joegm
New member
an interesting trip for sure. from the best day of the year last week at loon to probably the worst 2 day stretch all year. crazy? maybe, but this is how it went down.
tuesday the sugarloaf report was claiming 120 trails and specifically articulated 6 bump runs.... now i had never been to the loaf as the drive had always repulsed me. my buddy g tried it about 6 years ago and got lost going and returning... it was a nightmare as i remember him talking about it for week....of course tuesday , i managed to convince him to try it again as, 1) we would probably be at k the rest of the year and 2) it was for the donut as it falls under our bronze asc pass 3) the claim of 6 bump runs seemed like a better bet than k considering all that seems to be going on over in vt with the grooming ... our alternative was the cat but we had concerns about the skiable lines as the week before when we hit cat, most of the lines seemed to be pretty thin except liftlion. our concern was that the lines got croaked in the rain of the past weekend... hedging our bets and factoring in all things like the drive and all, we decided to roll the dice, make the ridiculous drive to the c valley and stay over night for a 2 dayer at the loaf. oh my god what a mistake :twisted:
loaf on wed: left lincoln at 525am... pulled into the p lot at loaf at 9:10am...that in and of itself is out of hand....but again, it's all about the skiing at this point and the promise of 6 bump runs at the time, made the drive tolerable....i could go on for an hour about the ensuing disaster that followed but here is the short story... loaf had not groomed seemingly for 48 hours... it got cold and made all non bumped up terrain a sea of rock hard mini moon craters... it made all bumped terrain unskiable.... they had 2, that's 2 lifts running.. something they call the superquad ( believe me there is nothing super about this piece of crap ) and a double lift off of a 2 set double that pretty much mirros the vert access of the quad... the web site had advertised that the snow fields were open and that a thing called the timeberline was accessing them... simply not true... they stated day of that timberline was closed to winds... problem was there was no wind :twisted: as far as the 120 trails... bull cookies... it's a crock patrick!!!!! :evil: it was not even close....i'm not familiar enough with loaf to name the trails but essentially there were about 7 or 8 options to get down based in the middle part of the mountain... all of them sucked.... no doubt there were 1 or 2 pretty steep lines on a couple of these trails that probably provide some thrills when the snow is right...the incredible decision not to groom was an inexcusable error that i just can't believe a major operation would make...the outright lying about 6 bump runs was nothing short of a disgrace... i don't mean to pile on, but since i'm on a roll... that place is one lame ass hill imo... take it for what it's worth and i'm sure there are some loyal lofers who will disagree for sure...it appears to me that the bottom third of the mountain accounts for about 5 % of the total vertical rise... it seems like 30% of any given run is a run out to the lifts which seem to make no sense in their placement. this famous narrow guage trail that seems to get a lot of press ,seems to me to be a tad bit overrated....but again , that 's just me loaf appears to be a card carrying member of the " only double blacks are for bumps" club. and of course , the bumps on those runs blow...quote #2 fo the day from my amn g, " u can stick this place where the sun don't shine " .... i'd have to agree
i am still in shock as i write this as to how bad of a ski day it was at sugarloaf usa.... even taking about the lack of advertised bump runs, the day was a total disappointment. my buddy g summed it up best when he said, riding up that stupid double set up " this place just feels depressing"... i have don't have anything against old singles or doubles if you are mad river or smugs and can deliver the goods.. from what we saw, the loaf is no mad river or smuggs... i can't envision , for any reason at all, ever going back to that place... i can't see how in any way they manage to remain profitable with what it appers they have to offer when compared to how much effort it takes to get there...absolutely the worst day of the year ( and possibly ever ). after 5 runs, we threw it in as it was that lame... now our problem was what to do at 1230 in the afternoon...skip lunch and hightail it out for about 90 more minutes in the car and try and see if the river had anything or eat lunch and try and figure out what to do on thurs.. we ate....stopped by the cat on the way back to lincoln just to see if we could have made a worse decision...we couldn't have..but that doesn't mean that cat would have been a great decision either... cat looked like it had 1 skiable line, liftlion and then only about halfway down... then it appeared that you had to go hard skiers left and ski the flats the rest of the way down... starr line was wiped out... al's was gone and catenary, despite the lies on the paper report , was gone also.. so the cat report is that it appears to be down to 1 skiable line from the top....i would bet the asc would love to dump this place for sure.
rolled onto lincoln on wed night after about 425 miles in the car. knowing we had the long trip to k and the long ride home the next day, it was an early night..
k on thurs- havin not been at K all winter from nov 23 on, we knew we would be in for some surprises... the first aggravating thing was , becasue we made killer time on the drive , we drove over to bear just to try and see how the new set up looked and all.. of course they had big sing up saying bear was closed as of the 10th, but we just wanted to see ... of course O>L had top to bottom coverage with what looked like great lines...stared at ol for about 10 minutes and drove over to the access rd to drop off some base damage skis for a little tlc hand tune at fred's freeride... imagine the shock... fred is out of business- lock stock and barrel- gone- the real estate sign was out , the fred sign was down, park fred is dead... kind of sad actually... probably the only store left in NE where one could walk in and 1) buy a pair of mogul skis and or pants off the rack, and 2) have an informed , intelligent, real conversation about freestyle mogul skiing....very sad indeed...haskell , what happened man?
we were informed that the rain on wed into thurs had pretty much shut k down to the skiable lines described by geoff in mark's closing post announcement.. and yes there is little doubt that it's may 15th for sure....and of course, the superstar is/was groomed flat... it was rock hard boilerpalte in the am.. the headwall was literally a sheet of ice and remained so ... the middle and the bottom became waterlogged oatmeal by noon and really was not fun at all...it was not corn,.... it was waterlogged unfrozen gran... the disgrace of the day was the greateastern cross over that looked down and up on needles eye, which had the sweetest looking medium sized bumps on it trail wide... but as geoff pointed out, no needles eye quad to access them...it was sickening that that lift was not spinning...there was a different vibe at k on thursday.. i don't know if it's permanent or what.... the amount of people who were thirlled with the early morning rock hard superstar was depressing... i have never seen so many racers or wanna be racers out so late laying down and grinding their turns... for them , it was great....at least until 12 or so... then they all went away... not that there was a lot of people to begin with in the first place ( a problem in and or itself discusssed many times ) the whole place just seems to have a different feel to it... the freestyle scene, seems to be dying or dead for sure....k certainly looks a pretty and spiffy with it's new signage and painted lifts... but something about it seems different :?
... back on tues and wed .. i guess we'll see
tuesday the sugarloaf report was claiming 120 trails and specifically articulated 6 bump runs.... now i had never been to the loaf as the drive had always repulsed me. my buddy g tried it about 6 years ago and got lost going and returning... it was a nightmare as i remember him talking about it for week....of course tuesday , i managed to convince him to try it again as, 1) we would probably be at k the rest of the year and 2) it was for the donut as it falls under our bronze asc pass 3) the claim of 6 bump runs seemed like a better bet than k considering all that seems to be going on over in vt with the grooming ... our alternative was the cat but we had concerns about the skiable lines as the week before when we hit cat, most of the lines seemed to be pretty thin except liftlion. our concern was that the lines got croaked in the rain of the past weekend... hedging our bets and factoring in all things like the drive and all, we decided to roll the dice, make the ridiculous drive to the c valley and stay over night for a 2 dayer at the loaf. oh my god what a mistake :twisted:
loaf on wed: left lincoln at 525am... pulled into the p lot at loaf at 9:10am...that in and of itself is out of hand....but again, it's all about the skiing at this point and the promise of 6 bump runs at the time, made the drive tolerable....i could go on for an hour about the ensuing disaster that followed but here is the short story... loaf had not groomed seemingly for 48 hours... it got cold and made all non bumped up terrain a sea of rock hard mini moon craters... it made all bumped terrain unskiable.... they had 2, that's 2 lifts running.. something they call the superquad ( believe me there is nothing super about this piece of crap ) and a double lift off of a 2 set double that pretty much mirros the vert access of the quad... the web site had advertised that the snow fields were open and that a thing called the timeberline was accessing them... simply not true... they stated day of that timberline was closed to winds... problem was there was no wind :twisted: as far as the 120 trails... bull cookies... it's a crock patrick!!!!! :evil: it was not even close....i'm not familiar enough with loaf to name the trails but essentially there were about 7 or 8 options to get down based in the middle part of the mountain... all of them sucked.... no doubt there were 1 or 2 pretty steep lines on a couple of these trails that probably provide some thrills when the snow is right...the incredible decision not to groom was an inexcusable error that i just can't believe a major operation would make...the outright lying about 6 bump runs was nothing short of a disgrace... i don't mean to pile on, but since i'm on a roll... that place is one lame ass hill imo... take it for what it's worth and i'm sure there are some loyal lofers who will disagree for sure...it appears to me that the bottom third of the mountain accounts for about 5 % of the total vertical rise... it seems like 30% of any given run is a run out to the lifts which seem to make no sense in their placement. this famous narrow guage trail that seems to get a lot of press ,seems to me to be a tad bit overrated....but again , that 's just me loaf appears to be a card carrying member of the " only double blacks are for bumps" club. and of course , the bumps on those runs blow...quote #2 fo the day from my amn g, " u can stick this place where the sun don't shine " .... i'd have to agree
i am still in shock as i write this as to how bad of a ski day it was at sugarloaf usa.... even taking about the lack of advertised bump runs, the day was a total disappointment. my buddy g summed it up best when he said, riding up that stupid double set up " this place just feels depressing"... i have don't have anything against old singles or doubles if you are mad river or smugs and can deliver the goods.. from what we saw, the loaf is no mad river or smuggs... i can't envision , for any reason at all, ever going back to that place... i can't see how in any way they manage to remain profitable with what it appers they have to offer when compared to how much effort it takes to get there...absolutely the worst day of the year ( and possibly ever ). after 5 runs, we threw it in as it was that lame... now our problem was what to do at 1230 in the afternoon...skip lunch and hightail it out for about 90 more minutes in the car and try and see if the river had anything or eat lunch and try and figure out what to do on thurs.. we ate....stopped by the cat on the way back to lincoln just to see if we could have made a worse decision...we couldn't have..but that doesn't mean that cat would have been a great decision either... cat looked like it had 1 skiable line, liftlion and then only about halfway down... then it appeared that you had to go hard skiers left and ski the flats the rest of the way down... starr line was wiped out... al's was gone and catenary, despite the lies on the paper report , was gone also.. so the cat report is that it appears to be down to 1 skiable line from the top....i would bet the asc would love to dump this place for sure.
rolled onto lincoln on wed night after about 425 miles in the car. knowing we had the long trip to k and the long ride home the next day, it was an early night..
k on thurs- havin not been at K all winter from nov 23 on, we knew we would be in for some surprises... the first aggravating thing was , becasue we made killer time on the drive , we drove over to bear just to try and see how the new set up looked and all.. of course they had big sing up saying bear was closed as of the 10th, but we just wanted to see ... of course O>L had top to bottom coverage with what looked like great lines...stared at ol for about 10 minutes and drove over to the access rd to drop off some base damage skis for a little tlc hand tune at fred's freeride... imagine the shock... fred is out of business- lock stock and barrel- gone- the real estate sign was out , the fred sign was down, park fred is dead... kind of sad actually... probably the only store left in NE where one could walk in and 1) buy a pair of mogul skis and or pants off the rack, and 2) have an informed , intelligent, real conversation about freestyle mogul skiing....very sad indeed...haskell , what happened man?
we were informed that the rain on wed into thurs had pretty much shut k down to the skiable lines described by geoff in mark's closing post announcement.. and yes there is little doubt that it's may 15th for sure....and of course, the superstar is/was groomed flat... it was rock hard boilerpalte in the am.. the headwall was literally a sheet of ice and remained so ... the middle and the bottom became waterlogged oatmeal by noon and really was not fun at all...it was not corn,.... it was waterlogged unfrozen gran... the disgrace of the day was the greateastern cross over that looked down and up on needles eye, which had the sweetest looking medium sized bumps on it trail wide... but as geoff pointed out, no needles eye quad to access them...it was sickening that that lift was not spinning...there was a different vibe at k on thursday.. i don't know if it's permanent or what.... the amount of people who were thirlled with the early morning rock hard superstar was depressing... i have never seen so many racers or wanna be racers out so late laying down and grinding their turns... for them , it was great....at least until 12 or so... then they all went away... not that there was a lot of people to begin with in the first place ( a problem in and or itself discusssed many times ) the whole place just seems to have a different feel to it... the freestyle scene, seems to be dying or dead for sure....k certainly looks a pretty and spiffy with it's new signage and painted lifts... but something about it seems different :?
... back on tues and wed .. i guess we'll see
