Tim beats me by one minute.

I always trust the cams over the reports. If it looks anyway bare on camera it will be really bare in actuality. One thing that always gets me is the exit from lower angel. They usuall have a huge kicker just at the end so when you land on the steep downface you're at warp. Then you have to hit the brakes straight away to avoid the netting. An because everyone has to scrape through the netting that area is usually rubble by lunch time.

On a little bit of a different topic. What's the Whitetail terrain park like? Is it really a difficult park or is it similar to Liberty's? Is it steeper than Liberty's? I can't seem to find any pics on it from previous seasons...
Maybe I'll bump into some of you up there this weekend..

ok, let's see ...
The bare spot on Limelight needs snowmaking. It's a huge patch. At best they could make a narrow path on skiers left. You can see it on the web cam pics every now and then in the first camera. It's just above the Limelight/Snow Dancer merge. When Limelight opens, it would be wise to stick to skiers left when approaching the home run merge.

Whitetail has not announced which which trails will be open. My guess on the trails is Northern Lights, Almost Home, Velvet, Snow Park, Stalker, and Upper and Lower Angel Drop. First Tracks should also be open, but the magic carpet won't be running. My bet is that Home Run will also be open (Are they counting Angel Drop as one trail or two?). Limelight and Home Run should be open Sunday at the latest. If they don't start making snow on Drop In soon, they won't have Exhibition open this weekend. It takes at least 36 hours of snowmaking to get Drop In open. Although Ridge Runner is not labelled for snowmaking in progress, I thought I saw a web cam pic earlier in the week that showed some snowmaking going on over there.

Natural snow has no practical impact on trail openings. Natural packs down 10-1 to base. It takes 10 inches to add one inch of base. It takes a minimum of 10-12 inches of base to open a trail. You can often see this on Exhibition under the chair. Whitetail rarely makes snow directly under the chair (until near the top). Look for the bamboo markers. We often get enough natural snow to suck people into going over there for freshies. It looks ok but there are base eating rocks lying in wait. With all the natural snow predicted, there will be plenty of other enticing spots to risks your bases on. Don't do it people unless you have rock skis.

The snow reports are reliable as they can be. You have to understand that when a 12 inch base depth is reported, there are going to be spots where the snow is 2 inches deep and spots where the snow is 3 feet deep. Judy usually updates the page right after 6AM.

There will be no huge kicker at the bottom of Angel Drop until base depths are built up. If tradition has it, there will be a few small hits appearing in Jib Junction on day 1 or day 2. Kennedy -> I'll tell Maury to put a net up with your name on it ok?

To be honest their park last year was pretty decent. They had some monster tables and some really gnarly technical stuff, like a 15-20 table with a take off either side of a 15' sex change rail (trust me if you mess up you'll know where the name comes from) The only downside is that lower angel flattens out so you need to link everything together pretty well to maintain momentum throughout the park. Screw up on one jump and you just can't get enough pace for the second. Put it all together though and you have some sweet lines. A solid mix of big and small they have some big tables, smaller kickers, low level and technical rails, straight box, c box, large diameter pipe (hard to hit)rainboaw rail I think single, double barrel and flat rails, I want to say they had a battleship rail last year and a step down box. Pipe is not bad but tends to be bullet proof one side and gets pretty cut up.

Ok - cam2 is pointing up to the top now. They are starting to blow in the bare spot on Limelight from the bottom and Home Run is looking great.

Whitetail's web site indicates that Limelight and Home Run will not be open on Friday. My guess is that these will open on Saturday though. 7 trails = counts upper and lower angel drop as one trail.

I saw one rail planted off to the side in Jib Junction. Hopefully, they'll groom some snow over there overnight. It also looked like they started to blow the very top of Drop In and the base for K lift today.