KILLINGTON: AZ Challenge 2009 Response/Feedback Thread

Greg · Sep 9, 2009

Chris Nyberg's responses are in:

http://skiing.alpinezone.com/articles/challenge/2009/response.htm?resort=killington

deadheadskier · Sep 9, 2009

Good job Greg in presenting some hard questions that often had significant criticism in there. Good to 'keep it real'

as for the responses, I'm calling it early

*posts in epic thread*

RootDKJ · Sep 9, 2009

Interesting...

JerseyJoey · Sep 9, 2009

Page is not loading link.

Vortex · Sep 9, 2009

JerseyJoey said:
Page is not loading link.

It worked for me.

2knees · Sep 9, 2009

Offering moguls, natural and manmade on a season-long basis has been moved up our ladder of importance. Our guests will find more moguls than they have in the past on specific trails that we will advertise on the daily snow report and our Blog at Insider.Killington.com.

This and a week or two into may is all I needed to hear.

ALLSKIING · Sep 9, 2009

2knees said:
Offering moguls, natural and manmade on a season-long basis has been moved up our ladder of importance. Our guests will find more moguls than they have in the past on specific trails that we will advertise on the daily snow report and our Blog at Insider.Killington.com.

This and a week or two into may is all I needed to hear.

Yeah, sweet news!

Rogman · Sep 9, 2009

Interesting responses, pretty clear they're his own words, and not from marketing (i.e., TH). Intriguing that he referred to Highway Star as HS, a common enough abbreviation if you're a regular reader of the ski forums.

In some respects he kept the cards close to the vest, there wasn't much new information. However his remarks on DF indicates he expects there to be snowmaking on it, unless they have to divert resources, but he left it up to Jeff Temple in mt ops.

As for early season ops, no changes in the short term (GN WROD), but the new strategically placed fan gun should help considerably on Lower Bunny and if they were to change tactics, this resource could be relocated. Very sensible, it's not like they poured a ton of money into a specific top to bottom early season plan.

GrilledSteezeSandwich · Sep 9, 2009

Awesome..Chris Nyberg for President..lol..

deadheadskier · Sep 9, 2009

I thought his responses were quite good. I do expect a fair amount of criticism on some of the topics he left an 'out' on.....snowmaking on fiddle, closing day, recovery etc.

I feel for Chris. Tough job being the Chief at Killington. It's like being the mayor of a large city. No matter what you do/say somebody is always going to be upset.

mondeo · Sep 9, 2009

2knees said:
Offering moguls, natural and manmade on a season-long basis has been moved up our ladder of importance. Our guests will find more moguls than they have in the past on specific trails that we will advertise on the daily snow report and our Blog at Insider.Killington.com.

This and a week or two into may is all I needed to hear.

+1.

I gotta give it to him for being contrite in recognizing the missteps they've made. You can argue that they should've been talking to Pres Smith long ago, figured out what their demographic was before their first season, etc., but Nyberg would probably agree with you.

Last year was better than '07-08, and I expect this year will be even better. Still will be areas to be improved, but at least they're moving in the right direction.

tjf67 · Sep 9, 2009

IMO He put those answers out there cause if he didn't it would have been a slam fest. I thought the questions were marginal. Lots of opinions with question marks at the end.

He did not reveal anything and I am sure people are not going to be impressed. I am impressed he even participated. I would have told most of you to go shit in a hat you get what you get and if you dont like it there is a hill up the road. Just saying

2knees · Sep 9, 2009

tjf67 said:
go shit in a hat you get what you get and if you dont like it there is a hill up the road.

maybe this should be their slogan for '09/'010.

deadheadskier · Sep 9, 2009

2knees said:
maybe this should be their slogan for '09/'010.

and change the name to Mount Festivus

SkiDork · Sep 9, 2009

deadheadskier said:
and change the name to Mount Festivus

JerseyJoey · Sep 9, 2009

2knees said:
maybe this should be their slogan for '09/'010.

Agreed. Why change it from 07-08 or 08-09 when it's worked so well for them?

Highway Star · Sep 9, 2009

Haven't read yet, just posting in this historic thread...

Highway Star · Sep 9, 2009

Think we did ok this year. Hopefully they'll make snow on the Fiddle.....but I'm not holding my breath for them to cut back the brush.

Tin Woodsman · Sep 9, 2009

tjf67 said:
IMO He put those answers out there cause if he didn't it would have been a slam fest. I thought the questions were marginal. Lots of opinions with question marks at the end.

He did not reveal anything and I am sure people are not going to be impressed. I am impressed he even participated. I would have told most of you to go shit in a hat you get what you get and if you dont like it there is a hill up the road. Just saying

Do you work for the phone company or some other monopoly? That wouldn't be very smart if you're in a competitive business, which they most certainly are. Kudos to Nyberg for participating, but I wasn't impressed with the answers.

The Devil's Fiddle thing was a non-answer - "if it's a good snow year, maybe we'll make snow there, but that's someone else's call". Blah.

What I found least convincing was his answer about doing things differently in retrospect. He said they'd make all the same decisions, but would have communicated them differently. What a load of BS - they've already rolled back half of their assinine decisions around lift operations, Pico, kids pricing, and operating principals (note how they now state that having a late season is important for market purposes). That's a complete 180 from where they were 2 years ago. I guess it's hard to say "we fucked up and didn't know what the hell we were doing", but his answer was like Baghdad Bob declaring victory as bombs were dropping on his head.

Finally, his answers on the Village and parking were entirely unconvincing. Geoff is as shrewd an observer on all things K-Mart as there is, and I didn't come away from Nyberg's response feeling better about their plan one iota. It sounds like SP Land wanted to go even further and POWDR had to beg and plead to soften the edges of a very skier-unfriendly plan

Newpylong · Sep 9, 2009

I am also less than impressed. Some of the answers are good to hear but why are they secretive about everything?

For example, regarding an upper mountain lift: "we have some ideas". How about sharing some of them? We as hardcore skiers and riders really are interested in this stuff. I mean, I find it highly unlikely that they are going to install some super secret Powdr proprietary lift, why not share?

KILLINGTON: AZ Challenge 2009 Response/Feedback Thread

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