Replying to Big Boulder 12-27-08 Trip report

December 27th 2008


I am not great with details, so in an overview fashion.....

The snow was soft and fast for the most part, albeit a bit wet from light rain during the night. Great conditions when falling on your butt! No rain, no ice from the precipitation last night. Cloudy, however the light was good and the sun did peak through occasionally, temps were in the mid 30's at 9am warming to low 40's by night fall.

Crowds were light with little lift line wait, if any.

All trails were open with deep coverage with some exceptions of some ungroomed small trails. (2 groomers decided to take a short holiday break last night.)

Tannebaum is set up as a truly beginner park with all the features low to the snow. This is a new and much need improvement for Boulder. Great for taking your inexperienced friends to learn park.

Freedom with all the Boulder classic jibs flows nicely and the skier group I was with lapped it continuously.

Widow (Love Park) was set up as an intermediate park with longer rails and boxes, 3 jumps at about 15-20 feet that are lofty so you don't need to barrrel your way into them. They are easy to overshoot, so all you experts take it easy! These jumps are great confidence boosters in that they shoot you higher and give you good hang time with out having to go mach 10.

Big Boulder Park opened with 2 jumps tonight at 5 pm. John did a great job with building hybrid step over style jumps. These jumps the first at ~30' and the second at ~50 lip to knuckle have the knuckles of the jump higher than the lip. These are great jumps in that just after the apex of the flight you pass over the knuckle. Essentially if you end up short, you aren't dropping out of the sky from 20' and wrecking yourself. They are forgiving and great for learning those bigger tricks.

I should add the group of snowboarders, Billy, Louie, Scott and a couple of others were raving over the first jump (30') as being super sweet. You can over shoot the first jump, as also in Love Park. so train someone already experienced and please people use spotters! It is the holiday season and there are people who are learning their turns and oblivious to park etiquette in spite of all the signage.

The second jump at the bottom (they haven't built the middle jump and frankly, I don't think they should) is intimidating by the look of it. rest be assured I watched whisper quiet landings tonight like I have never ever seen on the east coast. The group of skiers that I was with about 12 or so were steadily progressing up to 9's and 10's and would have kept going had the fog not rolled in. KT threw a massive steezed out 10 to a deep landing, a snow snake bit him and twisted his knee up pretty good. We all hope its nothing serious.

Okay I wrote a book, but after reading some rather sour reports of recent, I thought that an eyewitness report was in order.

The long and short is that Big Boulder is now everything everyone has come to expect and more. The weather looks really favorable through the week next week. If you have friends that would like to try out some quality park features set up in a progressive fashion by trails with increasing skill levels, then I would encourage you to visit to experience the best the Mid Atlantic has to offer. Should be a lot of kids really throwing down this week so you can watch that too!

Lastly. On a personal note. Those stepover jumps on Boulder Trail are the "shit"! Thank you! I have been asking for that style for a solid year now. There are some very stoked kids anxious to come back as a result of that build. Props!