How was the day today for those that went? Good turnout hopefully?
I went to check this out last weekend and it was.... interesting. Powder Ridge is a very small bump in CT and I imagine they just don't have the money to put a lot into this. I could be wrong. It was .... ok. You take a very slow magic carpet up to the top of the 500 foot slope. You then spray this wet solution out of a spray bottle onto the bases of your skis. You spray the sh!t out of them. Off you go. If you don't take off like a bat out of hell you lose speed halfway down practically to a stop. Even if you do take off fast you still run out of juice near the bottom. It's this white bristley material that is supposed to provide natural glide for you skis but I don't know.
Thanks for the report. A little disappointing, but it is consistent with what I heard from other sources too. I've heard the surface isn't bad for getting on edge, but the difficulty is getting speed up to get on edge. I had not heard about the spray solution. The innovation of this material was that it did not require spraying with water every morning! Kind of defeats the purpose if you spray your skis instead of the surface...
Did you hear anything about them expanding next year? Their plan originally was to go to the summit. Your pictures lack anyone else on the slope behind you... were crowds non existent?
I was told not to wax my bases but if I don't have much better luck I'm going to slap on some roller wax I have in my bag
I've heard both to wax and not to wax the skis before going. I've also been told the wax will rub off onto the surface throughout use.
Hope they can improve on the sliding issue! It would really really stink (to the tune of a few million dollars) if this surface was just a bust in general... hopefully there is something they can either improve or alter...
I guess they don't make a good wax for 70+ degree bristle skiing hahahaha. We sprayed WD40 on our skis for each run down the water ramp at freestyle camp. They also had soaker hoses on spraying up a mist about 4 feet above the bristles.. oil and water base friction FTW.. It was pretty steep. I can see now a green trail would be futile on that stuff..