Whitetail PA 1/7/06

aaron12345

New member
Just came back from a day trip to whitetail. The green was a tad icy, the blues were fun with heavy manmade "powder" and some bumps developing later in the day. The blacks - bold decision was defenitly the best snow on the mountain with very few ice spots early in the day and slightly lighter man made "powder", some bumps started to from on it later in the day. They left one "mogul run" (right under the lift) ungroomed. I love bumps, but that was a horrible decision, even though I think they were concentrating snowmaking laste night on the other two blacks and left this one because without snowmaking there wasn't enoguh to groom it. This run had ice sheets and the moguls were not spaced well. I can usually carve on ice but there were patches that were just un-penetrable. Really odd snow. The other black, farside, while it had a few more ice spots was a nice wide carver with reasonably good snow at the top and was alot of fun just to zoom down.

This was my ski club's first group trip, we had about 30 and it was blast plus no injuries!!!
 
thanks for the report. what ski club are you with? i'm taking a smaller church group there later this month; how were the crowds? i'm afraid whitetail will be a zoo on every weekend, but thats expected i guess.
 
I just started a ski club at my school high school this year (TJ). I organized two trips for our first year, this day trip and an overnighter to WISP. The crowds weren't too bad. There were a good handful of out of control idiots like always on the intermediates, but on the expert part, no lines, pretty low on the crowds and skier density (people get scared off by the two black diamonds on bold decision but it easily had the best snow on the mountain today). The main intermediate quads and main green lift had no lift lines most of the day, but torwards the middle the lift lines got up to 1-3 minutes tops so the lifts seem to hold up pretty well there. One thing to remember - it is the weekend after winter break so some people may have been skied out.

We were orginally going to get our own bus, but didn't have enough people (34 to be exact) so we ended up changing to the attiva outdoors shuttle. Check our their website: http://attivaoutdoors.com/

Even though their bus costs a bit, their lift ticket rates are lower than group rates you could get directly from the resort and they'll give you even lower rates than posted on their website for your group (shoot brad an email for these). Another big upside of using them is that you can still take a bus up which logistically, evironmentally, and safetywise seems to be alot better, without having the pressure to fill every seat on the bus or the club looses money. They were great to work with and we defenitly plan on using them again - it really helped to simplify the whole trip.
 
They left one "mogul run" (right under the lift) ungroomed. I love bumps, but that was a horrible decision, even though I think they were concentrating snowmaking laste night on the other two blacks and left this one because without snowmaking there wasn't enoguh to groom it. This run had ice sheets and the moguls were not spaced well.

Funny how things can change in a day... I was up there on Sunday afternoon and the bumps on Exhibition were pretty soft and rippin'. By 3 pm they were getting pretty skied in and a little tighter and deeper (which is the way it should be). They did make snow on it both Friday and Saturday night, so that helped to soften it a bit.

The thing about WT is that the zipper lines are not very long and you have to traverse or stop and sight another line to ski (however, the line at the top was fairly long and fast). I ski it in sections because I am not interested in throwing my skis sideways into a bump to traverse that far over to another line. I would rather ski straight sections of zipper lines than be all over the trail.

It has been pretty good the last few weeks (not the best bumps we've ever had in the area, but decent) and it should be good this upcoming weekend if they don't groom and it doesn't rain.

Another thing about Ex is that it needs to be skied in the late morning through late afternoon when the sun is hitting it really good and the snow softens up.

cj
 
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