Mount Snow: AZ Challenge-2006 Response/Feedback Thread

Chris's responses are in:

http://skiing.alpinezone.com/articles/challenge/2006/response.htm?resort=mountsnow

In fairness to Chris - he replied on the 4th, only a bit over a week after receiving them (amid the Christmas week holiday too!). Sorry for the delay in getting them published.

Too bad that the first terrain improvement priority seems to be widening trails. That's not exactly enticing from a skiing experience P.O.V. At the end of the day, the only thing to reduce crowding is to expand terrain. That's no going to happen until they finish the Somerset reservoir pipe, redo some of the lifts, and then work on the base area. In short, don't look for any meaningful terrain expansion at Mt. Snow for a good 10-15 years.

Still, good to see that Somerset is priority #1. As K-Mart has shown with the Woodward connection, having a limitless supply of water can make life a lot easier on mtn ops. That said, I find the 100% coverage claim a little disingenuous. That won't be accomplished just by adding more water - you need to lay pipe. For example, IIRC, Olympic doesn't have any snowmaking pipe alongside it. That's quite a haul from the next run to it's east (Fallen Timbers?). Just my $0.02.

Part of the 100% snowmaking they are planing with the sommerset pipeline is to add pipes to cover all of the trails (olympic, titanium, sunbrook, hop, one more time etc). With a high speed lift in sunbrook and all of sunbrook along with hop/uncles/shootout open it will do alot to minimize crowding on the trails.

tree_skier said:

Part of the 100% snowmaking they are planing with the sommerset pipeline is to add pipes to cover all of the trails (olympic, titanium, sunbrook, hop, one more time etc). With a high speed lift in sunbrook and all of sunbrook along with hop/uncles/shootout open it will do alot to minimize crowding on the trails.

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Here's a response posted over on the all4one website by Kelly Pawlak, (the "head honcho" at Mt Snow). The context of the thread was about when will the Somerset water pipe happen and then when would a high speed be likely in Sunbrook.

Her response: "Now you are really asking me to look into the crystal ball! Hard to tell. As you know Sunbrook, North Face and Main Mountain are all areas that we would like to see lift upgrades. So, it depends which we tackle first. Also, in there we need to expand snowmaking pipe to our natural snow trails. My guesstimate is 5-10 yrs.

One thing we are working on now is a permit to space out our chairs on the Sunbrook Quad. That will allow us to run the quad at a faster speed. Right now if we speed it up, guests cannot get out to the load line in time. Taking out some chairs and respacing will improve this problem"

If anyone was at Mt Snow this past Sunday and got to watch the RSN morning snow show (CH. 41 on local MS cable) they got to see Chris doing his best "impersonation" of a TV meterologist/weather man using the green screen technique where he was pointing out features on the trail map. Great job, and he just about nailed all the hand motions too!

Thanks drjeff, I spent all night watching TWC and practicing!

Seriously though, it was a very disorienting experience keeping track of where I was pointing on a monitor, turning to a blank, green wall, then remembering to stop and actually address the audience once in a while. I'm glad Luke does that most weekends!

clenois said:

Thanks drjeff, I spent all night watching TWC and practicing!

Seriously though, it was a very disorienting experience keeping track of where I was pointing on a monitor, turning to a blank, green wall, then remembering to stop and actually address the audience once in a while. I'm glad Luke does that most weekends!

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Chris, hopefully the next time you get to do the morning show like that, mother nature will have cooperated and you'll just get to wave your arm across the screen because the entire mountain will be open!