Welcome to our new winter season. We will be opening tomorrow for skiing. We were not quite ready today for a passholder appreciation day but you will find some nice skiing and riding tomorrow. I just took a run and was pleased with what our new HKD's put out. Tomorrow Downspout all the way down will be groomed through Coffee Run and Lower Organgrinder will have some nice fresh manmade powder. The first turns especially will be sweet.

Let me preempt some discussion about why we are only skiing from mid-mountain down tomorrow. The Heaven's Gate lift is still a couple of days away from being ready for public use.
As for inspection about two weeks ago. it was running beautifully both on the electric motor and the auxiliary diesel motor, Every 7 years a lift is required to do a load test unless major system changes have been made and then it has to be done at that point before the Tram authority will clear it for public use. We had not had a load test of Heaven's Gate for several years. When the inspector from the Tram Authority was here it ran perfectly on the electric motor but when we switched it to diesel it ran but just a bit slower that the code requires, so it did not pass. After eliminating all the other possibilities we called in Cummins Engine to take the auxiliary motor apart.. Unfortunately, their work schedule did allow them to get here for several days. They discovered that the fuel injection system was not working properly so they took it back to their shop to fix it. Unfortunately, the part the required to complete the job was not in any East Coast locations so they had to track one down out West and have in shipped to them in Springfield, MA and they couldn't get it up here in time for to get it installed and then inspected by tomorrow morning. We expect Cummins will have it installed in a day or two and then we have to get the Vermont Tram inspector back to do the load test again. Not sure he is willing to to it on a weekend but we will try. Then it should be in great shape for the season.

Thus, we will not be skiing Upper Jester but we changed the snowmaking priority to Lower Grinder to have that ready by tomorrow morning.

Despite this I think you will enjoy the first day, and I look forward to a great season.