Rainbow Symphony is about 20 minutes from my house. I still have quite a few of them left over from the bulk order in 2017. Place your mail order now. There will likely be a last minute crunch and possible sellout during the final weeks before the eclipse as in 2017.
Total Solar Eclipse coming to NY: April 8, 2024
- Thread starter Harvey
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riverc0il
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- Joined
- Jul 28, 2020
I am a pass holder at Jay this year and plan to be there for the eclipse. Jay has been pimping packages for a while now. Lifts will stop at 2:00pm. Way too early, but they probably have personnel and operational issues to consider.
I may skin back up after the lifts shut down. Not sure I want to stand at the top of the Bonnie for an hour and a half. April weather is weird, it could be nice or could be brutal. Keep moving is the plan if it is cold and windy.
Prepositioning with flexibility is going to be difficult. I like the idea of basing out of Albany and being flexible in going either north or west, depending on the weather (if you don't care about skiing and are 100% eclipse focused).
If ski area focused, I think it is a good idea to roll the weather dice on a specific spot to ensure access. Though, being at a mountain location substantially increases the chances of being clouded, especially at a place like Jay.
Coming from NH, I'm all in for Jay. Either the weather works or it doesn't. I will day trip and probably leave way earlier than normal. I think parking is going to be an issue at resorts in the path of totality. That won't be an issue if you arrive the day before.
jasonwx
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2020
Full disclosure I googled partial eclipse almost totality. That’s what came up.
If an eclipse last a couple of hours then it would worth some travel.
A brief look up of afternoon commercial jet service outta Buffalo or Rochester flying along the NE path during the duration of the totality found NADA. Could get ya above any clouds.
I wonder if net-jets or some other company with jets are booking charters, though the shadow moves a lot faster. In yer article ya said there were a lot of private jets that flew in for festivities in Jackson Hole. Any of them or any eclipsophile ever try to chase one in a jet for a bit?
I have seen 3 by aircraft; Liz has seen 4. This is what we have done when eclipse paths are in difficult locations and/or with very poor climates, like 2015 and 2021. These charter flights are not cheap, as you can only sell a couple of seats in each row by the eclipse side windows. And most of us feel that it's not quite as impressive as from land, so strictly for the addicts who don't want to miss one. Yes flying along the path (if the geometry works) extends totality; in 2015 we got an extra minute beyond the 2 minutes 45 seconds below in the Faroe Islands. The slowest the shadow ever moves is about 2,000 km/hr, so current charter and commercial aircraft are limited. The record for a charter flight was extending that 2010 eclipse over the South Pacific from 5 minutes 20 seconds to 9 minutes 23 seconds.
On June 30, 1973 a Concorde, which can keep up with the slowest eclipse shadows, was chartered by scientists and was in totality for 74 minutes over the Sahara Desert. As the sun was directly overhead, only the pilots could see it through windows. Instruments were installed to make observations through the roof of the Concorde. The same guy, Glenn Schneider, who organized that 2010 flight, planned to charter a Concorde for a one hour totality in 2001. But the Concorde was grounded after the July 2000 crash in Paris.
There have been a few commercial flights that intercepted eclipses. But it takes a lot of cajoling in advance to get an airline to commit to a plan. The one I know about was the Alaska Airlines flight from Anchorage to Honolulu on March 9, 2016. I had to give up my Snowbird timeshare week for that one in Indonesia. But it was on a scuba dive boat in Raja Ampat and we drove for a week of Utah powder when we got back.
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True, winter or summer. 11 people in our Jackson Hole group fled west to Idaho because they were nervous about the mountain.
Absolutely not. If dead set upon skiing, you can easily reach Whiteface or Sugarloaf (2 minutes, 23 seconds) if you get up early enough from your NH location. You must leave yourself multiple options with weather odds this poor and make the commitment in the last 48 hours
I get the attraction of skiing the same day (I'm sure that's Patrick in Ottawa's objective too), but if these ski areas are going to shut their lifts down at 2PM, what's the point? Isn't the idea to be ON the mountain? If they force you to view from a base area, how is that any better than fleeing west to Lake Ontario or somewhere else with a better weather forecast?
Which the ski areas might not let you do. But you could skin up something in true backcountry like Big Jay.
The bottom line is that any of you who know marketing directors or other management people at thse ski areas need to reach out NOW. Explain that people want to be ON the mountain and that it will only be "dark" for 5-6 minutes. Shutting everything down at 2PM is ridiculous. Maybe you don't let people on the lifts after 3PM (you might not want people on lifts during totality). Everyone who gets off a lift after 2:30 is advised to stay in place or sign a waiver that they understand light will be dim for those 6 minutes. After 3:35 anyone on the hill will have no problem skiing down. You might even want to run the lifts again until 4:30 so everyone isn't trying to leave at the same time.
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Makes sense.
Most skiers and dang boarders have experienced being in snow storms and/or fog when visibility and light is low.
Having the lifts shut down at 2 with a party at the base with a band could increase sud$
$ales.
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Stream trout, spring salmon & brown trout on the Big O will be on in The UpState when the eclipse goes by that afternoon. Fishing's usually best at dawn and dusk. I wonder how the fish will respond to the change in light levels around here that day. Could be super duper. Maybe the ESF school folks will do a study hopefully. They put telemetric tags in some of em. I’d volunteer.
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Organizer of that flight Joe Rao lives in NYC. He did it once before in 1990 on a flight from San Francisco to Honolulu.
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