powderfreak

So here's the historical data... day ticket prices are up $23 from pre-Epic Pass and the season pass is cheaper by $1,324. Okemo is the same... day ticket up by about $20 and season pass cheaper by $1,000. The last year of AIG ownership... Stowe lift ticket $124 with a season pass of $2313. Last year... $147.34 vs. $989.00 for season pass.

What? Someone is paying $200-300 more per day to ski now? Stowe pre-Vail was the most expensive ticket in the East Coast and the adult season pass was $2200. The Stowe day tickets have not risen appreciably since VR took over and the pass dropped by like 60%. We see a LOT more first timers and beginners than we ever did before. I'd say it's getting a lot more people into the sport here at least that never skied Stowe before. Again, even 5 years ago a day ticket here was like $120 I think and we have never done cheaper non-holiday or mid-week tickets. It's always been the same rate be it a random Tuesday or a holiday Saturday once it switched out of early season rates.

I thought tests were free? My wife and I didn’t pay a dime and the local hospital said it was “written off” as their words. Or are you talking like private testing locations? The admin’s words were “how can we expect to stop the spread of people have to pay for them?” I was like ok sounds great I’ll be back lol.

Good to hear man. Mild cases? My sister and her family have been cleared. Bad headaches and head colds were their main symptoms but have passed now.

C’mon, this is America (where we all have a dose of entitlement, myself included, like it’s baked into our DNA)... nothing will stop a lot of people from their expensive leisure vacations, lol. First world problems on the whole. I did have a good chat with a commercial real estate developer from Boston who said if he lost the ability to spend his money on expensive trips where he wanted to go and buying pointless consumer items along the way (his words lol), what’s the point of building wealth? He almost honestly seemed concerned with his work ethic slacking if he couldn’t spend his money how he pleased. Like his effort at work was directly correlated to him doing whatever he wants in his free time.

I think Stowe sold out to capacity on Wednesday and again today. From what I saw it is not deterring many people... or if it is the more limiting factor is the capacity restriction. Exactly how summer and fall foliage was. The demand was still larger than the capacity allowed, even with 99.9% of the US population having to quarantine for two weeks to visit.

That was a serviceable run through Day 10. Lots of mess-scale snow chances in the upslope areas. I feel like any snow we get in the next 7-10 days though is going to be of that nature over synoptic snow.

Maybe global warming? I think another met was opining about how warm it was despite low heights last night. <duck and run>

To be fair everyone told him it would be like living in the Chugach Range of Alaska for snow. But it’s still New England lol.

Special pattern just for your first winter.

That’s my buddy Dylan, but yeah I think he’s got shifts for bindings.

I find myself drawn to looking at it despite the time range. Always fun to see exotic solutions.

Though all things considered.... not often you see a prog of a 959mb low just north of KRUT. Guess it does cool pretty decently from the +3C to +9C 850s in the beginning.

I don't really get it either, that track seems like it's rain in early December anyway you slice it. I'm not sure having the antecedent air mass -0.5C colder would matter. Hard to argue AGW moving the needle that much with H85 temps of +3C or even more.

Ended up with a couple inches of snow above mid-mountain this afternoon to give it a wintry vibe up there. Lower mountain was spring like mashed potatoes and soft bumps. 2.5 ways down right now... 3 upper mountain that funnel to 2 routes lower half (plus a few beginner lifts and trails over at Spruce). Full on bump runs this afternoon from the soft snow and traffic. Not time to "Shut 'em Down" yet up here. We'll see after a couple rainers, ha!

Had to go up above 2,500ft to find some actual winter over white rain or wet parachutes on top of mud at 1,500ft. Picked up 2" at 3,300ft stake this afternoon. The world looks so much better with snow around. Below 2,000ft looks like Maryland in February after a rainstorm.

Hope she gets a real mild case of it, which probabilities show she should but still not something you want to play around with. You won't be missing much over the next 10 days in Ski Country, ha.

Because your snowfall to date on 11/28 is likely higher than several of your Maryland winters added together .

2" at the Lookout snow cam. Accumulating snow level on my afternoon ski runs was around 2,200ft.

New York and Mass have financial penalties associated with them I think. Mass is $500 per day that you don’t quarantine after travel. New York’s is worse I think. Vermont doesn’t have a penalty and that’s been the issue all along. Like trying to set a speed limit on a highway but with no penalty if you go over the limit.

We keep flipping back and forth at 1500ft. Literally every 30 seconds it seems. All snow more consistently above 1800ft.

A friend and fellow poster here @j24vt caught some shots of a snowy owl near the MVL airport yesterday. Today he just send me a cell shot of it back there sitting on the ASOS. He’s going back with the big lens, maybe he’ll share more later. Pretty cool to have a snowy owl chilling on the ASOS. What’s more NNE than that? Ha.

Briefly flipped to wet snow at 1,500ft and almost 1" at 3,300ft. Its pretty marginal, seems to be flipping back and forth with intensity.

DIT hates any mention of THC, I figured that might be it.

Hard to believe someone could be sad over this post, when someone finds relief they need. Nice work Jer.