tumbler wrote:

OK, I'm gonna be bold here: Slidebrook is a gimmick, and it's really not all that useful. Yes, it will get you from South to North or vice-versa without taking your skis off. If you're having lunch in the Gatehouse, decide you want to ride over at North you have to: ride Gatehouse chair ride Slidebrook chair then you have a choice, but typically if you want to ski you would ride North Ridge Chair That's 3 rides before you get to any decent skiing! Add to that fact that the Slide Brook ride can be quite windy/cold, and you've got a potential warmup/pitstop to deal with. I think I'd rather take a shuttle bus - still don't have to take your boots off. I like the view from Slide Brook on a clear warm day, but generally I make a choice - either Norht or South. Can't say I blame SV for not running the chair. Think about the last time you rode it, and try to remember how many people you saw going the other way? I don't think you can blame lack of ridership on the fact that the lift gets closed midweek.

I don't think Slidebrook has anything to do with the question about trail count. But since the post has already been hijacked I think SB is both a gimmick and useful to many like myself. I hate the LP base area on a weekend. I love the fact that I can park at North, burn a few calories hiking up to the base area, ski some at North then take the SB, what a ride it is!, ski my favorites at South then back to North without ever having to deal with the chaos that is LP. Plus I love relaxing with a cold one at the end of the day on the deck of GML. But that's me and maybe I am in the minority. While I am bummed it is not running on weekedays I do not begrudge SV at all.

I think Slide Brook is neat and all but I don't rely on it to access all 115 trails (or whatever the number is) on any given day. We usually make the decision in the morning which area we're going to ski and then live with that decision all day. I don't think Sugarbush currently markets the mountain as 115 trails that are all accessed without having to get into your car (although maybe ASC used to).

I do think Slide Brook is an interesting ride on appropriate weather days and I have occasionally used it to ski both mountains on the same day. I just don't think it's that big of a deal. On most days, I actually assume that Slide Brook won't be running and plan accordingly.

I do suggest to guests that have never been to Sugarbush that they should ride the Slide Brook to have the experience and take advantage of the views. It's more like an amusement park ride than a chair lift.

I don't think it's phony marketing to claim 115 trails but then not be running Slide Brook. If I ran SV, given the weekday crowds, I wouldn't run Slide Brook during the week either.

Interesting question that we can discuss further when we meet on Saturday. Because of the snowfall up high, the skiing on Castle Rock this week was phenomenal. However, the lower part was not. We call a trail open when patrol can be stationed up top and is able to effect rescues safely. Thus, we elected to allow people to hike across rather than not open the Castlerock because we could not get the bottom of the chair open quickly. I do not think that it is misleading to call it open because it is open and patrolled even though the access was via hiking. A number of people had a great time on the Rock this week. Tomorrow we are going to move snow by sled down to the base of Castle Rock in order to open the lift for the weekend. This actually will take several people several hours of work to accomplish. Even with this it is going to be thin at the base, and we probably will only be able to keep The Rock open for the weekend unless we get a lot more snow.

Slide Brook as of today can not run. We have to be able to get snowmobiles into Slide Brook for evacuation, and we are not permitted to run the lift unless we can. As of today that is not possible and we probably need another 4-6" of snow minimum to run it. If we get it and can get in, we will run Slidebrook for the weekend. Slide Brook runs on weekend and holidays whenever conditions allow, and we plan our staffing assuming that it will run on those days. We do not run it on weekdays for a very simple reason. The traffic does not justify it, and we do have the shuttle that runs every half and hour between the two areas.

win

Win

Thanks for taking the time to chime in. When you consider all the ski forums around the net I think it's pretty amazing and maybe even unprecedented when the Owner/President actually reads the content and even participates in the discussion.

ski_resort_observer wrote:

Win Thanks for taking the time to chime in. When you consider all the ski forums around the net I think it's pretty amazing and maybe even unprecedented when the Owner/President actually reads the content and even participates in the discussion.

Freaking Ditto!!!