NorthEast PMTS Meet Up

[midwif]

Dan Boisvert has posted this years Northeast  Meet Up in the Posse section at the PMTS forum.

While many participants are PMTS oriented, the focus is on having fun and all turns are appreciated.

Sugarbush area  from 2/4-2/6.

Glen Scannel will once again be joining us. Watching him whip out his box cutter and extemporaneously
modifying boots on the fly, was amazing.

A good time was had by all and Glen volunteered his experience as a ski coach/boot fitter in an informal way during the day  of group skiing.

There were 4 members from this forum  who participated. Hopefully meput (aka Jim 2) will make the long drive and show us again how to do bumps with titanium knees!

Join us!

[meput]

Dan Boisvert has confirmed the dates and lodging location for the PMTS Northeast round up at Sugarbush for the weekend of Feb 4/5.

Good time was had by all the last couple of years for this event.

I have committed with a lodging reservation. Would love to meet and ski with RealSkier forum members. Please join in.

Maybe Glen will bring demo skis for us again . Would like to try the MX 78's  , maybe even some of the Vist skis.

Join us!

Jim 2

[Liam]

Anyone finagling group discounts on tickets??  I believe S Bush will honor a Patrol letter so I might make it, but for most, skiing on a Saturday in VT is $$$$.

Did Dan get a block of rooms anywhere (I think he did the Sugarbush Inn Last time, correct?).

[midwif]

Liam

We stayed at the Sugar Lodge. Moderately priced and I believe you can get discount tickets thru the lodge. A small savings.

(the Sugarbush Inn is $$$$).

Sugar Lodge is on the same road as the SB Inn about 1-1.5 mile from the mountain base village.

It would be great to meet you.

L.

[bushwacka]

If you anyone wnats to come to stowe on the 3rd Id be game to show people around. Its my day off.

[midwif]

Thanks for the invite.
Unfortunately, can't make it this year, but maybe another.

L.

[jim-ratliff]

If you don't already have lift tickets for the PMTS gathering, here's a way to save some money for Sunday.


----------------------------------------------
Ski and ride for just $46 on Super Bowl Sunday (2/5/2012). This is a one-day only ticket sale so act fast. You have 'til the end of the day (today) Tuesday, January 31st, 2012 to buy your $46 Super Bowl All-Mountain lift ticket for Sunday, February 5th, 2012.
Remember to select "2/5/12" as the date range after you click buy now to find this special deal.




http://onestore.sugarbush.com/eStore/Content/Commerce/Products/DisplayProducts.aspx?ProductGroupCode=1000&utm_source=ecard&utm_medium=email&utm_content=super-bowl-ticket&utm_campaign=super-bowl-email&AspxAutoDetectCooki eSupport=1

[meput]

A bunch of RealSkiers forum members managed to get together this last weekend at the PMTS Northeast roundup. A total of 5 of us (counting Dan who according to Jim#1 is a new member  ).

If you live and ski in the northeast, where were you this weekend? Great gathering at Sugarbush. Good people, good conditions, good skiing, too bad Camden only had one ski (and did not slow him down). Once again, thanks Dan for organizing the roundup. If you weren't there, your loss  !

Would have been fun to have met some of the eastern RealSkier members.

(This post is partially cross posted on the PMTS site.)

[LivingProof]

meput,
Your group of 5 will win the largest Real Skiers team meeting. I might quibble that Dan has not posted yet ( at least that I saw ), so he's ringer. Glad all is going well and your snow was good.

I skied Superbowl Sunday at my home mountain in the worst conditions of the year. Tons of loose granular over very hard old snow, mixed in with large patches of ice. It was survival skiing, not a lot of fun. Plus, it was major day for racing and much of the mountain was closed to normal traffic. Temps remain too warm to make snow, and, the recent warm weather took a major toll on the depth of snow base.

[Liam]

I also skied at my home mountain-Berkshire East, to some of the Better conditions this year.  Which was surprising because Saturday was less than stellar, but the gun the guns blazing Saturday night and really breathed some life into the hill.

Northern, VT would have been great--I just don't do Saturdays and Sundays mid season in VT, but, I love to get some long mogul runs and tight tree runs in really soon. 

Where did you guys ski--Mostly Sugarbush?? (Mad River on a Weekend is always a fool's gambit).  How are conditions at the 'Bush???  That Paradise trail (the Sugarbush one, though, the MRG version is great too) with good snow is one of my favorite stretches of terrain to ski in the North East (Right up there with Kinsman's Glades with Good snow, The Trials at Mount Snow, and Starr at Stowe when conditions are great). 

How were the crowds?  I wondered how the weather and the economy is affecting the VT destination resorts.

[midwif]

On a sad note.....

A skier died this weekend at Sugarbush.
Meput mentioned seeing two sleds at one location and commenting on the
iciness of the some areas.

We never heard any mention while we were there.

My thoughts are with the family. He leaves 2 children to grow up without him.

L.

[jim-ratliff]

The highlight for me was watching Glen's friend Cam (20 pt FIS racer) ski all day most everywhere on one ski.


He had a race accident a couple of months back and can now walk on his ankle, but not ski on it yet.
The standard comment from onlookers (including me) was "Wow, look how well that guy skis and he only has one ski."

[dan.boisvert]

Well, I guess I'll de-lurk to reply to this one. 

Liam, we were at Sugarbush both days this year.  Last year we did one there and one at MRG, and the MRG day was pretty miserable.  The conditions everywhere were great, but the lift lines and general crowding were awful.  I think that mountain might be quaint and fun under other circumstances, but the day we were there it was overrun with people, and it seemed the facilities and such were just not up to the task of handling them.

I thought the conditions at the 'bush this weekend were pretty good, as long as you stuck to stuff that had snow blown on it.  Anything natural-ish was sufficiently scraped in the troughs that I'd only ski it on somebody else's skis.  I didn't think the crowds were too bad, as long as you paid attention to which lifts to hit & avoid.

For these meetups, we try to keep things friendly to people of all levels so, while we don't go out of our way to avoid bumps or glades or whatever, it's not like we're spending all day on the Castle Rock chair, either.  It's a more mellow day than the one I spent with you and Luke at Magic a couple years ago.

Additionally, since it's a PMTS-themed meetup and not just a general ski-along, Glen has generously been helping out with some drills and stuff, so we spend a fair amount of time on easy terrain working on stuff, too.  If you wanted to bring friends next year and ski two runs with the crew and then split off and go ski trees all day, we'd love to have you.  It's a pretty free-form thing; I think it just tends to work out that when coaches talk, people want to listen, so they go where the coaches are.

I was really impressed by Kamden's skiing, as well as his eye for movement.  We were his first exposure to skiing with a recreational group and, from the feedback I've gotten, he had a great time and might just be willing to do more of it.  I'll keep working on this.

I was also sad to hear of the fatality this weekend.  It seemed like we saw a lot of toboggan activity, but I guess I always think of the passengers as just having broken legs or something.  I guess that's a reality-check for all of us.

[Liam]

Dan,

Hey man, I think you do a great job putting these together.  I'm not a terrain snob and I enjoy the social aspect of skiing as much as the challenge (I ain't JP Auclair after all, just another east coast strong intermediate).  I'd be more than happy to ski groomers all day if I got some pointers from a coach like Glen along the way! 

I'd love to catch up with the PMTS meet-up, it's just Weekends are just hard to sneak away these days.  I am hoping to sneak out and catch the Friday of Bushwacker's VT Epic gathering-we'll see.

I was just wondering how the Northern, VT ski areas were faring this season and what I was missing out on so far.  Sugarbush is a great resort and long been my favorite East Coast ski area-I just haven't been up there in a while.

As for that day at Magic...challenging terrain laps were all that was available, I would have been happy to mix in some groomer recovery runs if they had been available!  Magic with snow is pretty special (If I recall, on a powder Sunday the only other person we saw in the lift line all day was you!  ).

[bushwacka]

Well I got to tell you that I am terrain snob more specifically a snow/safety snob.

I am frighten by skiing groomers with lots of people around. They are REALLY dangerous with alot unnecessary risk on sometime a very unforgiving surface at speeds that we shouldnt not be able to reach in any other circumstance.

This weekend at stowe there was 17 people sledded off the hill, every single one of them was skiing on a groomed run.

The peecieved risk on groomers is much lower while the perceived risk of where I am skiing is much higher to most people but the actual fact and statistics could not be further from people perception.

Yet another senseless groomer death at Sugarbush I do not want that to be me or anyone skiing with me.