Angus

I've been a member for 8 years - can't believe it's been that long - don't know crap about forecasting but am a big outdoor recreation enthusiast. Plus, I joined to keep to keep an eye on my then HS age son. I don't get half the jokes - before my time; but everyone has a role to play (and they do it well) especially during storm meltdown time. You go through a couple of winters of this and it just becomes comical. I literally have been laughing out loud at my computer reading this stuff. 

3 hours ago, MRVexpat said:

Loon today was socked in but completely empty and mostly soft snow.

I hiked Mt. Flume via Lincoln Woods today. We got some breaks around 10ish but then got very socked in and was raining lightly. It began to clear out around 230ish on the descent.

to put it into perspective - I might average 1 or 2 days at SB as a day tripper/maybe an overnight (some combo of SB, BV, Stowe and MRG) but as such never skied Slidebrook area given 'time' was a scarce commodity. With that said, I doubt I will ski at SB anytime soon given I've gone with the Epic pass which is too bad. I use to buy the 4 pack discount ticket package. 

On a weekend when both Sugarbush and Glen Ellen are open, I stick to GE b/c crowds are substantially less and there is a lot of fun terrain over there. The area on the Glen Ellen summit is a lot of fun. Castlerock terrain is great - but on a weekend, the lift is brutal. On a weekday, I will spend 75% of my time skiing castlerock and poking around terrain off ripcord lift - organgrinder, paradise, et cetera.

and contrast that with Temple Mountain which has been closed much shorter time which is now almost completely overgrown. 

It was crazy in the parking lot. I didn't realize they opened at 730am.

Was in the Wawa parking lot about 7ish and did a leisurely 3 hour skinny ski tour. Bottom of hill only had 5-6" of snow but not that far above 12+. The summit chair was broken when I got to the top so I skied down on a groomed trail about halfway down and then cut across. Very pretty and was great to be out on the snow. Of course, because of all the running water, my skis got iced up which was a pain. Talking to some folks who were skinnng up, they said there was close to a 100 skier/skinners in parking lot at 6am! The base area with the broken lift and limited terrain must have been a crap show. Problem right now is the ground is so warm, I think grooming is a bit problematic.

Let's not forget that skiing is increasingly becoming the recreational sport of the wealthy. As it has been commented many times, not a good trend for the sport. 

@powderfreak nice picture today and also noted the corporate disclaimer on twitter too. 

These rural areas felt Covid couldn't touch them. Not good at all, rural healthcare is a mess to begin with so capacity to treat is restricted to begin with. There was a good article in WSJ (I think) today which profiled a young Doc who was in Boston in April and now in Lubbock, the treatment protocols based upon 6-7 months of experience are very different now. Much better understanding on how to treat.

As an Epic passholder, I will abide by the VT restrictions - my intention was to ski the VT areas Mon-Thurs when volumes were low on a day trip from metrowest boston basis. But I hate rules and laws that are just made to broken and this is an example, it provides a rationalization for breaking other laws and rules IMO. 

Whenever I see Ascutney, I can't help tell an important lesson I learned there sometime in mid-late '70s. Probably 10th grade. Day trip on a bus from Boston, knowing it was my last day of skiing for season and my friends and I didn't go in for lunch.  It was beautiful Spring day, blue sky and warm. I remember being tired and hungry and probably a bit dehydrated...a skier cut in front of me, I had to turn quickly, hit a bump and next thing I was flying thru the air like a bird! At last second, I got my skis up in front of me before I crashed into a big tree. My friends thought I was dead. I came crawling out of woods with my face all scratched up and a broken ski. I liked the mountain though and always wanted to get back there!

9 hours ago, mreaves said:

on winter roads in Norway. What a beautiful country. Definitely bucket list material. 

we did a family vacation there two summers ago - roughly following this route - https://goo.gl/maps/d6Uke8GbgMbLaDe9A - over 5-6 days, visiting the national parks, et cetera. Crazy beautiful, wonderful hiking, vistas are dream like. We spent a few days in Oslo as well which is a beautiful city. want to go back and ski tour. Iceland is similar but Norway has far more amenities. Would recommend - would love to go further north. And for me, it's the kind of country I love visiting - they speak flawless english!

The Trump tax reform (whatever it was called) hurt folks in places like MA by limiting total deduction of taxes to $10,000. For folks like us, state taxes plus local property taxes are far in excess of $10K. Google SALT deductions

here's your answer....

By contrast, Republicans who control the Pennsylvania Legislature thwarted efforts by county leaders and the governor to begin processing mail-in ballots there, which as a result did not begin until Election Day.

“The legislature has refused to give counties the time they need,” said Amber McReynolds, chief executive of the National Vote at Home Institute, which advocates voting by mail, and the former head of Denver’s election system. “When the president started tweeting about vote by mail, we pretty much lost all the momentum we had with legislatures in certain states. I really wish we hadn’t had the tweeting.”

59 minutes ago, bch2014 said:

You are not allowed in the state unless you want to lie and/or quarantine for 14 days.

Wow.

Help me out here, what are the current regulations regarding going into VT for someone like me - metrowest Boston. As I said earlier, I purchased the Epic pass (Northeaster edition) and my strategy was to ski the VT ski areas on weekdays when I expected the traffic would be significantly reduced. If I'm significantly restricted, then I'm reasonably left with Wildcat, Crotched, and Sunapee. I would never ski Sunapee on a weekend due to crowds but I suspect if the VT requirements are significant, this will push people to Wildcat. Of course, you are skiing by reservation only.

dropped the skis off for the tune today!

I'm of the opinion that Covid is going to make those small-medium size areas much busier as people seek some physical distance thinking they can escape lift lines, et cetera. As I said,= in this thread earlier when I bought my epic pass a month ago, I will ski the Okemo, Mt. Snow, Stowe areas mid-week when things in theory are less busy, Crotched at nite and Wildcat on weekends to avoid crowds. I guess one of my hopes is we have a good spring and I get lots of days in that way...do a lot of nordic at the height of winter.

Son and I hike N. And S. Percy today in the Nash Stream Forest - Coos county NH. Beautiful hike with great views. Left metrowest in early AM and arrived there to find most of the leaves have fallen. We were laughing most of hike about the impressive snowfalls the elevated areas around there must get. Definitely plan to do more exploring next summer. We were aware of the late afternoon storm threats so kept an eye out - there was some haze but we could make out saddleback approximately 50 miles to our east clearly.

heard today that WaWa is now sold out. 

speaking with a MRG shareholder this morning and we both agreed the map is outstanding. We skied Telluride a few years back -2014 - nice mountain. I have only skied there and wolf creek in CO. We drove from Albuquerque after it stopped snowing at Taos in January that year. Stay in the town. You need to do some research ahead of time to know where to ski - some of the difficult fun terrain is obvious, other areas not so much. The Telluride airport is crazy. My son and eye drove down on way out of town to check it out. 

I have a # of physician friends who like me are for our age (50's) extremely fit with no pre-existing underlying health issues. Collectively, they have treated COVID patients, are cardiologists and/or are very familiar with vaccine development, et cetera - they uniformly say the long term effects are definitely worrisome. One of these friends was a fan of the herd immunity strategy and more specifically the Swedish model, they have backed way off of that position given some of the documented LT issues.

Brunswick is by far the nicest of the towns - Lewiston, Waterville and Brunswick. Colby sits above the city on a hill but is in the process of investing $$ in the downtown and actively trying to recruit cos. to revitalize the town. The Colby art museum is something to behold. I'm not an 'art' person but if you are up there, I'd budget 3-4 hours to walk through. If you are an art person, plan to incorporate a day in Rockland too.

Going back 40 years, I visited Colby and Bowdoin on back to back days in early January. Waterville had received something like 12-18" fresh while Brunswick had gotten slop due to proximity to coast. Bowdoin definitely has the highest rating of the three schools but they are all elite.

My daughter looked at Colby last year due to some family connections. She came away surprisingly impressed with curriculum and the school in general. I've had a bunch of friend's children start at Colby the last couple of years and they all like it very much. 

15 hours ago, tamarack said:

The CBB trio.  Anyone looking to attend one of those excellent schools should be diligent in seeking scholarship money.  Like many well-regarded liberal arts colleges, full ticket (room/board/tuition) is frighteningly costly but there's a lot of financial help available.  (I have no dog in the fight but my sentiment would be with Bowdoin, if only because the Bowdoin Pines east of the campus make up one of the most magnificent pine stands I've seen.)

I believe all three schools are need based only financial aid. @tamarack those pines are magnificent but I thought you would prefer Colby based upon the arboretum. One hundred twenty-eight acres of Colby’s 714-acre campus are designated as the Perkins Arboretum and Bird Sanctuary.