The Season is Rolling
— Posted by
Mark
on December 30, 2006
Well, it's been some time since my last post.; a few weeks I suppose. The Holiday Season has been crazy with thousands of skiing/boarding guests and good storms. Before 2006 comes to a close tomorrow night, I'll try to get caught up.
Rookie training finished up successfully and these last two weeks we've really had to throw them right into the mix. They've handled the challenge just fine. I think I speak for all the returning patrollers when I say that this year's rookie class is a strong one; we're all thrilled with them so far.
As far as mountain updates, in the last couple weeks with the help of a couple feet of new snow and the hard work of our patrol, we've opened every square inch of our Upper Mountain. That became official yesterday with the opening of Pinecone Ridge. After a successful and safe morning of avalanche control and some final work on staging gear and strining boundary ropelines, we had the whole ridge open from Scott's Pass to Homelight by 10:30 in the morning. 
I know the Holidays are busy for everyone, but it's quiet and lovely up on Pinecone Ridge. Even after a couple days of good traffic, there's still plenty of good lines to be had. The snow is holding up well with these clear cold nights and sunny days and the hike is well worth while. Pinecone is a wonderful place to celebrate the new year.
First off, great blog and it's nice to hear updates from you all. Seems like there are a lot of comments asking questions about the parks, but not a lot of info in actual blog posts, how about giving updates on park changes like you give updates on when powder stashes are opening? Stuff like how big the kickers are in Kings Crown, let us know when you add rails and boxes to different parks, tell us when Jonsey's gets bigger, etc... Is someone on the park crew or even just someone as passionate about the parks as many of you are about powder lines, one of the "official" posters for the blog? If not they should be, just my suggestion.
Eric.
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Eric replies:
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. We'll see about getting one of our park crew online w/the blog. However, they're out on the hill all day so we're going to have to drag them into the office in order to get them to post, but we'll see what we can do ;).
— Posted by Eric on December 31, 2006 1:44 PM MST