it is too short a notice to take off. This coming friday looks cold enough for decent skiing, but I am not sure if there is any snow left by then. As long as there is a contiguously ski-able trail that is at least challenging enough, it should be...

Took coming tues off to go to Hunter, next thing I knew was the weather turned from high of 40 to high close to 60. With the rain on Sun, I think I will skip it, and probably the end of the season for me, unless I take the Epic and go up to Vermont for a couple of days.

Was there Mon/Tues. Condition is as good as it gets. Monday was a cold bluebird day with frozen granular base topped w/frozen cords that soon got scraped to a thin snow cover. Lack of skiers prevented the condition from deteriorating too much. Tuesday was mostly cloudy and a bit warmer, but...