nOVEMBER IS OVER

Well Hello Again To all the readers of this website!
This may be my first blog of the year, but it is not the first ski report as I have been on the boards since Nov. 15th. But I figured I would give a report today as November is finally over. I'm still running with the Volkyl's, its my second pair now as I busted the top binding on my last pair, this pair are a lot slower but actually have some edges, so i can sort of carve on the groomers.
As weve put up all the snowfences on the mountain, theres not much more we can do until it snows. There calling for snow Sunday through Monday, so hopefully that will be a big dump. I started the day today doing "Trail Check" which was basaically freesking until we heard the call from our boss Towers to meet somewhere to do some work. But today was the first day we didn't hear anything, and got to ski right up until lunch. Got quite a few runs in, but it gets repetitive skiing the same stuff over and over, but you can always somehow get a different line. The most action I saw all morning, was a little kid on a snowboard caught up on a cliff in Virgin Chutes. As I saw him from the chair, I skied down to where he was, but at that point he had made it out. I told him it was a pretty dangerous place he was riding, he appreciated the advice.
Ski Packing all afternoon today, so side-stepping down the runs, packing down all the powder, it really creates ruts in the snow, looks just like a Cat went up it, so hopefully it will trap some more snow.
Im going to take out the Scratch's next wendesday or thursday on my day off. We're all getting pretty sick of our rock skis, as everyone else is on their good skis.
Thats about all the news from the world of Snowfarming, Ill get back to you with a Powder Report.

Over And Out
the GREEN BERET

Welcome back - winter is here!

How do I know this? Let me count the ways...

1) The Green Beret has left the East and has already started his ski bum dream job on the Sunshine Trail Crew. Check out the new link in the sidebar for the Sunshine web cam.
2) It's Warren Miller film night in Huntsville. Woo Hoo! Off to see Playground and dream of helicopters.
3) Our friends at Jay are are reporting that the Jet and Upper Haines will be open this weekend.
4) There was enough new snow on the ground this morning to make me put the truck in four-wheel drive. There was not enough snow to make me think it would be slippery so consequently I skidded merrily through the stop sign at the end of the road.
5) I wore Sorels to work today (see # 4).
6) Pudd is e-mailing snow reports to us all and Jonny Jay is vying to be first on the mountain.
7) I'm blogging about snow.

I haven't found it yet but Telemark Dave tells me that the current issue of The Ski Journal has a great article on Jay. Check your local news stand. Here's the teaser:

Jay Peak in the ski news once again

sPrInG sKiiNg

Jay Peak Weather... a weather system that you can never rely on.
Just last weekend, I was skiing in knee deep powder with my buddy (who wants to be known on this website as the Powder Pirate). We were skiing in great snow conditions, wearing full winter gear. It was a mild day but it dumped snow all day long!
Just a couple of days ago, Saturday April 21st, Jonny Jay and I were up at Jay skiing in 20 Degree weather. There was no need for the tuque, jacket, or goggles. Just sunglasses and whatever spring clothing you want to wear.


"the GREEN BERET" blasting down the UN bumps


The conditions were so good for this time of the year, that we even got to take a run down Green Beret and beleive it or not I got JJ to face his fears, and conquer Staircase once more. We had a good run down Staircase, whith not many rocks or stumps.


Jonny Jay cruising down Staircase



The day turned out to be a great day of spring skiing, we even saw a couple of skiers make it across on the Pond Skimming.
I attempted many jumps and drops including the Timbuktu Cliff and the Lift Line Rocks.... but the best jump of the day goes out to the Maniac who jumped out of the Tram.


For all you River Quai lovers out there, this is what it looked like from the top. If you look hard enough, you can see JJ making his way around the rocks.

Comparative snow reporting

Now that I'm back in the great not-so-white north, I can check the Jay on-line snow report. Here's the report for today, which would summarize the conditions Telemark Dave and I experienced this week:

Conditions are ok. Much closer to winter than spring. At least until early afternoon or so. Even then, conditions will be firmer than you expect for most of the day. This is either good or bad. Your call.

Whoever writes this report should hand over the keyboard to the author of the far more "let's call it like it is" JPSP snow report found at the bottom of the Jet on Wednesday:


Then there is the far more open-ended and colourful report found at Mad River Glen the next day:


And finally, the report of the random Jay skier we met at the Goat/Taxi intersection, one of the few soft snow places on the mountain on Wednesday. He skied up to Dave, stopped, looked him in the eye and said one word:

"Smooshie!"

Dave looked at him as if he was speaking a foreign language, or perhaps even, was a visitor from another planet. Random Skier then expounded with a little more detail:

"It's smooshie!"

Ah yes, smooshie snow. How did we miss it the first time?

Blog it if you can...

Well, faithful readers, I'm sitting in the base lodge at Mad River Glen, beside a big pile of "ski it if you can" stickers. What a great hill! I feel like it is 1972. Conditions are fast on the two runs that have been groomed. Everything else is rock hard and/or suffering from a lack of snow. We skied Jay yesterday. Windy, sunny, cold and the snow stayed hard as concrete all day. In fact, it seemed to get harder, except for the lower Goat, which was a wierd semi-frozen slush. Freezer and tram were on wind delay all day. MRG is way more fun in these conditions.

Time to stop blogging like an uber-geek and go skiing!

Editor's note: apparently some readers were thinking I was far more geekish than they realized, toting my laptop to the hill so I could blog on a pirated wi-fi signal. Have some faith, please. The nice folks at MRG have installed a public computer with high-speed access right beside the cafeteria food line entrance. Always on, no charge. Best of all, it's a Mac!

Jonny Jay steps up

SBR here, I'm posting this on JJ's behalf:

Ok I’ve tried three times to put this on the blog and I NOW GIVE UP.

Well boys and girls, if you're not pulling my leg then I am really envious! Sounds like the snow finally stuck on the mountain. While you were blowing up the powder, DC and I were running through the Philadelphia airport, heading for the sun.

Rather than snorkeling through the pow-pow we then strapped on the masks and headed for the coral canyons where white sandy ocean bottom was flanked by 5-10 foot coral walls creating a maze of intertwining corridors of various types of coral. Quite spectacular, except for the sounds of the Devon Cusser (who reserves namechange rights), who was swallowing the ocean beside me!

Hopefully we have a few more days when the snow Gods will shine on us and maybe we'll get some great spring skiing -- of course Jay doesn't really have spring skiing do they? Not like the old days when Jay would stay open till late April/early May before we would head off to Mad River for the final days of the season. By that time the Jay HARDSCRABBLE starts to soften, but not before! Hope you're impressed that I worked in HARDSRABBLE.

So as our old buddy Chris used to say Ski ya!

See you on the slopes.

Jonny Jay

PS

I am sure the boys thought of me as they were doing face shot after face shot – young showboats!

Who has the ruler?

And I quote:

"We're 100% open, have had more than 14 FEET of snow since February 1st and are poised for a long run into Spring."

Hey, didn't we have trouble finding the fabled five feet snow? Now we have to go looking for 14. I sure hope it's out there, as SBR and Telemark Dave will be headed for Jay the last week of March.