Believe me, we have been doing everything we can. It has been the "perfect storm" of problems cropping up in the past couple weeks, between CB2, Mad River, the weather, thaw/freezes, etc. But we did light up Gondolier and the few towers we have on Lower Jester and Gondolier. Still waiting on some new ground guns to get rest of Lower Downspout/Lower Jester on. I believe the groomers headed up today to start pushing out Jester and OG and to be able to get the gear we have on Jester off so we can push to the bottom for the next cold snap.
Here's what it looked like when I left work this morning, in the base:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/shadyj...7660257834278/
We believe Shady,... its still November and it has been warm as hell all month. Not your fault or Sugarbush's fault that mother nature is giving us a warm month. I hope you don't let "some" of the posters on this board get to you. Thank you to you and your team for all your hard work.
Thanks for the update and the pics Shady. Glad to hear everything is going as well as possible.
CB is short for compressor building. CB1 I believe is the building between lots d and f. Cb2 is the building tooled into the woods between The gmvs building and strait shot.
Shady, no one is questioning the efforts of the snowmaking team. It is funny how some people flip this to an attack on you guys. As a former snow maker I fully understand what the job entails and it is hard work. The cold you guys endure, the late night hours, always being wet and cold, dealing with broken equipment, frozen hoses, on and on. You guys deal with the hand you are dealt. My comments are a wish. One that is based off seeing the real value of a properly sized system. That is all. I guess if they experienced what a mountain can do with the right equipment then they would understand my perspective. Carry on Shady. Keep kicking A$$!
Trouble with you is the trouble with me,
Got two good eyes but we still don’t see!
Shady- thx for the update. Keep up the good work, you guys work hard.
I'm surprised there is not enough equipment to have lower downspout, jester set up ready to fire up. Having to strip upper jester to bring guns and hoses down doesn't seem very efficient. At least we will be skiing tomorrow.
Agreed. Its one thing to have system limitations like the total amount of water. Its another to lose precious snowmaking time because there isnt enough equipment such that it has to be moved manually. That's inefficient and costly when you're trying to make snow in the lower elevations in marginal temperatures typical in November.
I understand that fan guns are expensive, and that after trying them, they decided to go in a different direction. And that may very well be the right call for the system as a whole over the course of the season. But those things put down a shit ton of snow in marginal temperatures and having even just a few in strategic locations on the lower part of mtn, would go a long way to getting top to bottom to start the season.
Shady answered so I won't repeat with one exception to Hawk's comment. These improvements were not just to save money. There were to increase our capacity and that has been done. To get more now we would have to replace a lot of the existing pipe on the mountain with larger diameter pipe. This was done on Snowball/Spring Fling which is why those trails could be skiable in 48-72 hours now with temps in the low 20's. As we replace pipe we will be replacing with larger diameter but it can't be done all at once.
I dont understand. Are you saying that if you had wider pipes you could pump more water? but I thought that the system was maxing out on water while only a few trails are making snow at any given time. can't you just divert the water to other trails? I guess what I'm trying to say is, that I was under the impression that the system was limited by the total amount of water you can pump at any given time? I thought, the wider pipes installed only increased the capacity on those trails, but not to the system as a whole. I'm confused.
Howie, I believe you have the gist of it. They are limited on throughput with the old pipe at X diameter. If they have 4k gpm to work with, the old diameter (X) would only be able to put 2k gpm on Spring Fling at any given time. With the new wider pipe (Y), they can now push 4k gpm to guns on Spring Fling, thus producing more snow instead of having to divert 2k gpm to another line.
I don't know which upper mountain lines connect where, but I would imagine that they have the same throughput issue on something like Downspout, so they redirect the water elsewhere instead of being able to pound all of that in a short period. For instance, they can max water and air on Jester/Downspout to HG, but that line can't handle the water needed to run more guns below HG at once, so they use a different line (OG) to use the rest of the water.
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