Quote Originally Posted by HowieT2 View Post
As for snowmaking, seems to me all the snowmaking trails are open so there is no issue with the volume of snow they are producing. Hawk will tell me that the "quality" of the snow is crap, but I'm not qualified to render an opinion about that do I'll skip the debate.
The mountains we are comparing to do not just make the bare minimum to open a a trail. Or perhaps that's not a fair statement to SB. Rather once a trail is open they continue to blow snow on the trail throughout the season so the user experience is enhanced with soft snow under foot. They do so even after snow storms, but especially when the season is off to a poor start. They had their guns out weeks ago. They never put them away. SB on the other hand blasts snow to open a trail, says it's open then turns the guns off and stores them for the season. If the trail starts to get bare early they will turn them back on again, but only to blast some wet glob that will freeze and be harder to thaw and make it more resistant to weather changes, but not be very good to ski on.



So while 100% of snow making trails are open the mountains we are comparing to do not just blow snow to open. They blow snow to ski on throughout the season. When mother nature is kind we hardly notice the difference except for the start of the season, but then soon everyone forgets these threads (look them up. Every year. Same time. Then they stop though snow making didn't change) when SB gets bailed out with some storms. That is the "quantity" issue we are referring to. Just being open is the lowest bar to set. Back when there wasn't a ton of people at the mountain that may have been enough since it didn't get skied off so easily. Plus how can you justify the cost if the money isn't coming in. Now that visits are up, the money is in and mountain is not keeping up. You don't need to see exact numbers to know. Last year the record for skier visits was broken TWICE. This year they broke it again already.

For "quality" I'm sure Hawk has a lot to add on how snow is made, gun types, ratios, etc, but as a skier if you ski some of our local competitors then ski ours you can tell from the user experience. There is no comparison. It's not even close. Hell, if Killington is making poor quality snow and ours is the best as it is written in the books of how to make snow then I wish we would degrade the snow being made at SB. Then we should go out, find the person who wrote this book and send them skidding down OGs ice wall in their underwear.