Worcester Telegram & Gazette Reports on Wachusett Upgrade Plans and Mount Snow Opening Day

[thetrailboss]

The Crowleys are not selling anytime soon. They are weighing replacement options for the Polar Express replacement in 2024-2025. Next season they will upgrade Minuteman so that it is more reliable.

The author also comments on Mount Snow's opening day.

Exciting upgrades planned for Wachusett Mountain keeps ski area among nation's elite

Wachusett Mountain president and CEO Jeff Crowley has plenty of big ideas to keep the ski area in Princeton atop the list for avid skiers.

www.telegram.com

 

[Zand]

The crowding on the trails with a six pack would be a nightmare lol. It gets bad enough as it is with a quad. And with 90% of Wachusett's clientele being total knuckleheads, a six pack would stop every other chair anyway.

 

[urungus]

Good article, thanks for posting

 

[skiur]

The crowding on the trails with a six pack would be a nightmare lol. It gets bad enough as it is with a quad. And with 90% of Wachusett's clientele being total knuckleheads, a six pack would stop every other chair anyway.

Same exact things were said when K was putting the sixpack on Snowdon. In reality, none of those issues happened.

 

[Zand]

Wachusett has 3 trails off the summit, and theyre not exactly the widest trails. Snowdon has 8 trails plus many acres of glades. Apples to oranges.

 

[xlr8r]

Capacity wise, The Minuteman pod could handle more more people, but Summit pod is crowded enough as is. Also in my experience, with the park at Minuteman, Minuteman typically has longer lines than Polar. If they want to replace Polar with a six pack with wider chair spacing to keep the same capacity, that would be fine. In general detachable lifts are built with wider chair spacing these day in comparison to 25 30 years ago.

 

[crystalmountainskier]

For the millionth time, just because the chairs have six people on them does not mean overall capacity has to be higher. Just yesterday Grand Targhee opened a six pack with an hourly capacity of 2,400, same as a standard high speed quad. It's all about chair spacing: https://liftblog.com/colter-grand-targhee-wy/

 

[drjeff]

For the millionth time, just because the chairs have six people on them does not mean overall capacity has to be higher. Just yesterday Grand Targhee opened a six pack with an hourly capacity of 2,400, same as a standard high speed quad. It's all about chair spacing: https://liftblog.com/colter-grand-targhee-wy/

Agree 100%

Going from a 4 to a 6 or even an 8, doesn't necessarily mean that you will order and install the same number of carriers (chairs) on the haul rope and change the number of customers you will bring to the top of the lift every hour

 

[ss20]

I think a FGQ to the road/Mass Pike trail would be smartest way to get more people up the hill while keeping traffic pretty spread.

A 6pack at WaWa would be a disaster to load/unload.

 

[Zand]

I think a FGQ to the road/Mass Pike trail would be smartest way to get more people up the hill while keeping traffic pretty spread.

A 6pack at WaWa would be a disaster to load/unload.

That second point makes me want a 6 pack even less...it's rare to ride the quads on a busy day without multiple stops. Just way too many never evers and gapers that can't figure out how to board a lift. Getting 6 of those people to move in unison is just...lol.

I don't think anyone would ride a FGQ to the road. Minuteman basically does the same thing in half the time. Plus that just dumps more people on the lower half of the summit trails where they get even more narrow than they are at the top. No one ever rode the Monadnock lift when it was that insanely slow triple because there was a nice shiny fast lift up to Ralph's Run instead, why not just go ski that? Now that there's an express quad, beginners actually stay at Monadnock a little longer. Even with a park on Hitchcock and Frannies, no one rides the Vickery Bowl. They'd rather wait in line to ride the faster Minuteman.

To touch on points made above, I get that they can space the chairs out to reduce the capacity, but what's the point of spending more on a lift just to get the same output? It makes sense at Killington, Mt Snow, etc to give you some insurance against the wind but that's never a problem at Wachusett. Even if they space the chairs way out and don't increase uphill capacity, a 6 pack just creates more problems. I'm almost surprised to see them replacing lifts at all... the quads they have now haul ass when they run them full speed, but since they run 12+ hours per day and for the full season I guess the wear really increases over time compared to most other lifts. They've had some maintenance problems but the last couple years they haven't seemed as bad.

 

[doublediamond]

The Polar Express will be 31 years old in the summer ‘24-25. It’s an early second-generation detachable and very high on hours. It needs to go.

It never runs full speed. Midweek days it runs just shy of800 fpm.

As it is today, it has a design capacity of 2000 pph. At that slow midweek speed we’re talking about 9+ seconds between chairs.

If a HSS is put in with 2000 pph capacity, that ups that load time to 10.8 seconds at full speed decreasing the chances of misloads. And if designed to run at 1000 fpm that saves 65 seconds of ride time. 1100 fpm is 88 seconds saved.

If you’re spending the big bucks to put in a new HS lift, there’s just no reason to go with a HSQ. While I’m not saying the new lift will be D-Line, for reference Doppelmayr is not even making D-Line HSQs. HSQs are a thing of the past much like fixed grip doubles and fixed grip triples.

 

[urungus]

For the millionth time, just because the chairs have six people on them does not mean overall capacity has to be higher. Just yesterday Grand Targhee opened a six pack with an hourly capacity of 2,400, same as a standard high speed quad. It's all about chair spacing: https://liftblog.com/colter-grand-targhee-wy/

What is the point of going with a six-seater then ? Marketing ? Fewer wind holds with heavier chairs ? Fewer chairs required ?

 

[ss20]

What is the point of going with a six-seater then ? Marketing ? Fewer wind holds with heavier chairs ? Fewer chairs required ?

So I was told by a reliable source, that at least with L-P, HSQ's are now a special order product and they are pushing 6-packs/8-packs. Now that sounds ridiculous to a lot of people, I know. But remember almost all new chair installs in Europe are 6/8 packs. Like, 90%+. Typically in the world of ski lifts we run 3-5 years behind what's happening in Europe.

I believe this year in North America for detachable chairs it was a pretty even split of quad's and 6's.

 

[RH29]

LPA has not installed a new high speed quad in New England since the Mid-Burke in 2011(!!!). Been a few fixed grips and six-pack detachables, but all the HSQ's in the last 10 years have been Dopp or reinstalls.

This year, the new detachables have all been Dopp, with Waterville's being a MND (European company)

 

[crystalmountainskier]

So I was told by a reliable source, that at least with L-P, HSQ's are now a special order product

Every lift is a special order product

 

[ss20]

Every lift is a special order product

Yes/no. Line engineering/towers sure. Most other parts not so much in terms of variation. Your product line can be a lot more streamlined if you have 6 products instead of 40. But I think with the smiley emoji you know what I mean and you're just busting my chops

 

[2Planker]

For the millionth time, just because the chairs have six people on them does not mean overall capacity has to be higher. Just yesterday Grand Targhee opened a six pack with an hourly capacity of 2,400, same as a standard high speed quad. It's all about chair spacing: https://liftblog.com/colter-grand-targhee-wy/

Many skiers can not grasp that.. My wife being one of them