The following was posted on Sugarloaf Today on Saturday by the mountain communications director. SL has 3 trails open right now with no top to bottom. Bring on the cold weather.
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We maxed out at about 110 guns last night and the night before on Hayburner and Candyside. When temps/wet bulbs get low enough, these days the snowmakers can generally max out the system somewhere in the 130-140 gun range, depending on the types of guns they’re running. When temperatures are higher and snowmaking requires more air, that number goes down a bit.
Sunday River has about twice the air capacity that we have, and consequently has a much larger snowmaking capacity than we do, particularly when temps are warm like they have been this week. It’s really apples and oranges. We certainly don't claim to have a comparable snowmaking capacity to Sunday River, so I’m not sure where the disconnect is.
And with all due respect to Vesper’s vast knowledge of all things snowmaking, in 2000 we could not have accomplished what our snowmakers did this week. With about a 48 hour window of marginal snowmaking temps (only about 36 hours for Peavey and below), they were able to take Hayburner and Candyside from what was essentially bare earth to skiable.
We have made huge improvements to the snowmaking system over the past several years, but no matter what improvements we make the key ingredient will always be cold temperatures, which have been in short supply this week.
- Ethan
Sugarloaf Communications Manager
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ____________Although I could have played golf yesterday, I opted to go see the Patriots game in Foxborough. Pretty warm for December football.
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