Recent content by Jim

Get an instructor with a good bag of "wedgebuster" tricks and it will be french fries in no time! I like to motivate it with hockey stops with the reward being to kick up a cloud of snow, then move to "hockey stop turns" and there you go. Also matching with the hands.

I've been at Oak most of the day while my daughter is out tagging along for some race training with the Oak Mountain team. Her school team has its first race of the season here tomorrow (it's the team's home mountain and Oak owner Matt O'Brien is one of the school team's coaches). I didn't ski...

Conditions were better than I expected when I was listening to the rain and wind last night. The packed powder has been replaced by frozen and loose granular, and with the snow pushed out and groomed on Upper Red Carpet, 100% of the mountain was open. It was fast but easily skiable early, we...

Thanks - don't know how I got it in my mind that it was. I should have realized this when I went to their website and it wasn't a clone of every other VR mountain. And also the fact that it says "Boyne Resorts"...

Royal announced that snowmaking is complete on Red Carpet, it has been pushed out, and the trail (as well as all the others) will be open on Saturday. From the picture I saw on their Instagram, I think it's a wider swath down the middle than last year's. I think the glades should make it...

I'm back from my trip to use a couple Indy days at Cannon and Middlebury Snow Bowl. My ride up Monday afternoon took forever. There's no easy way to get from the Albany area to Lincoln, NH, on a dry day and this one was in snow the whole way. In some places the roads were genuinely bad...

Make it 5 in a row to finish up the holiday break: powder and packed powder. I skied for a little over and hour this afternoon and got into a few glades I hadn't yet this season: top half of Jacksland, Damsel Glades, top half of Duke, and the middle part of Duchess, and also returned to...

I decided I didn't want the 4 hours in the car today then the NH drive the next day, so we'll just head up to Royal after lunch for some runs. Plans are going forward for Tuesday at Cannon. For Wednesday, I'll probably decide that morning. Possibilties, all of which would be new to me except...

I will decide in the morning on a Sunday plan: either heading up to Royal late morning/early afternoon, or spending a few more hours in the car and using an Indy day for some runs at Snow Ridge. It looks like it's been a good week for lake effect there. I'm working to arrange to drive Monday...

I think they have shared a few posts on their social media, so they're at least aware. Should be really good again...

What a run of lake effect, with I'd say another 4" this morning. I was on the practice slope all morning with my first week of advanced Trailblaisers. (We'll be on the main mountain from here on, fortunately.). When I finally got up on the main mountain at almost 2, things were still nice on...

Again a little fresh fluff and a mostly packed powder day. This lake effect cycle hasn't been epic by any means but it's made for a great holiday week after the you-know-what from Monday. The big change from yesterday is a lot of freshly made snow at the top of the Challenge, which is now...

Another 1-2" of fluff this morning after the groom and another nice powder to packed powder day. It was really nice to have sunny skies for a change. I made a few more tracks off the groomers today: off to the sides of Prince and the bottom half of Jacksland. Things there are improving with...

Yes, it was good. 6-8" of fluff. Powder early then packed powder on all the main trails. The usual spots got skied off by mid morning but even so the skiing was surprisingly great when I went back out at almost 3:00 after teaching a couple lessons in the middle of the day...

If the snow is anything like the 4-6" of fluff I just essentially brushed from my driveway here in Amsterdam, it's going to be great! Headed up now.