A Great Mountain

[Fourwide]

You all really see a dramatic increase of skiers on the mountain? I'm generally a weekend skier, and I don't see it. Bravo lines do seem longer, but that can be attributed to other factors, principally the better skiers settling for the lower mountain groomers due to lack of natural snow. I'd like to see the numbers.

[ThinkSno]

So I think its great that the mountain is bringing more business in from a revenue perspective, but I also feel like they need to put significant money back into the lifts and snow making to make it a quality experience when there is a lack of natural snow. Before this year I was a pass holder for over 15 years and still love skiing at the mountain. I want the on snow experience to be better then it has been and feel like the main reason its not, is the increase skier visits does not match the improvements needed to give a quality experience.

Perhaps once Win's Porsche friends decide to park their new 911's in Claybrook's garage, enough revenue will come in to fund the mountain's infrastructure needs.

[Go Figure]

The shitshow continues, Bravo stopped for 15 minutes ,running now to offload and currently not loading for 20+ minutes. We were waiting for friends to arrive and now are going to take the gravel road[Castlerock Conection] to get to HG.

[MntMan4Bush]

I can't for the life of me figure out why they wouldn't offer the quad pack again. Two years ago it got a good response. This year they sold even more. Usually unless something stops selling and you stop making a profit on it you ride that horse until it bucks you. The big revenue generator here is how many did they sell that went unused? The more sold overall the higher the likely hood.

So that's really the heart of what we're all saying here and I don't think Angler has been personal about it or gone too far. Win's letter was nice. In fact it was a lot more detailed than you would have gotten at other mountains for certain. Perhaps some of our ranting here may have even led to it a bit.

However if you are SB 2010 and before with lower skier visits then the snow making, lifts, everything is just fine as it is. You can't expect much and none of us did. Maybe a little snow making grumbling, but it died out and we all understood why. You'd need the revenue flow and without it we had less "goodies", but because of the mountain itself, the terrain, the natural snow, it was a near nirvana. We all jumped in here and praised Win for everything he did. But the man wants to make money (as we all do) and to do that you need more skiers. More tickets sold. More food and beverage sales. All of it.

Now that skier visits are up, our little mountain can't sustain the crowd. Heck we don't even have corrals that go deep enough so you get cluster F's after 50 feet (Not out there with my tape measure so relax). With more skiers you have more wear and tear on lifts. Snow is skied off faster so you have to make more of it and do so consistently. Your cafeteria will get packed so you need to expand that. Sound like any place we know? Well Killington gets a ton of visitors. Obviously more than us, but they handle and manage it because of all the things they do for maintenance of lifts, trails, snow making, etc. I'm not saying I want to go to Killington (Been a pass member here for 10? 12 years? Ticket holder even longer. Worked at SB when I went to college long ago) and I'm not saying that we have as many visits as them, but as we expand our skier volumes we need to take a page from their books on how to support the customers they get. If you don't want that experience then cap the number of passes sold, but I don't see that hapenning.

You want the volume Win? You got it. But you need to be prepared to handle it. The letter was great and thanks. I realize that in a letter posted to all customers you can't say "our snow making sucks and Killingtons is better in quality and quantity." I get it. Bad marketing. But I hope you got the message loud and clear from here and people you hear it from and you're looking into it. Visit Killington when they are making snow and ski on a trail. Tell me if skiing on it is anything like a trail we are making snow on. Or don't tell me, but at least recognize the difference and make a change. (By the way Killington was making snow this week. A novel idea. Snow the week a giant storm is coming)

Your attention to lifts in the letter was also great. Missing was the issues with GH we had a few weeks back (The week SB and GH went down at the same time). You addressed VD in it's update plans. Thank you. How about SBX? When will that be open? 1% downtime? OK you have the numbers. I believe you. What is the industry average in the NE? Does that include the fact that during the summer SB is running so it dilutes the percent? Is it taking into account SBX is not spinning? I know it doesn't account for wind hold so I don't blame for those. It shouldn't, but I've seen some questionable "wind holds" while parts are being tossed out of the wheel house. 1% sounds good, but it's all relative. I want my car to start 100% of the time and it does because I maintain it regularly. It also takes a beating in the NE and driving up to SB every weekend. If my car only started 1% of the time I turned the key I wouldn't be happy with that statistic and would probably look at taking better care of it. If I have issues with it consistently I'd replace it or do larger scale maintenance on it. Sure it would cost money, but if someone paid me to drive them around in it then I'd have to.

In summary it's great Win responded and in the detail he did. A great quality of a leader to take responsibility as he did and own up. We all appreciate that and respect him for it. However if he didn't hear complaints from people (here and elsewhere) who knows if he would have. Meaning how would he know to do so. Our feedback, instead of being fanboys all the time, allows impartial views of user experience. We all want the mountain to be better for our own selfish reasons. We don't care how much it costs someone else. We want our customer experience to be the best it can be and without speaking up it remains the same and we suffer and endure in silence. So maybe a little partial, but with good intent.

I will see what happens before I pass judgement. This season hopefully things will even out with lifts and the worst is behind us. Mother nature will likely bail us out on snow as she always does this time of year. What I will be looking for is next year. Soft man made snow under foot early season and lots of it. Some touching up during the first few months up into January to make sure there is good snow to be had each day. Fewer lift incidents (Some will happen, but that's to be expected and OK). If the skier visits are still up with quad packs that's fine. Make money, but handle it. Expand the corrals. Have more employees directing traffic to make it smoother for those new skiers to the mountain. Maybe cut in some steps up to VD to make it easier to get up there. Ski sherpas that offer to go up to VD to spread the crowd coming in or a snow mobile shuttle up? Make it easier on for families and people not familiar with the mountain to spread out. (SBX open to get to north). Might take some creativity, but if visits are up it needs to be handled. So reserving judgement until then.

[Fourwide]

"...Expand the corrals. Have more employees directing traffic to make it smoother for those new skiers to the mountain. Maybe cut in some steps up to VD to make it easier to get up there. Ski sherpas that offer to go up to VD to spread the crowd coming in or a snow mobile shuttle up? Make it easier on for families and people not familiar with the mountain to spread out. (SBX open to get to north). Might take some creativity, but if visits are up it needs to be handled. So reserving judgement until then."

Great ideas, MMFB

[Dblshot]

I agree with Win at least owning up that there was a problem. Good post by MMFB, some good points. Win is in business trying to make money in one of the toughest industries to do so. The Quad Packs are a great idea, I bet most people that are buying them were coming already or people are buying them for friends. Skier visits are up at all resorts. This is not a private club. That being said I take exception to a couple points in Win's email
-1% downtime is a "massaged" number. This does not count in addition to windholds, all the "delayed openings" The lift maintenance dept is extremely inexperienced and it is showing. When does this become a safety issue?
-Snowmaking- Win answered a question about not grooming the piles right away- correct they need to drain. But why make piles in the first place? When they do a gun run it is not hard to move the gun or swing the tower to spread out the snow. On some trails this is not possible, but on the big wide ones spread it out. I agree that the quality of snow being made is way too wet. A little less stick on the sleeve of the jacket would be good. Resurfacing after thaw/freeze events would be nice, but that is not their strategy anymore. They do not have guns and hoses on the trails, they turn off a trail after 3 straight days, strip the guns and hoses off and bring them to a new trail and start up for 3 days again. Look behind the snowmaking building at the stack of hoses and guns sitting there. It would be nice if those were on the hill

Big dump and big crowd on the way so hopefully they can work out the kinks on Bravo, NRX, Summit, mousetraps for HG, and pass inspection on SBX.

[angler]

My intent is not to be personal at all. I love Sugarbush and it was a hard decision to make another mountain my main one after 15 plus years. This is what happened in my case. Over the past few years I started to feel like the mountain was not getting the infrastructure updates it needed to keep up with the times and the increase volume. It really became exasperated with the lack of natural snow (after all mother nature hides sins in this case) and the advent of the quad pack.
I ski on an average 50 plus times a year. Last year I went to the mountain 10 plus times from opening day to the middle of December. Not a lot of natural snow just man made snow. For the most part only 4 to 6 trails open and after 2 hours or so the trails where ice. So 10 visits and maybe 20 hours of skiing at best. I would go to the gym and friends would be telling me that they were skiing at another mountain all day and the man made snow was holding up most of the day as well as having numerous trails open.

A friend of mine comes up for long weekend mid December. I pick him up on a Thursday morning drive right from the airport to the bush. Get there around 12 or so there is 5 trails open (being generous) and the man made snow is slick already with hardly anyone on the mountain. After 90 minutes of skiing, it was over, trails were ice, time to leave. Friend is very disappointed. Next morning I suggest we go to the "other mountain" that my friends from the gym were speaking about. We get to the mountain there is quadruple the amount to trails open snow making all over the place and the quality of snow is far superior then the snow being made at SB. We are able to ski the entire day. Not that the man made snow did not get slick by the end of the day but even when it finally gave way it sill was not as icy as the snow being made at the Bush. It really was mind blowing, I was in shock! My friend turns to me when we are driving home as says "So please tell me why this is not your home mountain these aren't even close?"

So the rest of the year I went back and forth to both mountains and in my experience the quality of snow, lifts system, amount of snow being made, going back to resurface trails, ability to handle skier volume was far superior to SB. Like other people have pointed out here SB has not kept up with their competition. Its not even close. So I felt like I was put in a position to change my home mountain (not because I wanted to) because I valued quality snow making, lifts that run, and an infrastructure that can handle the stress of skier volume.

Im in no way suggesting that SB hasn't made improvements on the mountain its just not enough compared to their competition that they want to be compared with, as well as their desire to continue to increase the skier visits. So it is nice to hear Win take responsibility for this weekend but thats not the elephant in the room, anyone can make a poor decision about having an event on a weekend. Shit happens sometimes! It's not fair to all the loyal season pass holders as well as the long time ticket holders who get homogenized with quad packs, triple packs, ect ect.... I drove to the mountain for 15 plus years driving 50 minutes and a Clay Brooker gets to ski power before us? Really? No matter how you slice the cake the mountain needs a new lift system, better snow making capacity (a mountain today in this environment needs to be able to create their own mountain and let mother nature be a bonus), expanded lodges, along with an expanded view of the guest experience in every aspect of the operation. One might argue with my form at times but IMO its hard to argue with the substance of my rants. Not sure I can say anything I haven't said in my 40 plus posts so I will take a break after asking one more time what is the 3-5 year plan to fix the obvious. Is that so unreasonable?

[Hawk]

Not sure if questioning anyone's "ski resume" has to do with their abilities to make a candid observation of the mountain?!?

Sure it does. If you only ski 5 or 10 days and all of them are perfect with no lift issues then your perception is different. Also of you only ski from 8 to noon then your perception is different on conditions. I have been here every weekend and have skied late most days so I have seen these issues from front to back. That was all I was trying to say.

[angler]

Sure it does. If you only ski 5 or 10 days and all of them are perfect with no lift issues then your perception is different. Also of you only ski from 8 to noon then your perception is different on conditions. I have been here every weekend and have skied late most days so I have seen these issues from front to back. That was all I was trying to say.

Agreed, plus it matters if you get out early season as well....

[MntMan4Bush]

Well bumpcrasher's resume may actually be detrimental to his opinion. I have never known anyone who blows off his work as much or who ignores his family and friends more during the ski season than him. In fact his lack of work production in normal human society alone may have been the cause for the most recent recession single-handedly. He's a real inspiration to negligence and self servitude everywhere. Early season he runs to Killington and SR. Mid-week trips to SB. Long weekends. 60-80 days a year. Almost as many blown edges as me and happily burning up all the extra fuel all you tree hugging Prius owners are saving to get him there.

Sadly though all of this probably makes his days all blur into one bacon grease coated kaleidoscope of snow and captain and cokes. Thus making his opinion, much like the man himself with anything tool related, useless.

[Hawk]

Ya but if you subtract all those "Crack-0-noon" club days his total is more like 40. Also I hear that ping pong has made him stay up late further clouding his judgement.

[djd66]

Sure it does. If you only ski 5 or 10 days and all of them are perfect with no lift issues then your perception is different. Also of you only ski from 8 to noon then your perception is different on conditions. I have been here every weekend and have skied late most days so I have seen these issues from front to back. That was all I was trying to say.

Easy on the resume BS. Do I need to post my resume before I get any respect on this board?

[ReefBum]

Perhaps once Win's Porsche friends decide to park their new 911's in Claybrook's garage, enough revenue will come in to fund the mountain's infrastructure needs.

It's unproductive comments like this that have really hurt the integrity of this board. In the past this place has provided some great info, especially from Win but that kind of below the belt comment is not going to motivate him to re-engage.

[ThinkSno]

It's unproductive comments like this that have really hurt the integrity of this board. In the past this place has provided some great info, especially from Win but that kind of below the belt comment is not going to motivate him to re-engage.

Ridgefield, CT, lighten up.

[Go Figure]

It's unproductive comments like this that have really hurt the integrity of this board. In the past this place has provided some great info, especially from Win but that kind of below the belt comment is not going to motivate him to re-engage.

My bad, I forgot fanboy praise and bobbleheading every decision made over the last 13 years in the required uniform.

Case in point. I watched the weekly rumble for the first time this year. Opening segment of cabin cat first tracks powder skiing followed by the Porsche Driver piece with info for the clay brook set who can borrow one to drive around for a few hours which was a segway to the rice brook ad for a condo. Must have been riviting for the family packed into a quad pack room at the Sugarbush Inn[motel6].

About as informative as the boring daily videos , which are unwatchable on a daily basis.