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30" of snow up here at my spots in VT last weekend. Best powder I've hit all season.  "The Rat" is not an official trail you will find anywhere on the mountain maps; hence, it must always be found and skiied. Hardly a secret, though, I hit it right off the bat and it was already more packed in than a lot of the glades (some of which still had feet of virgin powder on them when I decided to call it a day).
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Mar 25, 2019 17:00
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 Mad River Glen, Ski It If You Can My first day out for the year and I discovered a loving hairline crack in my left boot, right in front of the buckle ( to the left -- the line down the center is actually a seam).  Because I'm in VT, and was at MRG, instead of saying "lol bin those", the guy at the repair shop said "well, depending on what tools you have, you could cut a little channel there, apoxy the living hell out of it, and then keep an eye on it". Am I correct in thinking I should just.... bin these, and buy new boots? I've never had a crack quite like this before, but I did have a boot fail once. Of course this will just get worse, and the idea of coming down off a 3' jump or whatever and having my boot just explode seems... bad? So I guess I should suck it up and go spend $3-500? I got these used for like one fiddy midseason in 2018 so this is not catastrophic, just annoying (and makes me not want more used boots). edit: random forum says: quote:With a crack at the shell overlap (which is common with boots) you can do this. But the OP said he has a crack at the toe. A crack in this area is quite the problem as tons of forces are put on the boot in this area. If the crack is at the toe on the main shell drilling a hole might stop the crack from spreading in one direction, but the boot may still catastrophically fail. If Salomon will not warranty the boots, the best bet is to replace the boot rather than risk serious injury. This is, technically, in the overlap -- but it's the very edge of the overlap and goes up into the toe. I don't think drilling into there is a good idea, and it's probably better to spend money I don't quite exactly have, than to be alarmed all season and/or wreck myself. Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Jan 4, 2021 |
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Jan 4, 2021 17:01
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Wistful of Dollars posted:I'd suggest new boots. Yuns posted:How old are the boots? Because if it was caused by the plastic being brittle I wouldn't repair. I didn't seriously entertain the idea of doing much besides binning these. If it was a crack at the back, maybe, but the toe area gets so much tension this is just hosed, and these were used when I got them which means I didn't spend that much on them. I have an appointment with a boot fitter on Friday and it sounds like I probably want to be prepared to spend $500 for the kind of skiing I do. (Nothing insane or high speed, but I do like the woods a lot, I like deep powder and mogul glades, etc). I could go back and get another pair of used boots for $150 instead, but I've never owned brand new properly fitted boots, so I am going to go keep the appointment, and maybe see about selling a $500 magic card or some loving thing because I absolutely did not budget for this this year. edit: the boot I had fail was a pair of used Rossis, and I had just made a run down Killington, so thankfully I was at the bottom. It was subzero (F). I lifted my foot and slammed it down to knock snow and ice off my ski, and the front half of the boot just completely came off, and the ski started to slide away. I hobbled into the repair shop with one sock half sticking out. Shop person thought it was the funniest thing they had seen all week, and asked me for the cracked boot to hang on the wall. I forgot to look and see if it was still there last season, I don't do Killington unless there are touristas in town. In any case, having had one boot explode at the safe, flat, bottom of a mountain, I have little desire to have that happen when I'm working my way through glades. edit: VVV bawfuls posted:Used boots Yes, it was an impulse decision two years ago, I was sick of renting but didn't have a grand to drop on a new setup so I spent $300 on a used setup. I will end up spending that same grand, plus $300, of course, but I'm spreading it out over a longer time period. Also FWIW I feeel 100% differently on this subject w/r/t snowshoes and x-country skis -- if you're doing very basic, not super exciting cross country skiing, I think a used setup makes a hell of a lot of sense. Used gear in general is extremely common here because we're a state with a ton of skiing and a median family income of under 60k. I am going to have them take a close look at the skis while I am there, too. I'm going to be up for a new pair of those within a couple years I expect, and I will probably also try to go with new gear this time. The problem is that I want all the things (alpine, AT, x-country) as well as a loving snowmobile and god knows what else, and all these things can be more expensive than God if you let them. Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jan 4, 2021 |
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Jan 4, 2021 18:23
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yea, y'all got me convinced. The one thing I don't want to do is put this on credit, and we're still sorting out our checking and savings after a bunch of unexpected home repairs, so I have to figure out if I want to sell a loving magic card or a couple shares of MSFT or some dumb thing, but I guess I have 3 days to figure out a plan to pay for this before the appointment  Does anyone need a Gaea's Cradle  edit: I should stop bitching and give a slight report on my first day out. I took 3 cautious runs, keeping an eye on this crack, and avoided doing too much that was going to get me off the ground. Mad River was covered with signs that said "6' COVER ON TOP OF NOTHING! STAY OUT OF THE WOODS!" combined with lots and lots of tracks of people definitely wooping in the woods, but I stayed on the beaten paths. Some standing water, rocks, grass patches and they only have like 1/3 of the mountain open, but it was a real nice first day. This is, I poo poo you not, the first time I've left my house to go do something purely recreational around other people, since early March. The way they're spacing everyone out, and the fact that everything at the mountain can be handled outside (include booze sales, if you don't want to carry a flask for some reason). I absolutely smelled someone smoking pot on the lift in front of me before 10am, and I was slightly jealous, because I knew I needed to come back home and work all day. Also being high is usually a last-couple-runs kinda thing for me.  
Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jan 4, 2021 |
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Jan 4, 2021 18:46
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Wistful of Dollars posted:If financial issues are tight right now maybe the answer is to wait and potentially not go skiing for a bit. Only you know what's best for you in your circumstances. I won't counsel potential financial trouble over a pair of boots. Also, sunk cost fallacy dictates that the $300 weekday pass I already have be utilized 
Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Jan 4, 2021 |
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Jan 4, 2021 21:38
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okay, okay, I had to sell two magic cards, but now I have a $700 boot budget which ought to be more than sufficient. I came very close to thinking "poo poo I should just sell 4 cards and also get new skis and maybe a used AT setup" but  NO, BAD TIM, NO. (mainly because I don't have an AT buddy to go off into the woods with, and would likely die the first day -- same basic problem that keeps me off the more fun dirtbike poo poo up here)
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Jan 5, 2021 00:33
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Master_Odin posted:Sounds like you've got an appointment, but I'm a fan of Alpine Options. They do a good job in fitting and explaining things, and will also happily refer you elsewhere if you're best suited to a boot brand they don't carry. Great service. well, thank goodness that the one local recommendation that came through.... is for the place that I have an appointment on Friday! It was lovely timing but I am fairly stoked to be getting new boots, I have been skiing since 1991 and I've never owned a pair of new boots before.
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Jan 6, 2021 18:32
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Alright, I just got a pair of Atomic Hawx Ultra 120 after a proper fitting. $599 for the boot, $723 out the door, including better ski socks and a moldable (and now molded) set of inserts to compensate for the fact that one of my feet is sort of hosed and has a bony protrusion at the ankle after a sprain in 2009. I am stoked to try them out, probably Monday (I have a weekday pass only this year). I left my beat up Elan 888's there to get the bindings adjusted, and, for the first time in my life I checked "Type III". I am not an amazing high speed skiier, but I've been doing this poo poo for 33 years and generally when I get off the lift my first thought is "how hosed up can I get in the woods on some untouched powder?". Even though I tend to take glades pretty slowly, with "Type II" binding settings, twice last year I had a ski pop off after coming down off of a fairly small ( < 2') drop, so, that makes me think it's time to tighten up my bindings, and then be a bit careful about not wrecking my knees. Walking around the shop in the boots, especially after the molded heel supports and internal molding had been heat fitted, kind of blew my mind just because it's the first time in my life I've walked around in ski boots and not been in some amount of pain and discomfort as a result of a not that great fit. Followup thought / question: I am going back tomorrow, to pick up my stuff, and also get our 4 year old fitted for rentals. My plan with her is just to walk around flat parts of our property and then MAYBE try to learn to snowplow down a gentle grade that's only ~10-15' long. The place I ski has a ski clinic for kids 4-6, "no experience required", and so what I want to do this year is just get her comfortable enough with the whole idea, that in a year, putting her on skis and then giving her to a stranger and saying "okay honey, go learn how to not die!" will be less scary for both of us. Does anyone have any tips on just generally getting a small kid used to wearing real boots and skis? Last year we had her try strap-on things that went over her boots once, and she sort of got the idea, but they had way too much movement in them to be too useful.
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Jan 8, 2021 19:24
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Yuns posted:Your plan sounds fine but isn't 100% required. I just took my kids at around 4 years old and threw them into regular half day group lessons/camp (eventually full day) for kids since I'm not a skier. The first few times I did stick around the periphery of the kids learning area just to watch a bit. The instructors at those are super used to dealing with tiny kids and at the camps we went to were great. Yeah, this makes sense. Doing the camp this year wasn't really an option because of Corona and I didn't think about it until it was too late to budget for (and probably too late to sign up). This stuff is expensive, of course; I figure next year between a season pass for me and a clinic and some more skiing for kiddo I'm looking at a couple grand, and that's without any more gear. I took her out for the first time yesterday, and we just practiced trying to walk for 10-15 minutes until she got tired. Then I did a little demo for her skiing down one of our smaller hills, and then she asked me to ski down again, carrying her, which I did only slightly nervously; I mentally had a fall/exit plan the whole time that invovled sticking her out of harms way if we went down and we went really slowly compared to how I bomb our woods when I'm testing out my gear, but she thought it was great and I think it made her more excited about it. This year I just want to get her walking around, maybe learn a little bit about walking up hills and snowplowing down the very small hill in our backyard, and mostly just comfortable with the gear and the idea. I am sure some kids do better than others if you just throw them into a clinic; by personality our kid tends to be a lot more confident doing things around strangers if she's pretty familiar with them, so as long as I avoid teaching her bad habits, I think this is a good idea. On the "habits" front, when we got her boots on, the first thing she picked up on was "woah, dad, I can lean WAY forward and not fall down in these boots!" ... and I said "yep, and that's how it's supposed to be, because on skis you want to lean forward to be in control!" This also let me test out my new boots in my newly set bindings; feels great. I'm going back to Mad River tomorrow for a couple hours before work, and probably will try to spend most of the day there Friday (and then come home and pound coffee and THC/CBD/turmeric* and work for 8 hours, ha). * herbal anti-inflammatories in no way work as well as NSAIDS, but I have hearing issues and tinnitus that make all NSAIDs contraindicated unless they're absolutely necessary. So, snake oil for me!
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Jan 11, 2021 16:59
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Steve French posted:I'll add some thoughts after a handful of days out with our 3 year olds: I have yet to see how well it's really working out in terms of learning, but our kids are not quite at the point where they can really form a real snowplow and control their speed, but we're still taking them out on the hill and holding them between our legs and going down various slopes. Most of the time they need to be supported a bit, but we let them go completely on some of the real flat stuff where I'm not worried about them getting out of control or hitting anything. I'm no instructor and once I feel like they're responsive enough to benefit from it we'll get them lessons, but for now it's a fun time out with the family and they are having a great time, so even if it's not the most productive possible thing we could be doing learning wise, I think it's still beneficial. So my advice is not to be afraid of getting them out there and focusing on just having a good time to start. This is great to hear. I very recently had the lightbulb pop to take this on this year, so we don't have a proper harness, but I have one on order that I'll have Friday. We actually have some fairly substantial vertical right here on property, as well as a some long, slower grades that aren't too painful to huff back up. I think I will get her at least 1 real lesson with an instructor this year; even if the only thing that sticks is "sometimes I go to a bigger place and a person I don't know tries to lead me around", that will be helpful for her comfort with a clinic next year. A clinic this year would make me at least slightly nervous about COVID, but our own kid is pretty good about masks and not eating random stuff, so I think 1:1 is fine. I worked stuff out with my boss to get some morning skiing in a couple days a week. Thin cover; if we hadn't had 24 hrs of 50 degrees and rain on Christmas Day, there would probably be another 36" of base -- as it is, I need a rewax, got some gouges and hit dirt once or twice.     Not many people, just how I like it. HookShot posted:Welp I planned on going skiing tomorrow thinking it would snow on me and not rain but the freezing level here is going to be at 5800 feet so it'll be tight. Neat, 5800' is 1559' above the very peak of the tallest ski slope at Killington, which is the tallest in the state I like the thick snow just fine; my aging knees want me to move to Colorado. Also this is the warmest year on record here, a trend I worry will probably continue and could make the whole concept of skiing here impractical in my lifetime. That's not much to be sad about compared to the oceans dying etc, but it's hard to see it happening. Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 21:56
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Keegers posted:Was on a lift last night and passed over 2 snowboarders sitting in the middle of the run watching YouTube tutorials. I hope they learned what they needed, obviously the video didn't touch on where to stop One of my friends once noted snowboarders hitting a full size (24"?) bong on a lift and we could not loving figure out exactly how that all worked. Thank the 20-teens for shatter and wax pens, gamechanger. Also, gently caress it, I'm putting our 4 year old on a chairlift next week. We've been "skiing" down the driveway with me just holding her under her arms, and as of today we have a real kid harness deal, and all weekend to practice with it. I talked to the people at the mountain, and while I was out today I also saw several other parents doing exactly what I'm thinking of (including a woman who was just doing the "hold 'em under the arms with no harness" trick with a similarly small child. I don't think the practice slopes at Mad River are any steeper than our driveway (probably less, mostly) -- they just go on a lot further, and then we can chairlift up instead of me carrying her over my shoulder  I told kiddo "hey, any time we ski, but especially if we go to the real mountain, there is some chance that we'll fall, no matter what I do to try to prevent that. If we fall, it might hurt. Are you cool with that?" She's just like YES DAD I HAVE MY HELMET LETS DO THIS My wife seems almost as concerned about the possibility of me killing or maiming the kid, as she is ecstatic at the prospect of having us both gone from the house at the same time several times a week
Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Jan 15, 2021 |
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Jan 15, 2021 23:39
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Mad River was gorgeous today but you'll have to take my word for it because all the photos I took are on the cellphone that I lost when I yard-saled out in a glade. On the plus side, I believe my binding release is set to an appropriate level, as my skis have stayed on through all kinds of bumps and jumps and small dumps, but one real WOOOOOOFUCK and off they came. Unfortunatetly my right ski is delaminating from the tip, so I'm likely looking at new skis & bindings next season (the ski shop thinks they can ghetto it fine for the rest of this year).
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Jan 18, 2021 23:31
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  I'm taking at least half the day off work tomorrow. My replacement phone with a better camera AND A SKI LANYARD to keep it fastened even when "safe in my pocket" is also on its way. 4 Year Old's Ski Lesson Update: After watching a bunch of parents on the mountain, and at the base area, with kids of various sizes, I decided that before I take kiddo to Mad River I want them very comfortable holding on to my ski pole and being pulled. I'm pretty impressed how fast kids this age pick stuff up. We've only gone out a half dozen times. Two days ago, she seemed completely incapable of standing up by herself, when sitting down in snow, in ski boots -- I showed her how to roll over, go onto her knees, but from there she just seemed to lack the strength and intuiton, so I had to help her. Today, the first time she went to try to stand up... she just did it, without saying anything or asking for help, and when I pointed it out she seemed surprised and happy. Since then she did it another half dozen times. Two days ago she basically refused to try to hold my pole tip at all; today she is comfortable on flat ground, enjoys it when we go down a slight grade, and only hates going uphill. I think this is a mix of her having a hard time keeping her tips straight, and not having at all developed a lot of the core and thigh muscles this needs. I ordered a tip connector for her skis which I'll have Saturday. Her endurance tends to be 30-45mins with some breaks, so, whenever we do start going to the mountain, we'll spend as long getting there and back as we spend there, but that's fine with me. I want this to be fun for her and even though I am making her work harder than she wants to through a combination of bribery, goading and flattery, I sort of know where the limit is where she'll come inside and say she had a good time. Past a point I am not going to be pushy; I want to give her a shot at learning the basics from a young age, and then I will make it possible for her to ski as much as is reasonable, but if she hits a point where she either has no interest or says "f you dad, I want to snowboard instead", that'll be fine with me, even if it will grate me to start buying Sugarbush passes. 2020 flashback: here's one of my last runs down Paradise last year. I could spend a whole weekend on this one run and associated glades, easily. 
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Jan 21, 2021 17:11
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ought ten posted:This is so cool. MRG was the first place I ever skied. Can’t really say I learned to ski there, we left VT before I was 4. But my parents would carry me up the little slope by the lodge near the base of the race hill and I’d slide down between their legs. I did spend a lot of time in the cricket club. Does that still exist? It does! I didn't really look into it this year because of COVID concerns but it's on my list of potentially useful things for the next few years (we have another kiddo on the way soon). Plenty of powder in the woods today. Also some rocks, ice, etc; I have a strained hip and the usual assortment of bumps and bruises, but I expect to be good to go again by next Tues. VERY FOGGY AND MYSTERIOUS TODAY WOW    
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Jan 22, 2021 22:46
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Partial Octopus posted:Those tree runs look like a blast! They are, I can't stay out of the woods and I get tired as poo poo and hurt myself. Doing lots of glades made me stop thinking of mogul fields as tiring, and instead as a place to practice higher speeds with substantially less risk. ninja: i have an icepack on my rear end/hip right now, deliberate controlled fall into what turned out to be a stump under 1/8" of white ice, oops.
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Jan 23, 2021 00:31
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I ordered a tip connector for my 4-year-old's rental skis because it seemed like a quicker path to being able to pull her around with my pole. But, Amazon and USPS keep having problems in some NJ distribution center, and I got sick of waiting I am sure the real product will work better when it arrives, but for the moment this has been fine and I think kiddo is starting to figure out some stuff about leaning forward vs not. She has been falling over a fair amount and I have mostly been letting it happen. She's pretty excited to be doing this and mostly talks about it in glowing terms afterwards, even if she gets hurt a little or screams at the time. She's able to stand up in deep snow in boots, walk around, and jump, and is getting closer to being able to pop a ski on by herself. It is amazing to me to see a young brain that can just learn totally new locomotion paradigms at this rate. The progress she's made in two weeks would, if I could not already ski, probably take me two months.
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Jan 25, 2021 19:45
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Let me know if people are sick of Mad River shots; I doubt if I'll make it anywhere else this year (laziness + season pass + covid)   The single chair got me nicely above cloud cover today and in general conditions were pretty clear.   Usually following a single, sole track of skis into the woods leads me to exciting places, but sometimes it just leads to having to basically clambor down trees or do some cross country skiing. Maybe I should have an AT setup...  The woods off Bunny finally had enough of a dump to carefully and slowly slog through. This is outdated nostalgia: this little waterfall was a common place to duck off and smoke a bowl... back before everyone just carried oil pens that you can literally hit during a run if you want. Also now that I am weekday season pass and doing this poo poo before work, it's kind of the first time in my adult life that I am doing a lot of skiing without any cannabis...
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Jan 26, 2021 18:40
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that's a really exciting forecast to read from the East Coast and I will cross my fingers for y'all!
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Jan 26, 2021 19:28
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spwrozek posted:I enjoy the pics but obligatory gently caress MRG. clearly you're I don't disagree with the senitment, but MRG rules. The terrain overall seems pretty hostile to boards, but, I'm talking out my rear end because I've been on skis since 1991 and I've literally never ridden a board. I should probably go take a season of lessons at Sugarbush sometime; I kinda sorta know how to skateboard.
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Jan 26, 2021 19:56
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LostCosmonaut posted:Keep posting those, so I can live vicariously through them. I had planned on getting to MRG this year, but then lol covid (I'm in NY), and this is probably my last winter in the eastern US, so welp. Noted. I am actually eyeballing a trip to NYS to see my parents and get some amount of childcare, a thing we otherwise lack. The only way it works is if I can spend a full 7 days there without leaving their house, drive directly back here, and then take a COVID test immediately. It's only a moderate pain in the rear end for me but unless you are able to stay indoors and not interact with society for a week, yeah, it's pretty obnoxious. Mad River is mostly VT plates this year, some MA. I've mostly been going weekday mornings, and it's dead. spwrozek posted:I mostly board but I also ski. MRG looks cool though. just seems like all three of the hold outs should just get over it. It's a NIMBY thing for me; intellectually I agree with you but selfishly one of the nice things about Mad River is how relatively little traffic there is there, and opening it up to a wider audience can only be detrimental to that. I'd feel more strongly about it if Sugarbush wasn't literally right up the road, substantially more built up, and also, as far as I can tell, a substantially nicer place to snowboard from a terrain and lift accessibility standpoint. Mad River being a weird co-op operating on state land seems to make it even more insular from change. Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Jan 27, 2021 |
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Jan 27, 2021 00:20
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casque posted:Did you read it? Because it's talking about the future, not the present. it is kinda depressing to be teaching my kid to ski and also thinking that skiing might be a much smaller thing here by the time she's my age (40 this year). Granted, I'm doing everything in my power to set her up to be able to leave the US for someplace less dystopian, but, we'll see...
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Jan 28, 2021 04:23
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Mad River Season Update: I've made it out a lot; today might be the last, especially if maple sugar season turns into a real thing as usual over the next week. I took our 4 year old a total of 3 times, and she's now been up the single chair on my lap to the midstation 4 times and up the double chair next to me three times. I used a harness and had her between my legs and she's clearly understanding a lot and capable of actually skiing for some distances, so I'm real happy with progress there and confident about dumping her in a kid's clinic next year. I took her for 2 hours today, then went back myself for 3 more runs to see what the top was like; "not great". Equal parts hoping your end-of-season wax is still good because of dirt/grass patches, and hoping your wax sucks because everything else was ice. I still had plenty of fun, but if that's the way the season ends, I think I extracted my midweek pass value. I stopped counting how many times I made it out but it's been 2x a week every time that's been possible weather wise.  Don't eat the brown acid. 
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Mar 13, 2021 01:28
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asur posted:There is absolutely no way that skiing is a dying industry. Resorts continue to add lifts and more obscure resorts are becoming mainstream and despite that crowds are continuing to increase. If we're talking about the next 5-10 years, sure. By the year 2100 Vail may not have snow at all at the altitudes that are skiied now, and the entire state of vermont will get half the snow we get now, or less. The season here is already substantially shorter than they were when I came here as a kid 30 years ago. 2014 nyt article: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-snow.html quote:Europe has lost half of its Alpine glacial ice since the 1850s, and if climate change is not reined in, two-thirds of European ski resorts will be likely to close by 2100. I think about this a lot because it makes teaching our kid to ski sort of sad. Vail's stock price is killing it. Look at what they're doing, though, they're investing in a ton of tourist poo poo that doesn't rely on snow. Maybe some idiot tech savant will create artificial snow that works at 50 degrees using weird polymers, but season passes will be $10million each. If that article is accurate, poo poo like Whitetail might just be gone in 24 years. That's crazy. Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Mar 15, 2021 |
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Mar 15, 2021 13:47
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I need new skis; have a cracked tip that I glued last year. I only ski VT stuff, mostly MRG. I've been skiing since I was 7 (33 years) but I consider myself "casual advanced", my basic thing is glades in the woods and looking for powder in the woods, but I am not a fast or aggressive skiier in those circumstances. I ski moguls outside of trees at somewhat more speed, but at this age I am more wary of season-ending falls than I was when I was 30. Additionally our 5 year old is learning to ski so I need something reasonable on hardpack etc (and sometimes the glades are hardpack anyway). The thing I am looking at now is Blizzard Rustler skis in the 9 model (94mm) in 180mm. I am 6'2", 150lbs. Does that ski seem reasonable, any binding recommendations, and any other skis I should look at?
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Sep 16, 2021 14:47
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bawfuls posted:I have no recommendations for east coast gear, but congrats on maintaining this aspect ratio into your mid-30's Thanks! I turned 40 this year. I expect my love of cheese and beer to eventually catch up to me, but moving 6 full cords of wood twice a year plus 100 maple taps helps a lot; there's rarely a season that I'm not forced by lifestyle to sweat a lot. I prefer it this way; when I was urban I had to force myself to do gym visits and I was always bad at it. I will prolly just get the skis I mentioned, if I don't find anything that looks better!!
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Sep 16, 2021 22:16
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ought ten posted:This is all from my armchair but sounds like you picked the right skis for what you need. Maybe Head Kore 93 or Fischer Ranger 94? You could look at something like K2 Mindbenders but then you're picking 90 or 98. You could do a Nordica Enforcer but I think that's a little more on piste focused. There's also Rossi Soul 7s which get poo poo on for being the ubiquitous rental ski of the last few years but are supposed to be fun and easy in soft snow. Awesome; people elsewhere on the internet agreed this ski is a good pick for what I want and also suggested Tyrolia Attack2 13 bindings as a reasonable budget option, so.....  I've been skiing since 1990 and this is the first pair of new skis I've ever owned. I bought my first pair of new boots last year, too. Moving up in the world! Skis, bindings, 6 day season pass and 12 week ski clinic for kiddo this year added up to $1900 wowedit: also I changed that order before I clicked submit, and got 95mm bindings instead of 110 because that should work with a 94mm width and I don't want to drag when I'm at a big incline.
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Sep 17, 2021 22:30
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 well, I have new skis, for as long as God decides to continue to give us snow up here. I drove by MRG over the weekend and at least the trails and woods look white so that's something. I'll take whatever I can get, just hope we get 10-12 okay weeks for kiddo's ski clinic.
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Nov 22, 2021 18:01
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HookShot posted:The ski racer in me physically recoiled at that photo. I've never been a racer, but... why?
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Nov 22, 2021 21:50
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spwrozek posted:Base touching rock. Micro scratches slowing you down. Never matters for the common skier but those hundreds of seconds matter in racing. oh, gotcha. Ha, I did actually think about that, and I rested it very carefully, but realistically one day at MRG even in good conditions, I am gonna mark up the backs of these pretty good.
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Nov 23, 2021 00:01
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  Too warm and too little snow here in VT generally, but suspect that this year is not going to look like an outlier over the next decade or two, so, smoke 'em if ya got 'em. Mad River had the single chair open for the first time today; terrain at the very top was pretty nice and then quickly turned into a game of obstacle dodging. I managed to not gently caress up the wax on my new Blizzard 7's too bad, and they're generally nice, I felt like I had a lot of control pretty easily across a spread of conditions from corn powder to "lol what is this poo poo this belongs in the CSPAM climate doom thread"
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Dec 31, 2021 23:31
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least snowfall on record for VT MRG was ski on lifts this morning which is good because you need the whole lift to yourself, by the time you bring the ice skates and boots with chains on them that you'll need for parts of the terrain  whatever, I'll ski on ice, it goes fast, brrrr
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Jan 12, 2022 17:16
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Varg posted:I'm headed up to Bretton Woods the week of the 24th so I'm constantly checking the weather, they're forecasted for 10-15 inches on Monday, and looks like VT is gonna get some of that too. yup, I have my fingers crossed and told my boss I am noping out of work for a couple days if we get anything real!  Has anyone ever gone skiing on a tab of acid? It's something I've wanted to do since about 1998 and just never have. Obviously I would take it easy and stick to easier runs, and have sober people with me and all the normal poo poo one does if consuming weird drugs in public while also wanting to exist in a society.
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Jan 13, 2022 18:59
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Real snow at Mad River finally. Smacked my rear end on some ice taking a fall in a glade, fortunately avoiding my tailbone, so I am just bruised up. Lucky!    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL3cNOEk_YI (video is of my buddy) The poo poo MRG decides to mark as "expert" is sort of hilarious. After getting deeply hosed up in some very sketchy and completely unmarked terrain, we came across a hand written "PLEASE BRING A BUDDY IF GOING IN HERE" note in front of a glade that was substantially easier and less steep. I started to feel sick right afterwards; it's not COVID (per lateral flow); probably got something from my kids, hopefully I didn't share it. Illness and a hurt rear end will keep me away for a few days, hope to be back on Friday. We both took the whole day off work but after 4 hours or so we were completely dead on our feet. the 15-18" we got isn't 50" and so it was still pretty easy to scrape down to rocks and roots, but the quality of the snow and the temperature was perfect.
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Jan 19, 2022 11:49
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I hope I don't get shot or dosed with poison maple syrup for posting this for potential touristas MRG's worst kept secret is that there's a network of trails that are marked by very handmade signs, which do not appear on the official maps. That's where the "Uppa Mountain People" signs are. Mix of tiring nordic transversal and slight downhill that ends in a pretty fun game of chutes and no ladders through the woods, brings you to a place where you could probably just jump straight over Rt 17 if you were totally loving nuts and the conditions were right, and then to a small set of glades that do get worked in, but more slowly than other terrain as a general rule.  The main trail is marked as "RAT", but there's also some signs in some kind of symbolic language. If Birdland is spinning, you can find this pretty easily from the top of that lift, just make an immediate left into the sign that says NO TRAIL and follow the thing that seems like a trail. If Birdland isn't running, there's an avenue off Snail that goes to the lower part of all this. Cabbages and VHS fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jan 20, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 14:50
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Master_Odin posted:
We got to MRG at open on Tues and I was able to find a bunch of powder in glades that are usually more worked in, and I was happy to note that I can take 'em at a much faster clip when there's powder on every turn. I am much more just boom-boom-boom-boom rather than boom-boom-stop, boom-boom-fall-on-a-rock.
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Jan 20, 2022 14:43
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PCjr sidecar posted:I bought some (on sale, extremely unnecessary) carbon fiber poles to embrace my disposable income dork. I lost the threaded detachable basket on one the first time out. The metal tip broke off the same one this weekend. I got carbon fiber adjustable Backcountry poles. Lost both baskets in the snow in hours. I just jammed a couple red baskets from an old pair of Lekis onto the tips, and they have stayed on ever since -- they don't articulate on the bearing, but, I'm also hardly a super aggressive skiier.Some Ice Coast pics  I did Sugarbush yesterday with some friends, this is at the top of Lincoln Peak. We had fun, it was icy as hell, but it started dumping powder on the way home so I made a pact with myself to get up early enough to be in line at open at MRG and sneak some runs in before work. Ended up getting around 5".       I've never used a tracker app before yesterday, but this is funny and unsurprising to me: skiing casually and easily with friends at "gently caress around levels" with a beer or two involved, involves going substantially faster than working my fuckin' rear end off solo at MRG dead sober does.
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Jan 24, 2022 20:15
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Made it to MRG for 2 hrs today, 12k vertical. Lower back pain means I've been doing too many moguls with bad form. I am gonna give myself a couple day break and hope for a powder day on Sunday, just ice and rest and weed in the mean time. Conditions were surprisingly good. When I got into the lower difficulty glades a ton of it looked like it hadn't been touched in a day or two, lots of places to blast some powder off some trees. Got myself seriously hosed up once by following the always sketchy single-pair-o-tracks. It was on the glades off the lower part of Bunny which I know real well -- well enough to realize when the tracks were headed for a cliff and stop, but by that point I was committed and had to find a lovely way down, some of which involved wearing skis
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Jan 25, 2022 23:29
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bawfuls posted:I have always found my back gets sore from skiing when my legs are out of shape, so I end up using my back/core more to compensate. I think that is 100% the case and I need to take a few days off and stretch and rest my back but also be back on some leg exercises etc. Sorta let the season sneak up on me and then I have gone too hard because season pass + dopamine. Offseason I stay in shape doing firewood and maple syrup and related stuff, but none of that works my legs like skis. Maybe bikes do, wouldn't know, I got no use for a bike that doesn't have a gasoline engine. also my office chair is kind of a travesty, I might invest in a chair that costs as much as my skis this spring because I sit on my rear end working way too much.
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Jan 26, 2022 02:21
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 Sometimes when I follow the brave lone set of tracks into the woods I find Secret Sweetness, otherwise it leads to Terrible Trekking. I knew what I was getting into here because this is one of the lower glades off Bunny, and it's generally "fine" but it does have a cliff wall on one side, and a crevice that runs along the bottom which is sometimes skiable and sometimes a river. I elected to briefly bootpack here, but mostly unfucked myself on skis because I was sinking into the snow up to my thighs trying to walk. Good times.
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Jan 26, 2022 16:28
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 17:35 |
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Partial Octopus posted:Still cool though. I just wouldnt wanna do it I want to build a rope tow on our property; the battery limitation of this thing is a dealbreaker.
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Jan 29, 2022 07:10
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