Angus

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!

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.”

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.

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.

It is one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. Brunswick is a very nice community. Not much more to say. If their curriculum is what she's interested in, can't go wrong.

Hiked Mount Washington yesterday via Tuckerman's route, at elevation there is some serious leaf colors. Unfortunately, the summit was in the clouds. On the summit cone came across some guy who I initially thought had fallen and hurt himself. He was just disoriented in the clouds. Got him back on track and stayed with to the summit parking lot.

More news from Saddleback Saddleback is very pleased to be able to announce that we are lowering the prices for the following season pass categories in response to the long conversations we have had with some of you affected by current circumstances. From now through Thanksgiving, the Junior and College Passes will now be only $324.00 (down from 449.00) and the Casablanca Pass will now be $399.00 (down from $599.00).

that whole area of winter's way, bubblecuffer, & white nitro is great - again with caveat of with snow! I've jumped in there a few times and was lucky to survive between ice, rocks and stumps!

Bought my NE Epic pass last nite so I will be skiing a lot of Wildcat if everything goes according to plan and maybe the VT resorts midweek to avoid crowds. When the snow is right, Sugarloaf is the best resort in the NE. Note: I've not skied two places that could competed - Jay and Whiteface. As I've documented here, I dismissed the Burnt Mtn/Bracket Basin tree skiing thing as a marketing strategy and not an actual product but skiing there two seasons ago in mid -April was a revelation. With that said, the terrain and exposure make Sugarloaf and Wildcat pretty boney when nature is not cooperating.

Just received this. Fantastic news about making skiing accessable to the local community. An anonymous donor, with close ties to the Rangeley/Oquossoc region announced a major gift to make Saddleback Mountain and skiing accessible to every child in the Rangeley schools for the next 5 years. “With this gift, Saddleback Mountain will be able to offer season passes to every child in the Rangeley school district for $50/year for the next 5 years,” said Wolfe Tone of the Saddleback Mountain Foundation. “These donors’ generosity in the early stages of Saddleback’s philanthropy campaign was instrumental in helping get the mountain back on its feet and this gift continues their legacy of making a difference in the region.”

Associating pedophiles with one mainstream political party or the other - that's just buying into hyper-partisan BS.

I can't say for sure but it was probably that third week (M-F, 18-22). I took 5 or 6 runs, each time had frost bite on my face and they wouldn't let me load without going inside. Absolutely brutal, my whole body was cold even with layers and layers on me. It was so bad that it ended my ski season.

@tamarack do you have temp data from January 1982. The earlier discussion made me think about a cold snap mid to late month that was brutal. I skied one day at Sugarloaf and combination of cold and wind made it the most uncomfortable physical experience of my life. Come to think of it, I was in Quebec City around same time and saw frost falling from a clear ski.

just looked...snowing and sticking at wolf creek.

Wolf Creek is a really fun area - basically a 1.5-2 mile ridge line with 1,500-1,750' of vertical with everything skiable and most annual snow in Colorado. The other bonus is there are no resort lodging at the ski area - need to drive north or south and the clientale is heavily Texan, Arkansas, Louisiana folks which can make for a comedy on snow at times - https://wolfcreekski.com/wolf-creek-ski-area-live-web-cam/