Ski areas with buyer's remorse

At Sugarloaf and Shawnee they do. The chairs fly for fixed grips and the conveyor makes for a soft loading so the lifty doesn't need to bump the chair. At both ski areas they went the conveyor belts instead of HSQ to prevent wind holds and as its much cheaper.

I'm an enormous fan of conveyors. Skyline is a great lift, clearly has an impact on the ride time. I think they improve the stop rate too for the lift. The ski resorts all claim this and spillway used to stop pretty frequently. The conveyor might be unsettling to load at first, but you get used to it.

More and more of these keep cropping up every year with at least two that i know of this past summer and even the Hermitage club installed a sky trac.

C-Rex said:

How about those stupid loading/unloading conveyor belts? If they don't regret those, they sure should. I don't see it helping anyone. In fact, I think it just weirds people out and they actually end up having a harder time of it.

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I don't like them either & find them harder to load or at least strange. The only ones I've encountered so far is the one at Okemo & the new Metro quad at Stowe. I didn't really notice the chairs running any faster. In fact the two lower side by side chairs at Okemo still seemed to run the same speed. One has conveyor loading & the other doesn't.

xlr8r said:

Lifts:

Possibly shortening Rams Head when the quad was put in.

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That is one of the best things they have ever done, they needed a dedicated next step up for beginners from Snowshed.

Well! I just hope that it's going to be for the better.

manhattanskier said:

That is one of the best things they have ever done, they needed a dedicated next step up for beginners from Snowshed.

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I nominally agree. I suppose they could have put in a mid-station, but too many of the beginners coming off Snowshed would panic and not get off. (In addition, that would require an extra operator.)

I mentioned earlier, that doubling the traffic (i.e. going from a double to a quad) without increasing the downhill capacity would create a bottleneck at the top and someone took exception to that saying there were no more routes down from the current top than there were from the old top. While this is true, the fact is the beginners at the old top would freeze (creating a bottleneck) when they looked down what they perceived to be cliffs.

I am amused that at least IMO half of the proposals are Skiers' remorse and not managements' remorse.

Jully said:

I'm an enormous fan of conveyors. Skyline is a great lift, clearly has an impact on the ride time. I think they improve the stop rate too for the lift. The ski resorts all claim this and spillway used to stop pretty frequently. The conveyor might be unsettling to load at first, but you get used to it.

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I agree. In addition to running the line faster, the carpet greatly reduces problems loading and this greatly reduces the stop rate. That lift just keep chugging along.

Putting a fixed grip with a carpet loader is one of the best decisions for Sugarloaf.

joshua segal said:

I nominally agree. I suppose they could have put in a mid-station, but too many of the beginners coming off Snowshed would panic and not get off. (In addition, that would require an extra operator.)

I mentioned earlier, that doubling the traffic (i.e. going from a double to a quad) without increasing the downhill capacity would create a bottleneck at the top and someone took exception to that saying there were no more routes down from the current top than there were from the old top. While this is true, the fact is the beginners at the old top would freeze (creating a bottleneck) when they looked down what they perceived to be cliffs.

I am amused that at least IMO half of the proposals are Skiers' remorse and not managements' remorse.

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Mid station for beginners? Yea that would be a horrible idea! I can picture that and all the chaos that would go along with it.

Jully said:

I'm an enormous fan of conveyors. Skyline is a great lift, clearly has an impact on the ride time. I think they improve the stop rate too for the lift. The ski resorts all claim this and spillway used to stop pretty frequently. The conveyor might be unsettling to load at first, but you get used to it.

More and more of these keep cropping up every year with at least two that i know of this past summer and even the Hermitage club installed a sky trac.

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The opposite seems to be true at Mount Snow. The Grand Summit Express stops a lot and doesn't appear to run any faster than before. I guess it depends on what the general crowd is used to. I'm fine with it but from my experience they don't seem to help. Maybe people in Maine are just more adaptable.

C-Rex said:

The opposite seems to be true at Mount Snow. The Grand Summit Express stops a lot and doesn't appear to run any faster than before. I guess it depends on what the general crowd is used to. I'm fine with it but from my experience they don't seem to help. Maybe people in Maine are just more adaptable.

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Mount Snow put the conveyor in on the Grand Summit, not to increase the speed at which the lift operates (It's already at the maximum when it's running that the lift is rated for), but to help put 4 people on the load line at the same time. The "problem" with it that many people have, is that they don't read and follow the directions for it's use. If you lean on the gates, as it tells you to, and then just stand still on the conveyor, you're going to end up where you need to be, when you need to be to load the chair, and you WON'T slide off the front of the loading area (at least my in full gear, 250lb self, even on freshly waxed skis on a carpet that has some snow/ice on it, has yet to slide off the front of the loading area in the probably 250 or so times I've ridden in since the carpet was installed

Far too often, the cause of the "problem" is that people either hang back from the gate and then try to shuffle through it when it opens and get caught as it closes back up (the gates are only open for about 3 seconds so if you're not right there and ready, a problem can arise) and then once a person gets onto the carpet, rather than just standing still, they try and shuffle their feet, and unlike on a snow surface, that carpet is actually rather grippy, and people semi stumble and/or bump into who's standing next to them, which creates problems.

It's just getting people to be ready, and pay attention to the instructions, and then you get 4 people on the chair every 6 seconds via the conveyor belt

MadMadWorld said:

Mid station for beginners? Yea that would be a horrible idea! I can picture that and all the chaos that would go along with it.

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I think Waterville Valley has a mid-station on an FG lift for Lower Level skiers to get off - and the "lesser skiers" going up the MRG Single Chair, are supposed to get off at the mid-station.

Both lower-mountain lifts at Cannon had beginner midstations back in the day, right about where the top of Eagle Cliff is now. The top of the old New Peabody/Hong Kong/Gremlin chair can still be seen to the right of the Peabody quad a little above there. At the time they had no other beginner terrain other than the Pony Lift slope. My last time there before they replaced those lifts, I got recruited to escort a 4-year-old in ski school up the lift and help him off at the midstation.

joshua segal said:

I think Waterville Valley has a mid-station on an FG lift for Lower Level skiers to get off - and the "lesser skiers" going up the MRG Single Chair, are supposed to get off at the mid-station.

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Well I don't think the midstation at MRG is meant for that. That is what Sunnyside is for and most of the intermediate and beginner terrain below the mid station can be accessed from the double. The midstation is more for people that want to download to do laps on Liftline or upload and rip bumps on Chute. I think they also for saw it as a late season option to keep the upper mountain skiable. Chute holds amazing snow in spring time.

Granite Gorge, I think, also has a mid-station for lower mountain access.

ss20 said:

Too much snowmaking= lack of variety, too much maintenance, too much labor, not enough ROI

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I agree with pretty much everything but this. Considering the weather we get, how do you propose mountains operate if they can't consistently get terrain open with man-made snow? It's an absolute necessity at this point to sustain a modern ski resort.

Putting a lodge and parking lot on the middle of the hill taking away from what could have been OK experience at Bellaire in the Catskills.

ScottySkis said:

Putting a lodge and parking lot on the middle of the hill taking away from what could have been OK experience at Bellaire in the Catskills.

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I don't think you are missing out on much because of the lodge. It gets pretty flat below it. That is where they have their beginner terrain. The run out to the super chief I could do without.

Rowsdower said:

I agree with pretty much everything but this. Considering the weather we get, how do you propose mountains operate if they can't consistently get terrain open with man-made snow? It's an absolute necessity at this point to sustain a modern ski resort.

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The biggest changes that get the general population talking are the ones you see on a trail map. Look at the recent success from Mount Snow (and so far) Okemo with their bubble chairs. They are things that are tangible. Every guest will see and ride those lifts, remember them, and come back next time because they were warm and unique. Brand identity. Do modern snow guns throw out a better product than ones from 10 years ago? Yes. Will the general public notice a difference? Not likely, as far as I know.

It's not the better product modern guns throw out that makes people buy them. It's higher operational temperatures of high twenties wet bulb, more production and less energy used. SIGNIFICANTLY less energy. We're talking 10% or less. New guns that produce more snow at higher temperatures and use much much much less energy. The guns pay for themselves with energy savings in very short time

It seems like ski areas have invested more in snowmaking in recent years than anything else. Clearly, the resorts feel it is important to invest in the latest technology to cut energy costs and improve snow quality. This implies a good roi for them.