I bought a not very used pair of 2015 Bonafides to replace the 2017s where I tore that edge out Dec. 31. I left them with Garry yesterday and met him at Baldy today to try them out. I'm pleased that they work great.
As mentioned in another thread Baldy like many places has staffing issues now and thus chair 4 is not running.
Another unusual feature today is that I was issued a wristband rather than a lift ticket.
On the ride up here's the view of Bentley's.
And Nightmare:
Coverage on Nightmare looks fine, but the surface was not smooth and likely refrozen after the warm Thursday.
First view of Thunder after exiting chair 1:
The 3 groomers Fire Road/Bonanza, Shortcut/Robin's and Skyline were all in good shape, similar to Mt. High East yesterday. They stayed that way all day as it wasn't very busy. Lower Robin's is at full width.
We skied about an hour with Garry's friends Karen and Marty. Garry and Marty are here spraying loose snow at the bottom of Skyline.
My first ungroomed exploration was Andy's Alley.
Direct entry here was not well covered, so I had to traverse in from the top of Goldridge. Surfaces in Andy's were irregular and pretty much sucked. Shaded snow was hard and sunny snow was mushy. Garry and his fellow season pass friends left at 2PM.
The top of Thunder view was of a thick cloud layer higher than the top of Palos Verdes or the offshore islands.
Overview of upper Emile's (right) and Liftline (left).
Emile's is shaded , fairly steep and north facing, but it was still firm, either from the warm weather or maybe some fog?
The Notch and chair 4 terrain is illuminated at top center. By 2:30 there was partial softening of Liftline so I gave that a try. I alternated groomers with these other runs. Robin's trees were similar to Emile's.
At 3:30 I rode chair 2 and headed to Bentley's. View from the top of Bentley's:
The shaded skier's left was really nasty: both hard and irregular. I traversed to skier's right.
This was mashed potatoes but at least I could make one turn at a time in it. It took me 18 minutes to get down Bentley's.
View from the end of the ski run:
I skied 20,900 vertical and it was definitely a workout. I also skied January 7 at Mt. Baldy two years ago, and the holiday season weather was fairly similar. The big storm that season was about a week earlier. The ungroomed skiing surfaces were challenging by early January then too, but a bit worse this year. Coverage was better in some places than in 2020 and worse in others, but definitely better than on either of my Baldy days in 2021. It was a detriment not to have chair 4 this year because those are nice corn snow groomers in the morning.
As mentioned in another thread Baldy like many places has staffing issues now and thus chair 4 is not running.
Another unusual feature today is that I was issued a wristband rather than a lift ticket.
On the ride up here's the view of Bentley's.
And Nightmare:
Coverage on Nightmare looks fine, but the surface was not smooth and likely refrozen after the warm Thursday.
First view of Thunder after exiting chair 1:
The 3 groomers Fire Road/Bonanza, Shortcut/Robin's and Skyline were all in good shape, similar to Mt. High East yesterday. They stayed that way all day as it wasn't very busy. Lower Robin's is at full width.
We skied about an hour with Garry's friends Karen and Marty. Garry and Marty are here spraying loose snow at the bottom of Skyline.
My first ungroomed exploration was Andy's Alley.
Direct entry here was not well covered, so I had to traverse in from the top of Goldridge. Surfaces in Andy's were irregular and pretty much sucked. Shaded snow was hard and sunny snow was mushy. Garry and his fellow season pass friends left at 2PM.
The top of Thunder view was of a thick cloud layer higher than the top of Palos Verdes or the offshore islands.
Overview of upper Emile's (right) and Liftline (left).
Emile's is shaded , fairly steep and north facing, but it was still firm, either from the warm weather or maybe some fog?
The Notch and chair 4 terrain is illuminated at top center. By 2:30 there was partial softening of Liftline so I gave that a try. I alternated groomers with these other runs. Robin's trees were similar to Emile's.
At 3:30 I rode chair 2 and headed to Bentley's. View from the top of Bentley's:
The shaded skier's left was really nasty: both hard and irregular. I traversed to skier's right.
This was mashed potatoes but at least I could make one turn at a time in it. It took me 18 minutes to get down Bentley's.
View from the end of the ski run:
I skied 20,900 vertical and it was definitely a workout. I also skied January 7 at Mt. Baldy two years ago, and the holiday season weather was fairly similar. The big storm that season was about a week earlier. The ungroomed skiing surfaces were challenging by early January then too, but a bit worse this year. Coverage was better in some places than in 2020 and worse in others, but definitely better than on either of my Baldy days in 2021. It was a detriment not to have chair 4 this year because those are nice corn snow groomers in the morning.
