Snowmaking plan?

[random_ski_guy]

But Tree, arent you a pass holder? Early season skiing seems to benefit passholders and not the mtn's bottomline. Thats just my stupid opinion. Sure, Sunday River and Killington are picking up the die hards like yourself, but this early season jumpstart is fleeting. It will soon be December and then the diehards return to their home mountains.

When you get into December and January, Sugarbush certainly could use more snowmaking firepower to resurface the mountain after a rain/freeze cycle. There is no arguing that issue. Its just a small matter of money and return on investment.

[Xskier]

So I still dont get why a mountain that spends so little on snow making charges so much?

[gostan]

Guys, remember that Tree needs to make up for the 50 days he missed last season. If the 100' hill in Saxonville up the street from his home had snowmaking,(& if he could get there in time through the local road construction) then he would be there on Monday.

RSG, your point about "using more snowmaking firepower to resurface the mountain after a rain/freeze cycle" is extremely valid and definitely warrants the mountain's investment as the return in the form of decent to better snow conditions after crappy weather in midseason is an absolute necessity.

[Hawk]

RSG, I hear what you are saying but I think that you are not understanding the total bennefit of the snowmaking. It's not just to open early and stay open late. People that ski at the snowmaking mountains ski there for the dependability. My point was more that mountains like Sunday River and K can basically recover from a rain event in a couple of days. Yes in 2 to 3 days SR can have 10 to 15 trails fully covered, groomed in in fine mid winter condition. This is the absolute reason why most people ski there. Dependability! My entire family (5 Sisters and Kids) basically go there and not SB because they have experienced the week after a rain storm. Several times I have had some of them up on Christmas week, Feb Vacation or MLK week and they have left saying they couldn't believe how icy it was. Then I have to listen to the comments of how SR would have been beter.

Make no mistake, if we had that ability to recover we would get more skier visits. You can bank on it. Me, I left Sunday River and all my friends for the powder and woods of SB. That decision was the right one because I do not particularly care for groomers. But what I come here for is not what 90% of skiers care for. So that is why I say we need the snow making upgrade.

That said, Win has made a decision to put his capital into the basic facilities that we also desarately needed. You can't do everything and I can totally respect that. I just hope that maybe in the future we could make do some upgrades and at least focus on a percentage of trials that make sence. It might take a few years to catch on but once people do they will come back.

[slatham]

Well, my intention of starting this thread was the short-term snowmaking plan, but the discourse on the long-range plan has been good. Here are my 2 cents:

The reliability - via snowmaking - of the other mountains mentioned is real. We have a group of 20-30 people (w/kids) that takes a Presidents week trip each year, and we have seen Mt Snow recover from pouring rain to awesome skiing on 50%+ of the mountain in just a couple of days. I know that SB that week was not very good, except for the trail or two where they could make snow. This has a major impact of where we will go each year (pushing for SB this year but my family may be flying solo). A mountains snowmaking reputation is more important than the early season skiing, but the fact that you have early season skiing builds that reputation!!! To look at early Nov skiing based only skier visits during that time period is to miss the point.

Second, as mentioned, SB HAS THE BEST EARLY SEASON SET UP!!! The top of North is perfect, as we all remember from days past. I fully understand Wins logic for not doing that anymore, but I do hope that at some point - with higher priority items done (ie. base area work) Win will be able to push for North in early Nov AND Lincoln Peak for Thanksgiving, thus making hard core early season skiers happy, and allow the Claybrook set to have skiing out the back door (assuming the winters not like last year where this would all be moot).

But of course the most import thing is to expand snowmaking capacity to allow more of the mountain to have quality skiing quickly after a rain/freeze!!

In the meantime, what's the current short-term snowmaking plan, and what were the technical difficulties mentioned above?

And remember, a big dump of natural snow makes all the snowmaking talk moot so THINK SNOW

[skibum1321]

we have seen Mt Snow recover from pouring rain to awesome skiing on 50%+ of the mountain in just a couple of days.

Everybody knows that there is no such thing as awesome skiing at Mt. Snow. My perspective is that I really don't give a damn about snowmaking because I would rather not waste the time to drive up if I'm just going to be skiing groomers anyway. Even if I lived in the Valley, I could think of better things to do than ski groomers. I do, however, understand that it is important to other people.

[win]

Just a couple of points. This summer we have made a major investment in replacing about 2.5 miles of snowmaking pipe. This was a $1.5million investment in the future. While it is not visible to all, it ensures the integrity of our system for decades. Having the secondary water source at Mount Ellen will more than double our capacity there from what we had last year.

We had the guns on yesterday, but we had a fuse blow last night (not the type you get at the hardware store), and we had to shut down until we can get a replacement this week. It doesn't look like very good temperatures snowmaking in the Northeast until late in the week. Hopefully, we will see better temperatures as we get into next weekend.

[boze]

but we had a fuse blow last night (not the type you get at the hardware store), and we had to shut down until we can get a replacement this week.

Appreciate the update, doing my cold temp dance
Hope the folks also pick up a spare fuse for 'next time'

[vonski]

but we had a fuse blow last night (not the type you get at the hardware store), and we had to shut down until we can get a replacement this week.

Appreciate the update, doing my cold temp dance
Hope the folks also pick up a spare fuse for 'next time'

+1

[summitchallenger]

Thanks for the update. I was wondering why there was no activity when I drove up to LP tonight at 7pm and with the thermometer in my car saying 32 F.

[Tin Woodsman]

Treeskier, Hawk and Slatham nail it.

It's not about extending the season (though ME has the best set up in the East for that if they wanted), it's about ensuring reliable conditions in the early season and after thaw/freeze events. That's when you need the horsepower to turn it to 11 and cover everything as quickly as possible. Even if you aren't going for an early opening, you spend most of your snowmaking money Nov 15 to Jan 15. If you're able to hit the mtn hard starting mid-November so as to ensure a decent product by Thanksgiving and a high-quality product (washouts permitting) by X-Mas, that will matter to a lot of uncommitted skiers who prioritize that in their mtn choices.

Moreover, it should be pointed out that the final phase of the initial LP Village build out includes an additional, quite large, residential component in unpaved parking area north of the paved portion of the LP lot. If you want to sell out that building, you're not going to do it solely by offering a pure Vermont experience - you're going to need reliable conditions for the type of people who would throw down that sort of coin.

Hard to criticize Win at all for prioritizing things as he did with the base area and new lifts, and this year's investment in the trunk line is a great and necessary first step (though "doubling capacity vs. last year" just returns it to its original capacity before the line from the Van Loon pumphouse crapped out, right?). Now that the key pieces of the base area are in place, the latter building with other peoples money, it will be interesting to see how/if/when they choose to tackle this issue.

[random_ski_guy]

All I am trying to say is that it has been bold of Sugarbush to not invest heavily in snowmaking and instead invest elsewhere. Its contrarian and it really hasnt failed them.

[vonski]

It always seemed that the capacity at North was better than South. Maybe that is simply due to size, but with North line being repaired. I would expect North to recover that much better this year.

[HowieT2]

Treeskier, Hawk and Slatham nail it.

It's not about extending the season (though ME has the best set up in the East for that if they wanted), it's about ensuring reliable conditions in the early season and after thaw/freeze events. That's when you need the horsepower to turn it to 11 and cover everything as quickly as possible. Even if you aren't going for an early opening, you spend most of your snowmaking money Nov 15 to Jan 15. If you're able to hit the mtn hard starting mid-November so as to ensure a decent product by Thanksgiving and a high-quality product (washouts permitting) by X-Mas, that will matter to a lot of uncommitted skiers who prioritize that in their mtn choices.

Moreover, it should be pointed out that the final phase of the initial LP Village build out includes an additional, quite large, residential component in unpaved parking area north of the paved portion of the LP lot. If you want to sell out that building, you're not going to do it solely by offering a pure Vermont experience - you're going to need reliable conditions for the type of people who would throw down that sort of coin.

Hard to criticize Win at all for prioritizing things as he did with the base area and new lifts, and this year's investment in the trunk line is a great and necessary first step (though "doubling capacity vs. last year" just returns it to its original capacity before the line from the Van Loon pumphouse crapped out, right?). Now that the key pieces of the base area are in place, the latter building with other peoples money, it will be interesting to see how/if/when they choose to tackle this issue.

I think we all agree that SV has done a super job prioritizing their capital improvements. The new buildings were needed and will be a bigger enhancements than an upgrade to snowmaking capacity. The pipe replacement this summer is proof that they are not neglecting the snow making issue (1.5M for new pipe, wow). Certainly no complaints that I can see. The importance of snowmaking is the reliability of the product so that people can confidently book vacations. Nobody wants to put down a couple grand on a vacation and then show up and there is no snow. SB has an advantage because of the amount of natural that it gets especially compared to southern VT and Maine, but recovering from the inevitable thaws is vital.

Win-this snowmaking discussion occurs regularly, and lots of theories (system is lacking air capacity and/or water and/or electricity) and numbers (hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars) are bandied about. Are we anywhere close to reality or is that not something to discuss publicly. TIA

[summitchallenger]

All I am trying to say is that it has been bold of Sugarbush to not invest heavily in snowmaking and instead invest elsewhere. Its contrarian and it really hasnt failed them.

The truth is that we've been pretty lucky. We had cold weather and snow at the beginning of the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 seasons that let things get going. That came off the rails last season and so far this one when we have had some relatively short windows of cold air that SB either could not or would not make snow. The end result as we know last season was 2 or 3 lost weekends at the front end.