Ski Area Data Tables - now ready for boarding....

billski · Dec 7, 2005

OK, OK, I've done a first pass at quantifying measurable data for 82 US resorts and showing it in tabular form.

It includes these characteristics:
Name of Resort and State
Lift Ticket Prices
Vertical
Lift Capacity Per Hour
Skiable Acres, Trails, Average Snow, Snowmaking

I provided separate pages with sorted by each characteristic for the computer-challenged amoungst us. There is even a downloadable spreadsheet you can have-at.

You will find it all here:
http://www.iabsi.com/public/ski/

I'll be interested in your feedback and suggestions for improvement as well as corrections for the data gremlins which inevitably sneak in.

Bill

Greg · Dec 7, 2005

Cool stuff. You must have put a lot of work into that. You need to come up with some sort of way of "scoring" the ski areas by taking all of this data into consideration. Kinda of subjective, I suppose, but it would be neat to see them ranked overall in some fashion...

billski · Dec 7, 2005

Greg said:
Cool stuff. You must have put a lot of work into that. You need to come up with some sort of way of "scoring" the ski areas by taking all of this data into consideration. Kinda of subjective, I suppose, but it would be neat to see them ranked overall in some fashion...

No way

Beauty is in they eye of the beholder. If we all felt the same way about ski areas, we'd only need to have one McSki franchise....

Once the data is in (the hard part), the sorting and analytics are easy. If you have ideas for ratios you want to run, we can do that later.

'nuff crunching. Thanks for the compliment. Time to hit the slopes :beer:

Sparky · Dec 7, 2005

Geat stuff. It must have been a lot of work.

hammer · Dec 7, 2005

Nice list!

I saw that some areas in Mass. are missing -- do you mean for the list to be all-inclusive?

Now that you have it together, now you'll need to update it each year... :roll: :wink:

billski · Dec 7, 2005

hammer said:
Nice list!

I saw that some areas in Mass. are missing -- do you mean for the list to be all-inclusive?

Now that you have it together, now you'll need to update it each year... :roll: :wink:

No, I intentionally left off some areas, since they didn't really interest me (see my criteria on page 1). I also kinda lost track of time. I suspect you mean the areas in the Berkshires. I'm just doing this for personal yucks. So, gimmie the data on what I missed and I'll add it later.

I always wanted to track ticket prices, I have a few areas that I've tracked. This now gives me a tool to do so. I'll update the prices annually, dunno about the infrastructure. We'll see if I get any help on that. Takers???

hammer · Dec 7, 2005

billski said:
No, I intentionally left off some areas, since they didn't really interest me (see my criteria on page 1). I also kinda lost track of time. I suspect you mean the areas in the Berkshires. I'm just doing this for personal yucks. So, gimmie the data on what I missed and I'll add it later.

I always wanted to track ticket prices, I have a few areas that I've tracked. This now gives me a tool to do so. I'll update the prices annually, dunno about the infrastructure. We'll see if I get any help on that. Takers???

I just read your criteria now... :dunce:

Actually, I was thinking about the smaller hills in Mass. like Bradford, Nashoba, etc. Since they are vertically-challenged, you may bypass these on your way north, though...

billski · Dec 7, 2005

meaningful

hammer said:
billski said:

No, I intentionally left off some areas, since they didn't really interest me (see my criteria on page 1). I also kinda lost track of time. I suspect you mean the areas in the Berkshires. I'm just doing this for personal yucks. So, gimmie the data on what I missed and I'll add it later.

I always wanted to track ticket prices, I have a few areas that I've tracked. This now gives me a tool to do so. I'll update the prices annually, dunno about the infrastructure. We'll see if I get any help on that. Takers???

Click to expand...

I just read your criteria now... :dunce:

Actually, I was thinking about the smaller hills in Mass. like Bradford, Nashoba, etc. Since they are vertically-challenged, you may bypass these on your way north, though...

I just don't see comparing those areas will provide any meaningful data, since they serve such niche markets. I certainly don't consider them to be "resorts" in any sense. Viewing such data is really nothing more than a curiosity.

With all due respect, I consider Bradford, Nashoba, Ward and Blue Hills to be simply enormous ski schools.

SkiDog · Dec 7, 2005

That is pretty cool...good work.

M

YardSaleDad · Dec 7, 2005

Candidate?

Windham Mountain
State: NY
Ticket price: $55
Vertical Drop: 1600 ft.
Capacity/hour: 13200
Acres: 250
Trails: 41
Average Snow: ??
Snow making: ??

Data from http://www.weather.com/activities/recreation/ski/profile/518009.html & http://www.windhammountain.com/tickets/daily_tickets.php

madskier6 · Dec 7, 2005

Looks good, Bill. Excellent job! :lol:

One quick question: why were the names of some of the Northeast resorts listed in bold text (i.e. Loon, Killington, Okemo, Stowe, etc.)? Was there some significance to that or was it inadvertent? I didn't see any explanation for it on the various pages but I may have missed it.

Thanks for compiling all the data!

hammer · Dec 7, 2005

Re: meaningful

billski said:
I just don't see comparing those areas will provide any meaningful data, since they serve such niche markets. I certainly don't consider them to be "resorts" in any sense. Viewing such data is really nothing more than a curiosity.

With all due respect, I consider Bradford, Nashoba, Ward and Blue Hills to be simply enormous ski schools.

Not a problem...it's your list...

I like to see the NH entries...makes me feel pretty good about scarfing up the SkiNH passes while I could get them...

billski · Dec 7, 2005

meaningless

madskier6 said:
Looks good, Bill. Excellent job! :lol:

One quick question: why were the names of some of the Northeast resorts listed in bold text (i.e. Loon, Killington, Okemo, Stowe, etc.)? Was there some significance to that or was it inadvertent? I didn't see any explanation for it on the various pages but I may have missed it.

Thanks for compiling all the data!

Gremlins :evil: get in during the course of an intense data entry session. Can't always look pretty. I'll clean it up next revision, along with adding some other resorts and making data corrections when advised.

Thanks.

p.s.,

Take a look at the new menu pic "Skier Density". It's an interesting take (calculation) on the potential crowding situation, or alternately, where to go when you want to "get away from it all" (you may need to refresh your browser to see it). Also added a chart.

hammer · Dec 7, 2005

Re: meaningless

billski said:
Take a look at the new menu pic "Skier Density". It's an interesting take (calculation) on the potential crowding situation, or alternately, where to go when you want to "get away from it all" (you may need to refresh your browser to see it). Also added a chart.

That's a good chart...

I have one other way to look at that data, though. With places like Pats Peak and Crotched (which are two of my local favorites), since they likely never get anywhere near the number of people it would take to max out the lift capacity, one tends to have much shorter (or no) lift lines when you go there...

billski · Dec 7, 2005

Re: meaningless

hammer said:
billski said:

Take a look at the new menu pic "Skier Density". It's an interesting take (calculation) on the potential crowding situation, or alternately, where to go when you want to "get away from it all" (you may need to refresh your browser to see it). Also added a chart.

Click to expand...

That's a good chart...

I have one other way to look at that data, though. With places like Pats Peak and Crotched (which are two of my local favorites), since they likely never get anywhere near the number of people it would take to max out the lift capacity, one tends to have much shorter (or no) lift lines when you go there...

Right you are. The CORRECT chart (for making business decisions) would contain the actual number of average skier visits. Since that data is either proprietary or very hard to come by from privately held firms, we can only spin it this way. This chart only shows the potential for disaster.

Treeliner · Dec 7, 2005

That's great! I love how the West/East ski areas are in a different color, sorting the data and then seeing if there's an obvious cutoff (and who any outliers are) is so fascinating.

Me and a friend did a similar thing about a year ago, it lists all 300+ ski areas in the United States, and we had done all the ski areas in about 10 different states. We actually had done greg's idea- come up with a formula to score each ski area. We tried a few differnt formulas, and they all turned out to be very interesting.

awf170 · Dec 7, 2005

Re: meaningless

billski said:
Take a look at the new menu pic "Skier Density". It's an interesting take (calculation) on the potential crowding situation, or alternately, where to go when you want to "get away from it all" (you may need to refresh your browser to see it). Also added a chart.

Thats pretty cool, but those 5 ski areas at the bottom are all measuring there total acres not there skiable like the rest of the ski areas in the east. Almos all ski areas out west measure total acres not skiable, most ski areas are mostly above treeline so it doesnt make a big deal, but with ones that are mostly below treeline it makes a huge deal.

highpeaksdrifter · Dec 7, 2005

I wish we had an applause emoticon. Excellent effort.

billski · Dec 7, 2005

Re: meaningless

awf170 said:
billski said:

Take a look at the new menu pic "Skier Density". It's an interesting take (calculation) on the potential crowding situation, or alternately, where to go when you want to "get away from it all" (you may need to refresh your browser to see it). Also added a chart.

Click to expand...

Thats pretty cool, but those 5 ski areas at the bottom are all measuring there total acres not there skiable like the rest of the ski areas in the east. Almos all ski areas out west measure total acres not skiable, most ski areas are mostly above treeline so it doesnt make a big deal, but with ones that are mostly below treeline it makes a huge deal.

Get me the data and I'll fix it.

Greg · Dec 7, 2005

Also, Whiteface's skiable acreage for one is incorrect. It's 225. Berkshire East is wrong too. More terrain than Sugarloaf? I don't think so.

Ski Area Data Tables - now ready for boarding....

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