Mt Snow Thread

[Zand]

Got stuck at work a little later than expected today so didn't make it up, but planning on Tuesday. Good to hear more options are opening up. Should be a good day! Hope they have something open under the guns (and hopefully that something is Chute).

 

[urungus]

Hi @Zand FYI today I went to Mt Snow, summit had high temp of 5 and 30mph winds and and everything including Chute was groomed out frozen hard and wind scoured. However the skies were blue and the sun was out and the view of the partially frozen Somerset Reservoir was something I had never seen with the different shades of blue

 

[Zand]

The report currently says "snowmaking will be back in action on Thursday!" Like...are we not actively making snow right now? It's 12 degrees here in MA nevermind 100 miles northwest.

Please don't tell me they seriously have the guns off right now. That's ATROCIOUS.

 

[jaytrem]

The report currently says "snowmaking will be back in action on Thursday!" Like...are we not actively making snow right now? It's 12 degrees here in MA nevermind 100 miles northwest.

Please don't tell me they seriously have the guns off right now. That's ATROCIOUS.

That would be pretty sad. Though for some reason I'm not shocked.

 

[slatham]

GMP has mountains under curtailment. However, unlike the old days, when systems went fully off, mountains can now run enough power to keep parts of the system up and running. Whether Mt Snow has struck that deal, and is willing to pay the higher price of power during such times, I do not know.

 

[drjeff]

After about 2 straight weeks of a snowmaking assault, the pond needs a few days to refill a bit is what I heard from an instructor I rode the Bluebird with today.

While water is flowing above the mean low flow rate they need to inflate the dam and draw from the Cold Brook to fill West Lake, let's just say that visual about a mile or so down stream where the Cold Brook flows into the North Branch of the Deerfield River basically where Handle Rd meets route 100, there's not a lot of water flowing there, and I am guessing that the drought conditions for much of Summer + Fall plus the cold slowing water flow rates are playing a role. Add in that they had made lots of snow over the last 3+ weeks and I am not surprised that a few days off for pond refilling is needed

 

[slatham]

Given West Lake I ruled out water as the issue, but I guess I’m wrong.

But that high in the greens is no longer affected by the summer drought. The ongoing cold locking things up is a real possibility. And of course going strong with snowmaking for 2 weeks could drain the pond.

 

[drjeff]

Given West Lake I ruled out water as the issue, but I guess I’m wrong.

But that high in the greens is no longer affected by the summer drought. The ongoing cold locking things up is a real possibility. And of course going strong with snowmaking for 2 weeks could drain the pond.

If you take the reported somewhere between 8000 and 10000 gallons per minute their snowmaking system can effectively put on the hill, over the course of a 2 week run, that math gets you between 160 and 200 million gallons of water over that time, and West Lake apparently holds between 180 and 200 million gallons of water if I recall correctly. And I think I remember it being said that they anticipated being able to make snow for about 2 weeks straight with the capacity of West Lake.. (And lets also be honest, especially in the early season trail role out push, how often do we get an extended, multi week run of basically non stop quality snowmaking temps? )

Factor in a slowish flow of the Cold Brook now for refilling and I could totally see needing a pause for a few days to "refill the tank" a bit

 

[doublediamond]

Any drought infill rate is exacerbated by Vail’s moronic policy of making 235 foot deep trails before moving on to the next one.

I haven’t been to Snow this year. but I remember 3 years ago Sunapee was really struggling getting terrain open. I skied there anyway and they had two routes off the top open with 6 foot depths wall to wall.

 

[Zand]

Fun enough day today but I couldn't help but think I was skiing the worst conditions in the east while I was there today. On the ride in even Brattleboro Ski Hill was running their fan guns. But indeed not a single gun running at Mt Snow and it showed with the wall to wall hardpack. If they really needed to take a couple days to refill the pond, why not do it this past Sat/Sun when temps were more borderline? Why do it in the middle of the coldest and dryest couple days this year so far? It makes no sense to me.

Anyway, even with the wall to wall hardpack each open trail skied differently. I thought the best snow (maybe even soft enough to consider it packed powder) was on Long John and Gulch. I did multiple runs through there once I discovered how good they were. Long John is actually an extremely fun trail on an uncrowded day when it's not covered in thousands of idiots. Gulch had the best carvable snow right down skiers left of the park, I'm glad I went over to check it out.

Three options on the front face as of today as Ridge dropped the ropes. No one knew it was open as the report didn't say it and the entrance off Long John is kind of hidden. I wish more people skied it as it had the first day death cookies and it was a teeth chatterer, and never really got skied in. Lodge/Ex was my favorite off the front. A couple skied off areas but weirdly some soft snow at the top and then Ex was pretty decent. Cascade was a mess and both Canyon and Snowdance were frozen hardpack.

North Face wasn't great and I only took a few runs. Freefall was more of that frozen hardpack because barely anyone skied it (I'll explain below). Chute was slightly better but definitely skied off and could use a few more days of guns on the second half. It's bizarre to me that they run the Outpost instead of the Challenger chair. You have to climb quite a bit from Outpost to get to Freefall or back to the summit. Challenger chair dumps you right at the top of everything. I always thought Outpost was the secondary chair in the area (and it should be) so is there some kind of problem with Challenger chair? If not that's just weird to me.

Skied hard for 3.5 hours for 22k vert. Burn in the legs by the end of the day, mission accomplished. Don't want to hurt next time I go to Stowe.

 

[SLyardsale]

In one of the best weather starts to a season in a decade, it feels underwhelming here. That's what Vail brings to the table - underwhelm. Blaming the water on one of the least challenged water resorts in the NEast seems off. These water people were the same ones bragging about how unlimited water was here last year, year before, year before that, etc once the EB-5 project concluded at West Lake. Some new natural tomorrow. Stratton dropped some ropes on nat trails already, Vail probably won't counter - expecting more plain vanilla tomorrow.

 

[Zand]

In one of the best weather starts to a season in a decade, it feels underwhelming here. That's what Vail brings to the table - underwhelm. Blaming the water on one of the least challenged water resorts in the NEast seems off. These water people were the same ones bragging about how unlimited water was here last year, year before, year before that, etc once the EB-5 project concluded at West Lake. Some new natural tomorrow. Stratton dropped some ropes on nat trails already, Vail probably won't counter - expecting more plain vanilla tomorrow.

I was looking at webcams before I left this morning and very nearly decided to spend $47 on a day ticket at Wachusett after watching people ski under the guns on Challenger. If the summit was open there I probably would have done it but just Minuteman would've gotten boring quickly. But I have no doubt the conditions were 10x better at Wachusett today.

On another note, I took the Augur Hole/Higley Hill shortcut today. I usually disregard shortcut recommendations as they often take longer than the main route on weekdays with no traffic but this one is actually a good time saver! It's been a good winter for dirt roads so far so the route was nice and smooth, and I believe saved 5+ minutes of going down through Wilmington.

 

[urungus]

It's bizarre to me that they run the Outpost instead of the Challenger chair. You have to climb quite a bit from Outpost to get to Freefall or back to the summit. Challenger chair dumps you right at the top of everything. I always thought Outpost was the secondary chair in the area (and it should be) so is there some kind of problem with Challenger chair? If not that's just weird to me.

FWIW, you can avoid most of the slog of getting out of the North Face from the Outpost chair by heading towards the summit, then quickly turning right and it will take you to Long John.

 

[Zand]

FWIW, you can avoid most of the slog of getting out of the North Face from the Outpost chair by heading towards the summit, then quickly turning right and it will take you to Long John.

Yup that's exactly what I did (this is how I ended up discovering Long John and Gulch were in better shape). But if you need to get back to the lodge or something (or ski literally any other trail on North Face except Chute, Fallen Timbers, or Olympic) then you have to go uphill quite a ways.

 

[doublediamond]

Death cookies and wall to wall hard pack are symptoms of the same problem... Vail is making far too wet snow. Meanwhile a little southern New England ma and pop made nearly perfect man made snow over the same time frame.

 

[skimagic]

Yup that's exactly what I did (this is how I ended up discovering Long John and Gulch were in better shape). But if you need to get back to the lodge or something (or ski literally any other trail on North Face except Chute, Fallen Timbers, or Olympic) then you have to go uphill quite a ways.

They put in a cutover from outpost area across Challenger that gets you to Freefall and Plummet.

 

[Newpylong]

Fun enough day today but I couldn't help but think I was skiing the worst conditions in the east while I was there today. On the ride in even Brattleboro Ski Hill was running their fan guns. But indeed not a single gun running at Mt Snow and it showed with the wall to wall hardpack. If they really needed to take a couple days to refill the pond, why not do it this past Sat/Sun when temps were more borderline? Why do it in the middle of the coldest and dryest couple days this year so far? It makes no sense to me.

Anyway, even with the wall to wall hardpack each open trail skied differently. I thought the best snow (maybe even soft enough to consider it packed powder) was on Long John and Gulch. I did multiple runs through there once I discovered how good they were. Long John is actually an extremely fun trail on an uncrowded day when it's not covered in thousands of idiots. Gulch had the best carvable snow right down skiers left of the park, I'm glad I went over to check it out.

Three options on the front face as of today as Ridge dropped the ropes. No one knew it was open as the report didn't say it and the entrance off Long John is kind of hidden. I wish more people skied it as it had the first day death cookies and it was a teeth chatterer, and never really got skied in. Lodge/Ex was my favorite off the front. A couple skied off areas but weirdly some soft snow at the top and then Ex was pretty decent. Cascade was a mess and both Canyon and Snowdance were frozen hardpack.

North Face wasn't great and I only took a few runs. Freefall was more of that frozen hardpack because barely anyone skied it (I'll explain below). Chute was slightly better but definitely skied off and could use a few more days of guns on the second half. It's bizarre to me that they run the Outpost instead of the Challenger chair. You have to climb quite a bit from Outpost to get to Freefall or back to the summit. Challenger chair dumps you right at the top of everything. I always thought Outpost was the secondary chair in the area (and it should be) so is there some kind of problem with Challenger chair? If not that's just weird to me.

Skied hard for 3.5 hours for 22k vert. Burn in the legs by the end of the day, mission accomplished. Don't want to hurt next time I go to Stowe.

The answer is simple, Challenger over the years has accumulated exponentially more run hours than Outpost. They switch on and off to help keep the hours down. You can cut all the way across the front to get to Committed and all in between without climbing. Maybe they didn't open it?

 

[Newpylong]

Death cookies and wall to wall hard pack are symptoms of the same problem... Vail is making far too wet snow. Meanwhile a little southern New England ma and pop made nearly perfect man made snow over the same time frame.

Broomfield does not dictate snow quality though, that is a local thing. Either dictated by management or snowmaker error.

 

[Zand]

They put in a cutover from outpost area across Challenger that gets you to Freefall and Plummet.

Challenger was roped so that cut across wasn't accessible. They may have had that access open on natural over the weekend. Drifter was also open on natural over the weekend and I have no idea why they closed it yesterday, it looked fully covered.

Also I see the Bluebird is down for mechanical this morning. Not surprising to me as it was stopping a lot yesterday. Even on my last run it stopped 5 times on the way up...I don't think there were even 5 people on the entire lift at that point so it's not like it was stopping for people falling.

 

[Newpylong]

It certainly would make sense to drag some hose onto it from the top of Outpost, and Freefall to get some cover so folks can cut across when Challenger isn't running for sure. I have gone down Sunbrook before because I didnt want to slog it back to the summit.