MassNerd

Holy crap!! The car still got nailed, but the size of the boulder that came after.... Just wow.

Thought I'd share this video I put together of a trip myself and two good friends took to Crested Butte back in January 2018. It was when the winter out west was off to a slow start. None of the extremes were open yet. We landed at the Gunnison regional airport in the snow. About 4 inches fell that night which made for very nice conditions over then next few days. Even without the extremes open, there was plenty of fun terrain at CB, especially the trees in the east river area. Can't wait to go back when there's more snow! Anyway, here's the vid:

I wish I had an awesome MTB photo to share, but here one with lots of green you are free to use: https://flic.kr/p/xmGDvt

I figure I got 9 legit uses out of the pass (counting the 5 in one day as just 1 day and a bunch of half days where I would have gotten 50% with my Wachusett pass anyway). I got the add-on only so that's <$37 a use so definitely money well spent. I'll miss it. Only the add-on makes sense for me at this stage with the family and no such deal with the other multi-passes.

Conditions at Wawa were spectacular yesterday. I skied in the falling snow Friday afternoon and really think the conditions were better Saturday after they spread it around with the groomers. Can't believe this was April skiing! Temps were cool and the snow didn't get spring soft until 2 or 3pm.

I talked to the woman in group sales and she said they'll be open until April 15th. They might shut down some weekdays depending on the weather. I think this will be Wachusett's longest season (if you don't count that one day in May they opened after that Snowmagedon year! November 12th-April15th.

Wow, incredible trip!

More info I've heard: Snow Masters = free skiing, no gates Gate runners = free skiing, working on general technique the first month and then 50% free ski and 50% gates after that. No formal competitions. Park Monsters = self-explanatory I didn't inquire about this one, although that's the one my son would probably choose.

Looking at larger, more metal hungry objects, I read somewhere that the average car would see a $300 increase in manufacturing cost as a result of the tariff. I presume that's for cars manufactured in the US. It would be a shame if that was motivation for car manufacturers to move car production more overseas to avoid the tariff...

My daughter expressed interest in doing Dev Team next year so I asked around and heard the same thing Infinite Dreams. They evaluate and group by ability. I got the impression that "levels 4 & 5" aren't very advanced, basically confident turns, even if they are snow plow turns, will get your kids at that level.

I think the lining in cans has gotten better since, but about 10 years ago, some friends and I did blind taste testing with 2 kinds of Wachusett beer in bottles and cans. Bottles won for both and across all 3 of us. Bottles were smoother less bitter. Could be batch differences perhaps, but given it was 3 people and 2 different beers, I was inclined to believe the impact was real. As for the original topic, I saw somewhere it will impact Al cans 3-6 cents per can. Not sure if that's enough to push brewers back to bottles.

I can confirm that you can use your Max Pass at more than one mountain per day

They made a late decision to close at 9pm tonight. Probably because the place was empty. Snow report did say 10pm though.

Inspired by SkiBearded, I went on my own 5 mountain challenge today (March 19th, 2018). I took advantage of the Max Pass to ski Pico -> Killington -> Okemo -> Stratton -> Wachusett all in one day. I wasn't sure what to expect going into it. I wasn't planning for it to be fun, but I think the key was mid-week skiing. With no lines, one hour at each mountain was enough to get in some quality runs! Weather was cold (16F at start) but the conditions were excellent and I had a great time doing this. The goal going in was to ski from the top of each mountain at least once. I ended up doing better and made up some new goals along the way like: Ski at least 5000ft vertical at each mountain and ski bumps and trees at each (Wachusett was a dusk, so just barely snuck a tree run in). So, 34 skiing miles and 34,484ft of vertical later, I'm a very satisfied guy. Great idea @SkiBearded!. I had an amazing adventure!

What a trip! Looks like an amazing time!