Tseeb and I extensively modified our road trip itinerary to avoid rained-upon refrozen areas: no Revelstoke, Whitewater, Red, Fernie or Castle. Tseeb would have loved any if those areas if they had decent snow.
Deer Valley, UT 3/15/2015
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Marc_C
Active member
Right - relatively easy distance for a two-day trip, seeing that Denver is 8 hours away and I'd pass pretty much all the major ski areas to get there.Harvey44":2fkubwme said:
When I lived in central CT, Sugarbush/MRG was about 5 hrs; Stowe around 30 minutes longer. I also fairly regularly skied Sugarloaf - about 7 hrs.; depart Friday late afternoon/evening and get to my hotel in Stratton ME (7 miles beyond Sugarloaf) around midnight. This would usually include time for a lobster dinner at the Maine border. On Sunday I'd ski till about 3 - 3:30 and return home ~11ish. Day trips from Wallingford would extend as far as Killington. Jay was about the same as Sugarloaf but an easier drive (almost all interstate whereas the final 90 miles to the Loaf was winding 2-lane backwoods Maine roads coming at the end of a significant bit of driving).
Of course that was 15 years ago when I was 45. Now I probably wouldn't do it as frequently (Sugarloaf that is) but then again I've been spoiled since 2001, living within 30 minutes of the 4 Cottonwood resorts.
jasoncapecod
Well-known member
This is a silly argument..
But what the hell..
First I work 6 days a week , so anything more that 2hrs each way is out of the question.
As great as the winter has been, It has been bellow or just around avg for snowfall.. I wouldn't be surprised if some of numbers are down because of the insane cold. just my 2 cents..
But what the hell..
First I work 6 days a week , so anything more that 2hrs each way is out of the question.
As great as the winter has been, It has been bellow or just around avg for snowfall.. I wouldn't be surprised if some of numbers are down because of the insane cold. just my 2 cents..
Marc_C
Active member
That's not what I said. I said I *probably* wouldn't do it as *frequently* - IOW, it's not as easy as it once was, but by no means "not easy". I used to be able to do 10 and 12 hour shifts on cross country drives. Now I'm finding that after 8 hrs is when I'd like down time. There will be a climbing trip this fall. Not sure where yet, but some of the options on the table will involve 10 and 16 hour drives.Harvey44":15fzrvys said:
As always, do whatever y'all like but I'm with Tony on this one: why would any of you wait until mid March and after the first major thaw/soak/freeze cycle of one of if not the best NE ski season in the last decade to go to northern VT? Where were you in Jan and Feb? Sure there were some brutally cold stretches in there, but there were a lot of weekends with more reasonable temps according to my friends in NJ who got in multiple powder days. BTW, they live in Morristown and are members of the Montclair Ski Club that has a house at the base of Lower Antelope at MRG. Their drive is 5 hrs.
Edit: oh, they're our age as well.
Agreed and it's not just a couple inches below. According to their websites, to hit their seasonal averages Plattekill needs 45 inches; Stowe needs 75; MRG needs 70; Whiteface needs 55; only Jay seems to be in its usual place with 317 YTD.jasoncapecod":2ow21cyb said:
Our experience this winter clearly shows that we'd rather err on the side of less snow and consistent temps than more snow accompanied by thaw/refreezes. Of course, the best of both worlds was 2000-01, where we got cold + lots of snow, but the fact that I'm still mentioning it 14 years later shows how seldom that happens around here.
Yeah, I was there on Sunday 3/15 as noted in the TR, but then you bitch that I waited until after the first thaw/refreeze to go up to NVT. Proofread the logic of your troll arguments before posting.Marc_C":2ow21cyb said:
I thought james knew better than to accept "brochure quotes" at face value.jamesdeluxe":2gnq3win said:
At any rate I publish season-to-date snowfalls as percent of average twice a month, most recently March 15: http://www.bestsnow.net/seas15.htm
Collectively the Northeast is 97% of average snowfall. But the absence of rain and thaw since Christmas has hardly been a secret so my original question stands.
FYI when I was a weekend warrior I had one of the most convenient SoCal drives to Mammoth at about 5 hours. From the west side or the OC it's 6 and from San Diego it's 7+.
No marketing overstates long term averages. Besides James was making an apples comparison of season to date actual vs. an oranges quote of total season average.
Marc_C
Active member
And you know you got damned lucky since snowfall wasn't even predicted until the Saturday evening forecast. On Friday or Thursday or whenever you decided to go there was every expectation that Sunday would be identical to the icefest of Saturday. Powderqueen pulled the plug on her planned trip only 2 hours before her departure due to the dismal forecast. Be happy you lucked out.jamesdeluxe":o26kdsmd said:
Marc_C
Active member
According to conventional wisdom here and on other forums, you simply don't book that far in advance in the Northeast due to the extremely variable weather. Other than our timeshare week with relatively fixed dates, we never booked more than a week in advance - usually more like 3 days - in our 22 years living in CT. Regarding the timeshare, we knew there would be good years and we knew there would be years where the hours spent drinking and watching movies and reading would far outnumber the skiing hours. One year in particular was memorable: Sugarbush went from 111 open trails to 2 the next day, not opening until noon. It was the classic 38F, 2 inches of rain, then -14F the next morning.Harvey44":216y6l3b said:
http://forum.nyskiblog.com/Storm-Specul ... 56723.htmlMarc_C":3992vwfa said:
Marc_C
Active member
Yep - that confirms what friends told me: uncertainty, fluctuating predictions between rain and snow, possibly this, possibly that. Even two days out the models and predictions disagreed. Certainly nothing you could reasonably count on.jamesdeluxe":2qlj479c said:
You got lucky.
To sum up: if I booked this visit more than three days out, I'm a dope because you can never count on EC weather, but if I pulled the trigger on it even a day beforehand, I was lucky (despite the fact that there was NEVER a question of Stowe getting rain out of this system, rather if it would bust with only an inch or two). Got it. I fail your and Tony's "How To Ski The East Coast" exam either way!Marc_C":3m5pbdkf said:
In a perfect world, yes. My ski seasons are generally built around one trip to the Alps, one trip out west, rounded out by daytrips within a two-hour drive of where I live. A quasi-destination trip elsewhere in the northeast is generally not an option given a kid and both of us with fulltime jobs and the wife often having to work at least one weekend day. NVT (top tier EC) is obviously better than what's down south (third tier EC), but not to the point that I'm going to drive six hours in each direction for one day of skiing.
We could have easily thrown stones at Tony for going forward with his British Columbia trip knowing the well-below-average conditions he was walking into and that there weren't any market corrections on the horizon. His reality, as I understood it, was a very expensive pre-paid cat-skiing trip that couldn't be bailed on. I get that and am not sure why you two can't understand that, as Jean Renoir once said, "everyone has their reasons." Ironically, Marc C has knocked heads with Tony repeatedly over the same thing: not being aware of or ignoring the full set of reasons for which people make certain decisions.
Can't believe that I'm engaging on this troll-y topic --
We could have easily thrown stones at Tony for going forward with his British Columbia trip knowing the well-below-average conditions he was walking into and that there weren't any market corrections on the horizon. His reality, as I understood it, was a very expensive pre-paid cat-skiing trip that couldn't be bailed on. I get that and am not sure why you two can't understand that, as Jean Renoir once said, "everyone has their reasons." Ironically, Marc C has knocked heads with Tony repeatedly over the same thing: not being aware of or ignoring the full set of reasons for which people make certain decisions.
Can't believe that I'm engaging on this troll-y topic --
Marc_C
Active member
Yes! Precisely!jamesdeluxe":2ayaxtlh said:
I'm far more concerned about:
http://firsttracksonline.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=11763
Edit: had to find the URL