SNOW & SKI/BOARD/BLADE TODAY IN THE EAST !!!!!!

[Frankontour]

Where were you all ??

So today, it was the 6th edition of the "Folies sur Neige" at Mont Saint-Sauveur in the Laurentians.

Here is my report of the day :

I've not skied finally. You may understand me looking the pics... but I've seen a lot of skiers/boarders in the trailS though. Yep, I effectively said the trailSSSSSS, cause yes, new thing this year, there was 2 trails open. There was of course the competition run at the bottom of the West 70. It was about 300-350 feet long with 6' wide in average. The Nordique had a little snowpark, which got more snow than the one of Tenney in early summer... but it melted extremely fast, with all the boarders ready to jibe. The total length of the snowpark was may be 150-175' long.

It was quite colder than last year for the event, but there was still enough people in the waterpark (brrrrrr). (85F last year, 65F this year)

Now, the pics !!

The preparation of the course :



The course was supposed to begin at 11h30. But, when I came back from my long hike from Hill 71 to Mt Avila back to central MSS by the road, it was 11h20 and they were just beginning to spread the snow on the West 70 At least, the snowpark was ready by 12h30, but the course just began at 1h PM.

This is the snowpark, which melted very very fastly, cause there was too much users for it. I wanted to ski it at the end of the day, when I wouldn't have had to pay 28$ for it (and to jump the rail + box), but there was almost nothing remaining anyway, so I let the skis in the car.



Oh, I talked of MSS + Avila, I had my altimeter and for the 1st time, those 2 ski areas are higher according to my altimeter than the numbers said by the ski areas. I can't believe it. Even Mt Avila is higher than the Mt Blanc, finally. (Mt Blanc is supposed to be 115 meters (360') higher than Mt Avila !! I knew that it was a fraud of Mt Blanc, but I thought that the Faustin side would be slightly higher than Mt Avila).

Back on the pix, here is the whole view : (notice the "screams" man)



The upper trail



The trail from the top



Here is a couple of hot pics of jumpers :

A cow...



A Pink Panther... (or was it a Teletubby... never watched that...)



There was 48 competitors and all them had 2 runs to hit scores. After that, the 20 best ones were qualified for another run and after that, the best 5 were in finals.

Before the last 20 competitors tried to reach the final, there was a motocross demonstration. Pretty cool, the jump was over 60' long and at least 30' high. Here is a shot, you can see the guy well over the trees...



This is the winner.... if you find it on the pic, you may understand why he won...



So there was many costumes today, on 48 competitors, there was 5 cows, 1 policeman (the great winner). A grammy (3rd place), 1 superman, 1 bodypainted + g-string, a couple of speedos, few clowns, many guys clothed in sexy girls and many many more weird costumes

It was a really cool day, but it's sad for me, as I was the last skier to have skied in the southern province, since 3 months now. I lost it today

But winter is close... a sure thing, this is the last summer event of MSS... winter events will begin soon

[kfarrar]

If it looks like snow, and you can ski - board - sled on it I have no problem calling it snow.

Thanks for the pics and report. Looks like it was an awesome time.

I certainily appreciate the effort you put forth - so that those of us who have to live vicariously through others can.

[NH_tele]

nice report...I can't wait for there to be some real snow...from the sky!!!

Still Tenny's going to have some man-made 1000 vert in early October if you believe their website...

[Frankontour]

NH_tele:
nice report...I can't wait for there to be some real snow...from the sky!!!

Still Tenny's going to have some man-made 1000 vert in early October if you believe their website...

Me too, I'm very eager to see some natural snow falling, after the simili-snow I've seen falling in late july at la Réserve. Last year, we got our first snow on october 20. Generally, it's more near mid-november... At least, some places of la Réserve were probably already barely skiable on october 17, after the 3rd snowfall of the season.

For Tenney, don't expect too much, they make snow in a building and have a pump to blow the snow in the trail. They don't have 3000' long pipelines, so they would have to blow all at the base and to spread the snow with a machine, without counting the temperature above the freezing point. So they would be better to buy a rope-tow and open a 1000' long with a snowpark at the bottom