2011-2012 Annual Snowmaking Discussion Thread

[itsallaboutpow]

Win,

There are always a lot of arm chair quarterbacks throwing out their opinion as if it was fact .. I can;t tell you how
nice it is that you are an active participant in this forum so that we can get the whole truth .. nothing but the truth ..

THANKS !!

[HowieT2]

thanks win. interesting stuff.

at the end of the day, its all about mother nature and evidently she wants to delay things a bit. must be saving it up to hit us with a big one.

i for one am not unhappy to start out slowly. iirc, 12/06 was a disaster before the powderfest that was february through may '07

great ride up tonight. truly remarkable what has been accomplished with the roads.

[arc1]

"in the past 24 hours we have made snow on 11 trails..."

[gostan]

"in the past 24 hours we have made snow on 11 trails..."

Stowe is only 50 minutes & a $88 lift tix away.

[Hawk]

Sometimes the truth hurts. Saying ski somewhere else does not dimish the fact that we are way behind and others (our compeditors for dollars) are not. I love this place as much as any other. Pray that mother nature bails us out once again. I am going out to ski now. See you out there.

[gostan]

Sometimes the truth hurts. Saying ski somewhere else does not dimish the fact that we are way behind and others (our compeditors for dollars) are not. I love this place as much as any other. Pray that mother nature bails us out once again. I am going out to ski now. See you out there.

Considering the slow start to winter, today was pretty decent after the crowds dissipated. I had to dodge quite a few riders on Jester and the boilerplate after noon was nothing to write home about. & I would definitely not go spend $88 to ski anywhere else as I am committed to SB. My previous post was my attempt at some sarcasm as I do believe that it is time to stop worrying about what the other guy is doing. But it is available if one so chooses.

[HowieT2]

nice day n the hill. skied till lunch thrn xalled it a day.

think we lucked out with temps today. stayed around 28 at the base. they were making snow down low all day.

[ml242]

With the warmer temps moving in I hope that they can get ~12 hours of snowmaking a day on the gate house over the next week. Sure, being top to bottom would be great but without that quad going for intermediates nothing else really matters. Experts don't come to the Bush to ski man made snow anyway and it would also be an effective way to increase trail count and acreage. I dunno, I don't need to ski the luge track of Jester -> DS -> LJ so I can wait for OG / Ripcord / Birdland whenever they get going.

But maybe Santa will drop off a diesel air compressor in a couple weeks. Or Chanukah Harry could bring eight!

[Hawk]

Well some of us are headed to K and others to SR next weekend. The first hand reports I heard are just to good. I will be back for Christmas week. Hopefully there will be more trails open by then. Skiing is fun no mater where you go. I just wish we could do more.

[MntMan4Bush]

Wonder what I could be writing about............


Skied SB on Saturday. Heard the crowds were pretty heavy for only ONE trail so waited till later in the day to show up. Plus after a few weeks in a row skiing just ONE trail it gets kind of boring and tough to make a full day out of given the trail that it is. In a word, it was terrible. Thank god I have factory edges on from a new pair of skis that I couldn't wait to try out, early season of not. Boilerplate ice luge mobbed with people at every turn. The snow report said they have been blowing continuously since Wednesday? Where? Was he referring to another mountain? Does he know what the word continuously means? Then when the crowds finally cleared and it looked like you could get one run in without need for the Gronk to toss a block out in front of you they roped it off at 3:05. Hey I understand, but it added to my un-motivating day.

All discussions pointed towards a top to bottom opening on Sunday. That's nothing more than a marketing move to say it's open top to bottom. Anyone drive up and say "I can't wait to see how Gondalier is skiing today." How about some new terrain worth skiing? So the decision was to make for Kmart on Sunday. Further sealed by the fact that new terrain couldn't even be opened as thought on Sunday.

Now I understand we can't be toe to toe with Killington. Seeing the crowds they get I don't want to their equal. But couldn't we be 1/10th of them at least? 1/5th as good. Why is our snow making so horrible. You can't even do a trail count comparison because it wouldn't paint the proper picture of sheer acreage and terrain open on several peaks at Killington. Even their most skied terrain wasn't in as poor a shape as Jester/spout was on Saturday. Oh wait . Sorry Jester-Allyn-Spout. Don't want to leave that gem out. And their best trail open, in my opinion, was Skylark which was absolutely swimming in snow. And not just hard or wet man-made stuff, but nice powdery snow that was bumped up so when you skied a nice zipper line down you were getting face shots. FACESHOTS on man made. To whoever thinks that all man made snow is terrible to ski on you have not skied on well made snow. If your only experience is with Bush snowmaking then I will point you back to 3 years ago (maybe 4) when Spring Fling was opened early and they were just blanketing it with snow that made nice powder bumps all the way down. Now that was some good snowmaking at the Bush.

As a long time skier at the Bush and a season pass holder I prefer SB. There are many things mid season and once things get going that I love about the mountain and hence why I continue to buy a pass here and no where else. But some of the happenings, specifically this time of year, are just Bush League. As much as people may be tired or hearing people complain about the lack of snowmaking I'm tired of skiing ONE trail several weeks in a row, especially given that it's that ONE trail. And yes it is ONE trail. Not 3. I challenge anyone to even find Allyn Traverse on a trail map. Ever lay down a sick line on Allyn's before? 3 trails? That's egregious. Every other mountain does it too so when we market ourselves out to the public why not, but between us who know better let's be honest with each other here huh?

I've skied 7 days so far this year. My 2 best days have been at Killington. Yesterday and the Friday after Thanksgiving/ They didn't feel like early season skiing. There was enough etrrain open and good snow to make it feel regular season. Sorry. Not to mention they have a great early season deal. When people say they don't want to spend $88 at Stowe I agree, but Killington has a two for one voucher they email to anyone who signs up for their newsletter early season. One per email ID. With a yahoo account, a google account an work account and if needed several misspellings of your name in each new account created you could end up with a handful of two for one vouchers. Not a bad deal early season given the terrain they have open.

So again I say we can't be Killington or Sunday River. Don't want to be. I want to be us. Just a better version of us. Why are we so far behind? Why are we so bad? What is the plan to get us better? I saw the new guns. They're quiet for sure. Can they put out as much snow though? I saw a few and looked closely at them and to the untrained eye they sure weren't jacked up to 11. But what do I know. Maybe they toss out gobs of snow. What's the mountain's next step to try and get to better snowmaking capacity. Multiple trails at once. Not a 'We need to freshen up Jester then move the guns over to Ripcord." Why can't we do both at the same time?

Personally given our current capacity I would have liked to have seen them blasting on Organgrinder to get that open and at the same time Spring Fling and have the double opened up. That would at least spread the crowd some. With the Grand Reopening of the Wunderbar it might have been a nice option and more attractive for people to finish up their ski day there after a run on the Fling. Just a thought.

[Hawk]

Wow, I see you haven't cooled down since I saw you at the Castlerock on Saturday afternoon. You two were way tooooo funny. It really is a dead horse dude. When several people come up to you that do not post on the board and say "hey can you cut them some slack", you know it is time to lay off. So that is what I am doing for now. I will be going to SR to ski this weekend with my old friends. I normally would not do this but I need a little variety. I will not come back and say that it was great. Hopefully by Christmas week we can enjoy more terrain. If it was me I would push the new guns aside and use the old ones.

[HowieT2]

The natives are restless.

while I am also anxious for some expanded terrain, it's only early december and the weather hasnt been cooperative. it'll happen.

[boze]

yes we're restless, and 'it'll happen'
it's just that 'it's happened' elsewhere already, by a magnitude or 2
while all mtns rely on Ma Nature to make things right, some mtns more needy than others
but those are the cards we've been dealt, and a meaningful capex infusion into snow-making coverage/quantity likely a ways off
so i'm going to take up early season yoga to work on my non-existent patience...

[HowieT2]

yes we're restless, and 'it'll happen'
it's just that 'it's happened' elsewhere already, by a magnitude or 2
while all mtns rely on Ma Nature to make things right, some mtns more needy than others
but those are the cards we've been dealt, and a meaningful capex infusion into snow-making coverage/quantity likely a ways off
so i'm going to take up early season yoga to work on my non-existent patience...

you're always restless. cant see you doing yoga. maybe try humping a pine tree instead. BTW-email me about going out in nyc this week.

[smb1789]

I agree with the angry post, yes the post seems a bit dramatic but really Sugarbush plain sucked this weekend and was far worse today. I was with intermediate skiers who really didn't get to go much as a result of the conditions and on the way back I heard a lot of complaints about why we just didn't spend the weekend in killington as from route 100 there is visibly a lot more snow on that mountain. It does look really sad that not only could they not open more trails but the conditions were not good either, downspout was according to some the worst they've ever seen it. Top to bottom when they finally opened it(gondolier) was like a sheet of ice, might as well sent the snowlogic guns back because a hose would be almost as effective and way cheaper. I know mother nature has not been kind but the resort has to do better, they should have gotten a little more open maybe organgrinder and ripcord and the conditions should be better. I am not asking for them to match killington in early season snow making, but at this stage 2-3 real trails and decent skiable conditions should be a reality.