Anyone been to Blue Knob this week?

Looks like the bowl is open. But was hoping for a first hand account?

And they are making snow on Extrovert...

I'm heading up there and will report later. Good progress on trail openings this week including Stembogen and some of the Glades. Management is pushing to have Extrovert open this weekend too.

I am thinking of going Sunday... will anxiously await your report.

mm

DETAILS?? DETAILS???
A buddy of mine and I are driving somewhere tomorrow. Blue Knob tops the list... but want to know the latest condition.
Anybody just getting back from there, kicking back with a nice brewski and perusing dcski???
mm

Five BK postings and no one has mentioned logging?

that wa s afew years ago. Times change, people move on.

Ahah. Guess I'm out of date. I had stopped reading BK threads because of the rather predictable course they took. Guess its safe to come back in the water.

Uh. Well, I JUST HAD to go and see firsthand what the conditions were. Good think I got no feedback from anyone who'd visited. Gave me an excuse to go.

Blue Knob was pretty nice on Sunday. Finally, there was snow both on trails and off. It's not quite so nice skiing when everything is brown.

Most everything seemed open. Some icy patches by end of the day. There were flurries, but no real accumulation on Sunday.

Stembogan has to be my favorite run in this region. Though for some reason, beginners seem to go on it past all the warning signs saying experts only.

I dunno about the "glades" all seemed to be roped off. I guess they need a lot more snow to open em.

Anyhoo, a good day had by all.

mm

Sorry MM. I was too busy skiing to post. Didn't get back until late last night and had no internet access. Hope to get a report out with pics in a day or two. Had a real good time on some of their best runs, but correct, glades need one more good dump to be truly usable.

Does Stembogen have the snowmaking whales on it this year? How was the coverage at the top in the Stembogen "Bowl"?

The top was pretty nice. Some of the long grass still sticking up through the base... but not bare or anything.
Some folks were hopping in right at that very top ridge as u first get to stembogan bowl. it was pretty bumpy and my repeated back surgeries gen'lly keep me from doing lots of bumps.
But you could pretty much enter anywhere along the ridge of the bowl. It actually looked like there'd been a little avalanche or something to the far left (facing downhill)

By the time we left, a bunch of patches were scraped down to ice.

mm

Sounds like BK has improved their snowmaking on Stembogen. Several years ago, there would often be large sections at the lip which had tons of rocks. Last year, the cover was very good in that section.

Here's an excerpt from a PM I sent to hockeydave about my BK outing this last Sunday:

Earlier in the day I skied Stembogen and Extrovert alone. Extrovert was just opened so all the machine made snow was still soft and grippy, really nice. Extrovert is just a tad steeper than Lower Wildcat but much more difficult due to the fact that it is never groomed so all the snow making is in odd shaped piles and it's intersected by two trails. I was having a really good run when I just finished the last steep section (already scrubbed off and dirt and dead 'pungy stick' weeds exposed) I was just about to the 'sort of flat' run out and I relaxed and got a little back on my skis. I paid for the lapse as I hit a bump and my skis shot skyward and I fell back carrying too much speed and landed head first and whacked the back of my head very hard. It's a good thing that I wear a helmet as I'm sure I would have been knocked out or brain dead. My neck is still sore. I have a mild headache and I'm feeling a little dizzy as I write.

Just for yunz guys online I'll add this:

Stembogen Bowl conditions were similar to Extrovert but once on the trail it was conditions as usual; super hard but not blue ice and ungroomed. As for the rest of the mountain, it was BK good meaning very nice to rock strewn and slick and all on the same trail. I didn't even try the glades because coverage looked way to thin. Speaking of thin, it seems to me that there might have been some more thinning of the trees. I swear that Laurel had but 6 trees standing and Forever looked more open too. Maybe I wasn't seeing straight after my crash.