# Sugarbush - 1/18/2008



## Greg (Jan 18, 2008)

*Date(s) Skied: *Friday, 1/18/2008 , 9:05 am - 4:20 pm

*Resort or Ski Area: *Sugarbush Resort, Vermont

*Conditions: *5"+ new snow, cloudy/snowy early, sunny late. Windy. Temps in the high 20's.

*Trip Report: *Picked up bvibert around 7:30 pm Thursday night, and madskier6 an hour later. Arrived at the Golden Lion around 11:30 pm. BS'd a bit over some PBRs and crashed at 1 am. Awake at 7 am. ALLSKIING arrived from Killington around 8 am.

Melinda fixed us a nice scrambled egg breakfast and after a brief chat with KingM, we headed up to the mountain. Met Win Smith a bit after 9 am and we boarded Gatehouse and continued on to the North Lynx chair. Birches had some fresh snowmaking which Win seemed pleased with. We heard from a patroller the North Lynx just went on wind hold so we narrowly squeaked in our run over there. We then cut in on Lower Birdland and Win, bvibert, madskier6, ALLSKKING and I laid first tracks over the crusty base. This trail had not been skied since the new snow Monday and the additional 5"+ from today. We were then on to Sleeper which was fantastic. A ton of new snowmaking there which blended beautifully with the new snow.

Took a ride up Bravo with Win and we heard Castlerock went on windhold, but Heaven's Gate was spinning. We bid farewell to Win and headed to Heaven's Gate. Did Jester and then Spillsville. We then planned to check out Twist/Moonshine, but on our ride up Bravo we notice Castlerock was spinning. Beelined over there and hit Castlerock Run and after a water break in the warming hut, Middle Earth X 2. By this point it was 12:30 so we took an hour lunch. After lunch, we did Twist and Moonshine, then Paradise, another run on Middle Earth and ended out the day on the Mall!

All the natural trails were skiing surprisingly well. Close to a foot of new snow this week over the crusty base. Challenging skiing, but extremely enjoyable. Picks of the day were Middle Earth and Moonshine. The middle section of the Mall was sweet with some nice soft bump lines setting up. A great way to finish an awesome open to close day. Brian's first visit to Lincoln Peak and I think we did a great job showing him the key trails. We toasted the day with a few beers in the Castlerock Pub.

Hopped in the car, and pulled in the driveway at 10:45 pm. A loooooong 27 or so hours, but well worth it. Great to get back up to the MRV, if only for a brief time. Thanks for the great company, guys!

I'll have a vid at some point, hopefully this weekend, but it certainly won't be tonight! 



_Edit:_ Here's the high res. It's big at 120+ MB :-o but I think it's worth the wait:

*Sugarbush: 1/18*

For those that don't wait to wait for the download, here's the YouTubage:



Enjoy!


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## bvibert (Jan 18, 2008)

I'll keep it short tonight... Awesome!


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## Grassi21 (Jan 19, 2008)

sweet.  looking forward tp some pics and vid.


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## madskier6 (Jan 19, 2008)

WOW.  What a great day!  So much fun skiing with you guys.  It was great to meet and ski with ALLSKIING.  Dave is an excellent skier.  I'd love to hit K sometime this season & have him show me around a bit. :wink:  It was also nice to meet ski_resort_observer, who was working in the Gatehouse Lodge.  Great to ski with Greg & bvibert, as always!

We hit most of the best runs on the mountain.  As Greg said, the skiing was challenging at times with the crust underneath the soft snow.  But there were many places on various runs, where there was little or no ice or crust underneath & skiing the fresh powder was silky smooth.  These places were usually lower down on the trail.  A great example is the middle part of the Mall that Greg mentioned in his TR.  Moonshine & Twist also deserve honorable mention.

I have to admit, my legs are sore this morning.  We skied really hard!  But it feels great when I think of the quality ski experience we had yesterday.  Looking forward to the video & pics.


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## ALLSKIING (Jan 20, 2008)

Just got back to LI....What a great day Friday. Great to meet Madskier6 and watch him rip through the bumps!!! Great to ski with Greg and B again. I skied K on sat but the legs were a bit off...Can't wait for the vid.


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## bvibert (Jan 20, 2008)

Fantastic day for sure.  A real good introduction to Lincoln Peak if you ask me.  Things were a little slow to get going for me.  I had a lot of trouble getting down that first run, but after a few runs I started to figure it out and really started to enjoy myself.  Middle Earth was the run of the day.  The Mall was pretty good too.  Some really good snow in there, especially for the last run of the day.  Honorable mention goes to Paradise and Moonshine, but they were all pretty good.

We definitely put in a full day, which is a nice change of pace for me.  I was wiped out on the way home and I feel bad for passing out on Greg for much of the last stretch.  Getting up early the next day for work was a challenge and needless to say that I was wiped by the end of the day.

Good skiing with everyone, I hope we can do it again soon!  Next time I'll have to give Rumble a shot...


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## andyzee (Jan 20, 2008)

bvibert said:


> I feel bad for passing out on Greg for much of the last stretch.


 
So long as you didn't start belching and farting, I'm sure it's ok. Now where's the video?


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## bvibert (Jan 20, 2008)

andyzee said:


> So long as you didn't start belching and farting, I'm sure it's ok. Now where's the video?



I don't know if I was belching or farting, as I was hardly conscious...  I only got a little bit of video so I sent it over to Greg to add to his.


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## Greg (Jan 20, 2008)

The video is coming along nicely. It's been a struggle though with Movie Maker crashing 20+ times. I think I have that worked out though. Brian's footage is awesome. I hope to have it up tonight, but I really want to take my time and do this great day justice. I have a *ton *of footage to go through.


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## snoseek (Jan 20, 2008)

^^^^^^
I like the new avatar. Pretty eye-catching.


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## Greg (Jan 20, 2008)

Vids are uploading...


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## Greg (Jan 20, 2008)

*Videos!*

Here's the high res. It's big at 120+ MB :-o but I think it's worth the wait:

*Sugarbush: 1/18*

For those that don't wait to wait for the download, here's the YouTubage:



A thanks to madskier6 for shooting a bunch of video on Friday. Also, big thanks to Brian for shipping over his footage so quickly. It was tricky to transmit 1.3 GB of video over the Internet! Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the final product!
:beer:


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## bvibert (Jan 20, 2008)

Just watched the YouTubage, can't wait for the high res to finish downloading!  Nice work!  Really captured to spirit of the day well.

That footage took like 10 hours to upload via FTP overnight, I'm glad you made good use of it!


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## ALLSKIING (Jan 21, 2008)

Thanks for doing that Greg...Looked great! You can still hear that ice even through the music. Sweet day!!


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## billski (Jan 21, 2008)

you guys had a lot more pow on-trail than Stowe did on Sunday.  I thought the two areas got about the same amount.  What trails was the early footage filmed on?  Remember?


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## ALLSKIING (Jan 21, 2008)

billski said:


> you guys had a lot more pow on-trail than Stowe did on Sunday.  I thought the two areas got about the same amount.  What trails was the early footage filmed on?  Remember?



That was Middle Earth at the rock.


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## bvibert (Jan 21, 2008)

ALLSKIING said:


> That was Middle Earth at the rock.



Yeah, I guess we didn't really get out the cameras until we got over there.  It looks like most of the footage is from Middle Earth actually...


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## reefer (Jan 21, 2008)

*sweet!*

Looked like a beauty of a day at the Bush!


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## madskier6 (Jan 21, 2008)

billski said:


> you guys had a lot more pow on-trail than Stowe did on Sunday.  I thought the two areas got about the same amount.  What trails was the early footage filmed on?  Remember?



Remember now that we were at the Bush on Friday not Sunday.  I would expect a lot less snow after 2 days of skiing it off on a holiday weekend. :wink:


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## Greg (Jan 21, 2008)

bvibert said:


> Yeah, I guess we didn't really get out the cameras until we got over there.  It looks like most of the footage is from Middle Earth actually...



The first bit of footage is Spillsville.


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## bvibert (Jan 21, 2008)

Greg said:


> The first bit of footage is Spillsville.



Was it?  I was wondering if you had gotten the camera out before Middle Earth, I guess so...


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## andyzee (Jan 21, 2008)

Nice! Looks like you guys lucked out with the conditions.


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## 2knees (Jan 21, 2008)

well played guys.  great video.  really glad i missed it now.  yeah right.....


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## madskier6 (Jan 21, 2008)

Excellent video Greg!  Great choice of tunes to go with that footage.  That was a great day!


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## kcyanks1 (Jan 21, 2008)

wow, great job!


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## Greg (Jan 22, 2008)

*A few additional thoughts...*



madskier6 said:


> I have to admit, my legs are sore this morning.  We skied really hard!  But it feels great when I think of the quality ski experience we had yesterday.



I normally don't have any stiffness in the middle of the season, but my legs were tight on Saturday too! I walked around like a zombie for much of the morning...



ALLSKIING said:


> Thanks for doing that Greg...Looked great! You can still hear that ice even through the music. Sweet day!!



That was a result of Brian and Jeff's suggestion. Leaving some of the scraping sound in there might help explain some of the flailing we did from time to time... :lol:



2knees said:


> well played guys.  great video.  really glad i missed it now.  yeah right.....



Jeff thought I was particularly evil when I tried to call you from the Castlerock chair!



madskier6 said:


> Excellent video Greg!  Great choice of tunes to go with that footage.  That was a great day!





kcyanks1 said:


> wow, great job!



Thanks guys. Sorry it took a few days to get it done, but the weekend was hectic and I wanted to try to do the day justice. I'm happy with it. Thanks again Brian for the additional footage. I particularly liked the first shot on the Gatehouse chair of Win and me. I had a ton of great footage to work with and I don't think the video shoots slowed the day down too much. There's footage there from the key trails; Spillsville, Middle Earth, Moonshine, Paradise and The Mall.

Some additional thoughts from the day. Win Smith is a helluva skier. He jammed on Birches and Lower Morning Star and had to wait at the bottom for the rest of us to hack our way down!  On a few runs we were joined by a 72 year old fellow that totally ripped. That was cool. The food at Gatehouse was great. Typical ski resort pricing, but very tasty so I was happy to pay it.

What a great day.


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## RIDEr (Jan 23, 2008)

Just spent the MLK weekend at the Bush... first time visit and loved the place!... they did a fantastic job maintaining the snow coverage throughout the mountain... Sunday truly turned out to be the best day based upon Stein's having their snow guns on from dawn to dusk.... btw, great video Greg!  Not too much video from Heaven's Gate Lift?


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## bvibert (Jan 23, 2008)

RIDEr said:


> Not too much video from Heaven's Gate Lift?



There's a little from Spillsville at the beginning and some from Paradise too.


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## RIDEr (Jan 23, 2008)

bvibert said:


> There's a little from Spillsville at the beginning and some from Paradise too.



Ok, tough to see the difference between Paradise with a few runs on Castle Rock.  Did you guys make it up to the church?  My view from Heavens Gate was pretty sketchy...


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## bvibert (Jan 23, 2008)

RIDEr said:


> Ok, tough to see the difference between Paradise with a few runs on Castle Rock.  Did you guys make it up to the church?  My view from Heavens Gate was pretty sketchy...



No OB for this group, not this trip anyway....   It did look, uh.. interesting from the lift...


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## ALLSKIING (Jan 25, 2008)

I finally loaded the pics from this trip:


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## bvibert (Jan 25, 2008)

Nice pics Dave!  I didn't even realize you had gotten any action shots...


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## Greg (Jan 25, 2008)

Awesome shots, Dave. Thanks for posting those. Middle Earth is a great trail...


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