powderfreak

Was something wrong? I know this is extremely stressful for you, but if you are doing you then just live your life. I get what you see online, but don’t let it ruin your day... just like taking comments personally regarding politics online. I still haven’t seen anything in real life or heard from any tourists and I come in contact with A LOT of them. Thousands and thousands the last few weekends. They seemed to be smiling and laughing and having fun. Don’t let the internet ruin it for you, people are having fun it seems.

Yeah it’s a tough spot to be in. A friend (not a ski area employee) had to go to a funeral in a hot spot... he had to take two weeks off before he was allowed back to work! Luckily he was salary and could do some work from home. Hourly employees would be screwed in that case. But yeah, the losing your job if you violate is a pretty terrifying position to be in, so no travel for now.

I just like stoke, weather and ski/mtn photos. Its such a shame the way the travel quarantine has evolved. I haven’t seen my family in a while and we can’t travel to any red counties without taking two weeks off from work. That definitely plays into it, it goes both ways for visitors and Vermonters. We likewise can’t travel out, as part of the COVID regs is employers need to screen their employees...so my wife and I need to answer questions every day before work about if we’ve traveled to a spot necessitating quarantine. If you lie, it could cost you your job. Friends who work at UVM or professors at Johnson and Lyndon State colleges also report the same thing. They will face serious disciplinary action if found to travel to red counties and not follow the guidelines. Employers are following the VOSHA and state COVID guidelines by asking daily questions prior to work. But it’s certainly both ways (inbound and outbound), and honestly when you are reminded about the quarantines every SINGLE day before work, it’s always top of mind. Before going to work I stop at a health screening checkpoint mandated by the state and someone literally asks me out loud every day if I’ve traveled to a location requiring quarantine. My wife gets the same thing at her hotel/spa too. Its almost like a brainwash for people in the state to hear that question every single day.

Yeah I’m not in the smoking side. Mine has been edible when done. None of the smoking side effects. Not a fan of cigars at all but not judging anyone on what they do to relax. But again, back to the main point if you are ok “by all means do it!” with it then you should want those tax dollars. It’s not about whether you do it, it’s a good way to get revenue like cigs or booze tax. Cigarettes are another that’s hard to understand how that’s legal given the public health issues that arise.

Yeah plenty but they are likely drunk and on meth too. I get the type you are referring to. Drinking has been proven without a doubt as the primary catalyst in domestic violence cases though.

No offense but you come off like it’s the 1970s dirty hippy image of weed smoking. That’s long gone. Now your financial planner and grandma are relaxing with it. I’m not a regular user but fully think it’s out there in such quantity that if booze is ok, we should take the tax money. Same with sports betting, though I do think that destroys lives more than weed and booze.

The vast majority of domestic abuse cases involving spouses or their kids has something in common... heavy alcohol use by someone. My grandfather was a bad alcoholic to the point where you find vodka bottles hidden in closets...made my mom’s life hell and her mothers the same. I have no doubt if he just smoked a joint on the porch at night instead of a fifth of vodka the experience would’ve been different. Drunks like to destroy stuff, fight, get angry... stoners like to sign up for a Netflix subscription. No one goes outside to smoke a bowl and came back in to beat their kids or wives.

Euro keeps us soggy over the next 3-4 days. 7+ inches in the past 3 weeks, but every event lately has been moisture laden, the firehose just changes angles a bit. Every few days it seems there's an axis of multiple inches of rain through the northeast somewhere going back to late September.

Ha yeah my bad that’s what I meant.

I love his tactics of getting an opinion out of Scott or Will... it usually works pretty well. Tried and true. Paint them in a corner and make them remove themselves.

He played a key role in extra innings in 2004’s “Four Days in October.” Wakefield entered Game 5 in the twelfth inning with the teams locked in a 4-4 tie. His knuckleball had been effective against the Yankees in the past, and this game was no exception. He wound up throwing three scoreless innings, and picked up the win when David Ortiz hit the game-winning single in the bottom of the fourteenth.

But if you have the active storm track without the cold...

Models with another half inch in the next 72 hours, on soggy ground. The Euro seems like the lighter model.

See any game out there? I know moose season just opened up in the Northeast Kingdom of VT today.

Ok, I guess the difference is that I have not based anything about how I feel about a given situation from postings on FB. I know that thread, commented that any civil discourse on a controversial topic is not possible on FB. I have yet to see or hear anything in public and real life, which is where I form my opinions. There’s no vandalism, confrontations or window smashing that I’m aware of around here. If you go read the comments on the latest WCAX or WMUR news story and applied those comments to every day life you start thinking very differently of people. Is it fair to approach every day life with opinions only generated by FB? People are still sensitive to COVID and there’s no doubt chatter online in places, but again jumping from internet talk to real life is I think the disconnect. That's why telling people “how they will be received” also has a disconnect because it’s not there in personal interactions. If one didn’t read that and just went about their business visiting, they would not be received that way.

You guys taking about growing this is crazy, I feel like we’ve been completely dead/dormant for a full month now.

Yeah theres no doubt in my mind the 4 days of mins in the 20s there in September cranked up the foliage. The valley went at the same time as the higher elevations, when it’s normally two weeks separated. The maples went bright red in the valley before the elevations...there was a period there when no real color was happening above 2,000ft while reds were bursting down low...night time radiation cold definitely played a big role IMO.

Yeah it’s in their heads now. Stein going Stockholm Syndrome, can’t leave your tormentor.

I truly think Facebook is the reason why so many people think this country is a complete dumpster fire. If you spend a lot of time on FB you quickly lose any hope for humanity. It used to be for photos of your kids, or sharing stuff with family and cool things.... but it's changed into one giant cess pool of "people speaking their mind" as they call it. It's all the sudden cool to be confrontational and very opinionated on there in the last year or two. Instagram is what FB used to be... pictures of cool stuff and sharing pics of your kids, things you do, etc. It's like a breath of fresh air after scrolling through FB.

I'm jealous and might be up there for some day tickets, ha. I think you are right about a once in a lifetime season there. The border closed is going to make it feel like a private ski area most days, IMO. That's taking 50% of their normal visitors and literally stopping them. That's no state quarantine rule or anything, that's an international border, you aren't getting through LOL. The most snow in the East coupled with 50% less customers. That opportunity won't come around very often.

That's one big hill 75 miles away.

Don't generalize it that far. It's the same as it has been all summer, it seems like it's Facebook and the Killington area. I've had several people mention the same Killington FB group that Jen references as being extremely toxic. Killington is also the most visited ski resort in the entire Northeast, so maybe there is some friction there given the scale of things in that area, who knows.

Hahaha, Killington must be like that lawless zone in Portland, everyone fending for themselves. We have been inundated by tourist traffic for 4 weekends in a row and despite it being an annoyance from a traffic standpoint (3-way stops at an intersection are NOT that difficult) I haven't heard of any issues. I think the biggest issue was just that due to COVID restrictions of businesses, restaurants, and the ski area doing reduced capacity that the town could not satisfy the number of tourists. People expecting to be able to go out to dinner on vacation, couldn't find reservations, couldn't ride the Gondola or Toll Road, couldn't do the things they normally expected to do. Going forward, managing expectations will be interesting for people with COVID hangover or those who are just completely done with it has definitely started to be seen in the travelers this fall. They truly expect everything to be running 100% capacity and like it would be any other year. So things like not being able to eat out ("I didn't go on vacation to be forced to get take out Chinese food in my hotel room!"), maybe longer wait times or unavailability of their favorite activities are also frustrating, etc. "Why are you turning me away? You only have three small lots full and I see a ton of parking open and my family came to ride the Gondola." "This is the capacity level we feel comfortable operating at." "Why aren't you running at 100%? We are here to give you money, you should take it." I do think it's going to be interesting as much of the operating capacity of say restaurants and activities is geared to a much, much smaller number of visitors (built around the frame work that the quarantines will significantly limit travel), but we are seeing the normal full boat of travelers on the weekends anyway. So there are a surplus of visitors who can't get service or experiences like they expect. Like many seemed to have an expectation rooted in a pre-COVID world, but everything they want to do is operating in a COVID world still, causing this disconnect.

I have to find my photos from October 2006 at Killington. Hurricane Wilma and another nor'easter hit back to back I think? There were two snow events that dropped like 30" across a wide swatch of the Greens (we skied the trees off Starr at Stowe that October), but Killington was the only one open and I was sent there to take photos and do a write up for a publication company. After the 30" of snow, Killington had the K1 Gondola running and the Glades Triple... but they dropped the ropes on literally everything that you could get to off the top of the K1.... including over by Superstar and that pod. The entire Canyon area was open, Snowden, etc. Two lifts and if you could get to a trail from there they let you have it. It was incredible. I have photos of being one of the first skiers out to Superstar and hitting that with only natural snow in October was awesome. They did end up closing some of it at the end of the day because it got beaten up too much. Overall though, it was carte blanche on whatever you wanted to hit. Memorable day for sure.

32F here. A couple final photos from 4kft this afternoon. Alex probably has the same amount of snow in his yard after this one, lol.