I thought it might be a good idea to have an omnibus thread devoted to discussion, analysis, opinion, idle speculation and, sometimes even hard information on Sugarbush's development plans for the base area and mountain itself. To get things started, I'll summarize the current plans as I understand them so we can all be on the same page as to what lies ahead.

Clay Brook
Rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of its two failed predecessors, the ASC Grand Summit and the Lodge at Lincoln Peak, Clay Brook is a luxury fractional ownership/hotel lodging facility that will anchor the South side of the new base area at Lincoln Peak. It's going to be huge and take up most of the space where the first parking bay was until last year. They are going with a design that evokes (some say too much and too awkwardly) a Vermont farm/barn type of feel. Costing about $50MM, this structure will be about half the size of previous attemps and is likely, IMHO, to fit into the fabric of the valley and the base area much better than its ancestors. It certainly represents a much smarter path for Summit Ventures to take than previous attempts. No need for them to put all their chips in one basket with the massive $100MM Lodge concept. They still have the land to develop where the lodge was to be, so they can build another lodging property there is Clay Brook succeeds. So far, things look pretty good with committed buyers for over 50% of the units, though this doesn't compare favorably with the pace of sales for units in Stowe's new village (among other locations) AFAIK. Clay Book construction is underway and is projected to be finished for the winter of 2006/2007. IIRC, it will included limited retail space along with the ski patrol HQ in the faux silo. Maybe a restaurant too?

Skier Services Building
This long-needed facility, originally planned to be built this summer, will now go in next summer due to an unanticipated delay in receiving Act 250 approval from the state of VT. This is a fantastic idea for a bldg that will combine children's programs, the ski school, rentals, a nursey school, season pass/ticketing, racing programs, and whatever other programs/snowsports you can imagine. It will be a great vehicle, IMHO, to get many families out of the overcrowded base lodge facilities and to provide them with their own dedicated facility. This will be a real winner, IMHO. There will also be limited retail in this facility, as I understand it. It will be located just SE of the loading are for the Gate House and will be close to the new Magic Carpet and teaching area, thereby removing this area from the overcrowded space between the two current lodges. This building is scheduled to begin construction next Spring for completion by next winter if I'm not mistaken.

New Gate House Lodge
I'm not sure on timing, but I believe the new Gate House lodge is slated for construction either summer 2006 or summer 2007. I suppose it might depend on how successful sales are at Clay Brook and what can be afforded. Anyway, details on this structure are sketchy but it will likely double in size at least, especially since SB plans to demolish the Valley House lodge. The gran pland, perhaps planned for completion in the summer of 2007 or 2008, is to shut VH loadge down nd then extend the VH chair down close to where the rental bldg was the last few years (just East of the Bravo loading area). I guess the idea is to centralize all activity it he new village core, which is great. By building the new skiers services bldg and perhaps doubling the size of the GH lodge, you would end up with much more net day lodge space. Due to SB's excellent and efficient lift and trail system, this is the chief constraint on its skiers visits, as anyone who's tried to get a seat at lunch in a holiday or other busy weekend can attest to.

One potential negative associated with this plan is the possibiliy of the VH lift being replaced with a HSQ. Many of the renderings for this lift indicate a HSQ in place of the current, historic double. The idea behind extending the lift, is to help carry traffic out of the base area. The BRavo lift and GH can get overloaded, especially dueing the morning and early afternoon rush hours. Having a third lift to carry traffic out of there would be advisable. That said, the limited unloading area at the top of the VH lift and the limited, non-snowmaking trial system in that area essentially mandate, IMHO, that the lift remain a double. A HSQ was create a disaster at the confluence of VH traverse, Mthe Mall and Spring Fling, an already challenging spot with only a 2/3 full double chair. Whether the lift is fixed grip or detatchable is irrelevant to me as they generally have the saem capacity, but I can't see anything more than a triple being advisable from a safety and guest enjoyment (of the snow and trails) perspective. SB need not emulate its large neighbors to the South (K-Mart, Okemo, Stratton) by going for lift capacity at the expense of the skiing experience. Twist, Mall, and Moonshine are natural snow classics that can't handle much more traffic. Snowball and Spring Fling are almost always used for NASTAR etc.., eliminating a lot of room to roam for the intermediates who go that way. You don't want more people over there.

Anyway, that's about all the pieces I know of. There is speculation that SB wil add a lot more tree areas to the map, though they won't be official runs - somethign akin to MRG though they aren't on the map there. We'll see.

It's my understanding that SB is engaged in an ongoing dialogue with the USFS to expand its presence and activities int the Slide Brook Basin. The Outback tours into there have become increasingly popular. So much so that it is difficult to get a seat on the bus back to LP on many weekend afternoons in Feburary and March. To the extent possible within the law and within the bounds of SBS relaitonship with the USFS, it would be great to step of frequency of service from the SB Road lot. I guess that will play out over the course of a few years.

Anyone else here anything else, or have comments/corections on the info above?

I'll be back in a bit to answer, but now I'm getting ready to head up to the mountain to remind myself that the pointy end goes forward.

Just a quick point is that you should swap the Gatehouse lodge and guest services village, in timing.

They are hoping to do the lodge, next year.

Wow, great job Tin!

I would love to see a nice skating rink at the base possibly between the LP base area and Sugarbush Village. While the Bush has little financial interest in SV alot of their guests stay there and need more non-ski activities.

Twice ASC tried to do a skating rink but failed miserably. The last try, filling in part of a tennis court near the SHARK was a pathetic attempt.

There is alot of unused terrain between Castlerock and Heaven's Gate lifts. Would putting in some new MRG type terrain work here, taking up just a portion of that land and staying away from everyone fav stashes.

ski_resort_observer wrote:

There is alot of unused terrain between Castlerock and Heaven's Gate lifts. Would putting in some new MRG type terrain work here, taking up just a portion of that land and staying away from everyone fav stashes.

Will absolutely never happen... would run over way too many stashes, plus there's that rather big rock in the middle...

ski_resort_observer wrote:

Wow, great job Tin! I would love to see a nice skating rink at the base possibly between the LP base area and Sugarbush Village. While the Bush has little financial interest in SV alot of their guests stay there and need more non-ski activities. Twice ASC tried to do a skating rink but failed miserably. The last try, filling in part of a tennis court near the SHARK was a pathetic attempt. There is alot of unused terrain between Castlerock and Heaven's Gate lifts. Would putting in some new MRG type terrain work here, taking up just a portion of that land and staying away from everyone fav stashes.

Skating rink takes up too much valuable land probably, and like you said, Summit Ventures has little financial interest in SB Village. My guess is that such a thing is a few years away. Wouldn't be a bad idea though. You could do nighttime tubing and skating in that area or something.

As for a lift in the area you describe - as Strat pointed out, you couldn't string a lift up that would avoid stashes there. Access is easy enough via HG and CR lifts, so not really an issue anyway. I'd much rather see a lift in the Slide Brook or Lockwood Brook basins, but that will never happen.

Wasn't talking about a new lift, just some new terrain as you pointed out there is already easy acces from both sides already.

I too would be very surprised if the FS allowed any kind of ski terrain development in Slidebrook. The Vermont/national enviro groups were pretty upset when the lift was allowed to cross the bottom of the basin. To be honest, personally speaking, I too would like to see the Slidebrook area remain wild or at least mostly wild.

What about the backside of Lincoln? People do ski it. I remember a few years ago some kids went down to the bottom, ended up at the Starksboro General Store, walked in and asked "when does the Sugarbush shuttle come by".

I think the forest service is also the limiting factor to cutting new trails between C_Rock and Heaven's Gate. That is all forest service owned, and only leased by Sugarbush.

I think any trails would cut entirely across everyone's stashes, in the area.

Plus there are those big rocks...


.

Pretty much anything done at the Bush involves the Forest Service. I get it about the rocks but they are not in the middle but on the south side of the land we are taking about and are up high so they really would not be a factor if you removed some trees, not cut an open trail, and opened some more terrain to the public off of CR Trail on the CR side. Remember we are talking about MRG type of terrain. I don't want to open up a big can of worms regarding people's stashes so I will agree that it will probably never happen.

Speaking of the Forest Service there is an interesting story how the FS ended up with this land and leased it to Sugarbush. The family of the gentleman who gave the land to the FS is still very upset that the FS let the land be developed into a ski resort. They have sued the FS on the grounds that this was not intent of the gift. Wonder if it's still in litigation. Obviously the FS can't go remove Sugarbush so most people think the family is just trying to get some big bucks out of the deal.

Does anyone know the details?

I highly doubt that it would be possible to cut even official or semi-official gladed runs in this area. The only access is via the Long Trail, so there is probably some sort of prohibition right there. At the end of the day, there is plenty of terrain in there for those who want to find it. Putting it on the map would just encourage Joe and Sue gaper to ski on in so they could tell everyone back at the office that they did it. That would be a lousy result for all concerned.

To be perfectly honest I don't want to see another trail or glade added to the map. I think people should be forced to find the good runs. For example, even though Exterminator Woods were well known, they were awesome and far less skied when they weren't on the map. By putting something on the map, it attracts the people that don't know where anything is at the resort and wouldn't otherwise find it. It also causes them to thin out or ruin lines that have been worked on for years. Nothing but bad news in my opinion. Even if they could I wouldn't want them to touch Slidebrook.

Strat wrote:

ski_resort_observer wrote: There is alot of unused terrain between Castlerock and Heaven's Gate lifts. Would putting in some new MRG type terrain work here, taking up just a portion of that land and staying away from everyone fav stashes. Will absolutely never happen... would run over way too many stashes, plus there's that rather big rock in the middle...

ASC actually planned to develop glade skiing in that area including some that appeared to be in the vicinity of The Church (I think that big rock is commonly known enough that we can mention it without breaking any rules ). The proposed traverse to get out to the glade skiing seemed to be a little bit downhill of the Long Trail, though, so perhaps the glade skiing actually would be below that big rock - I doubt they would have any endorsed skiing go near it due to fear of liability when someone gets hurt.

There's a picture of the plans on snowboarder757's website (who might even be posting here, I think he posted at AZ) (http://www.geocities.com/romulus757/images/expansionplans.gif).

kcyanks1 wrote:

ASC actually planned to develop glade skiing in that area including some that appeared to be in the vicinity of The Church (I think that big rock is commonly known enough that we can mention it without breaking any rules ). The proposed traverse to get out to the glade skiing seemed to be a little bit downhill of the Long Trail, though, so perhaps the glade skiing actually would be below that big rock - I doubt they would have any endorsed skiing go near it due to fear of liability when someone gets hurt. There's a picture of the plans on snowboarder757's website (who might even be posting here, I think he posted at AZ) (http://www.geocities.com/romulus757/images/expansionplans.gif).

Thanks for posting that. Definitely looks like the traverse would have aimed for below the cliff, sort of to where the snowfield is below the main Church entrance.

Other items of note:

- extension of Spillsville to HG chair

- new trail between Downspout and Domino

- several other official gladed areas, most of which came into fruition

that expansion plan map posted at the geocities site is kool, any idea if this reflects the final expansion plan approved by the forest service? adding a trail between domino and downspout should help alleviate traffic on domino. extending spillsville would be dynomite as long as they maintained the same narrowish width of 'upper' spillsville.

random_ski_guy wrote:

that expansion plan map posted at the geocities site is kool, any idea if this reflects the final expansion plan approved by the forest service? adding a trail between domino and downspout should help alleviate traffic on domino. extending spillsville would be dynomite as long as they maintained the same narrowish width of 'upper' spillsville.

This was an old plan from when ASC owned the resort. I don't think it corresponds to any current plan, though the current management may end up making some of the same changes. Lostone or someone else might have better info.

I would love Spillsville to be lengthed (at the same width, of course) - though wasn't Spillsville longer in the pre-Ripcord days, and Ripcord now covers where Spillsville used to be (and is much wider)? I didn't ski at SB before Ripcord, so I'm not going from first-hand knowledge here.

Also, am I reading that map correctly in thinking that they were proposing putting snowmaking on Spillsville? That would probably ruin it. Why make it longer if they are taking away the fun?

I would like to see that expansion plan. Is it on Strat's site? Could you post a link?

As for trail expansions, I've heard it said many times that there is no plan for addittional trails.

What is more, anyplace you decide to put in a trail will be taking soneone's favorite stash.

There is lots of skiing at Sugarbush! You can get around Deathspout, and I know a lot of people that almost always do.