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Who is right?

snoseek

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Jun 7, 2006
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I feel like right now loon has them all beat tbh.
 

slatham

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Sep 17, 2012
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LI/Bromley
Stratton and Okemo could have been players this year if they wanted to. Looks like Bromley got the edge in the 2nd tier running. 3rd tier players Berkshire East, Wachusett and Jiminy Peak showed themselves to be true 2nd tier players instead.

I just read what Stratton plans to have open and was very surprised. 3 TTB off Ursa, 4 TTB off Snow bowl, a full TBT green, and several on lower part of mountain. They will leapfrog Mt Snow and maybe Killington.
 

Zand

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Dec 30, 2003
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Spencer, MA
North Ridge and Upper Snowden have several trails side-by-side which gives them the edge. Mount Snow does have better options at the moment IMO. Killington's early season game is too predictable and basically any other resort that goes top to bottom on 2 or more runs beats them this time of year.

Stratton and Okemo could have been players this year if they wanted to. Looks like Bromley got the edge in the 2nd tier running. 3rd tier players Berkshire East, Wachusett and Jiminy Peak showed themselves to be true 2nd tier players instead.

Wachusett and Jiminy definitely arent 3rd tier as far as early season goes. Wachusett had 4 full trails open before Killington was even top to bottom 2 years ago. Jiminy has always been an early season player.

Berkshire East was definitely a surprise to see open this early though.
 

WoodCore

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I just read what Stratton plans to have open and was very surprised. 3 TTB off Ursa, 4 TTB off Snow bowl, a full TBT green, and several on lower part of mountain. They will leapfrog Mt Snow and maybe Killington.

Totally different strategy for Stratton this year focused around the new Snow Bowl HSQ. They might even be able to add a 4th TTB on Ursa with another snowmaking window as a bunch of snow has already been made on Grizzly and possibly others. Stratton is not aggressive with it's snowmaking but does have some pretty impressive capacity when they find the right windows to lay it down. :snow:

Stratton 11132019-001.jpg.jpg
 

spiderpig

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Dec 8, 2012
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Ridgefield, CT
I just read what Stratton plans to have open and was very surprised. 3 TTB off Ursa, 4 TTB off Snow bowl, a full TBT green, and several on lower part of mountain. They will leapfrog Mt Snow and maybe Killington.

Based on Okemo's statement that they'll have 25 trails open, that's probably 5 true TTB (with 2 of those sharing a bottom portion) and 2 TTB at Solitude.
 

kbroderick

Active member
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Dec 1, 2005
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708
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Maine
... Heck, anyone remember the days when Sunday River used to advertise Whiteheat as the "longest steepest widest" (without the use of commas) in the East? It was neither the longest, the steepest, or the widest in the East (when comma's were used) but fit the description when no comma's were used :dontknow: )

Ahem. That's the steepest longest widest lift-served trail in the East you're talking about there.
 

FBGM

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Feb 19, 2016
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Your Moms House
Neither - both are stupid ways to tell what’s open. Both marketing garbage.

The acre count is wrong. And even more dumb then miles. At least miles is accurate. Acres is not.

How about we just don’t lie and say we have “5/60” trails open.
 

drjeff

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Jan 18, 2006
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Brooklyn, CT
Neither - both are stupid ways to tell what’s open. Both marketing garbage.

The acre count is wrong. And even more dumb then miles. At least miles is accurate. Acres is not.

How about we just don’t lie and say we have “5/60” trails open.
So a bunny slope that's say 50 yards long should have the same snow report reporting "weight" as a continuous 1 mile long top to bottom run in your view?

Just curious? Since to me, an acre is much more relevant as a combo of trail length and width and eliminates the marketing BS of Upper, upper middle, middle, lower middle, lower and bottom traverse trail count padding that often happens.

I read 100 acres and I think 100 football fields. I can then relate that to if a ski area reports that as say 30 trails or 12 trails...

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FBGM

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So a bunny slope that's say 50 yards long should have the same snow report reporting "weight" as a continuous 1 mile long top to bottom run in your view?

Just curious? Since to me, an acre is much more relevant as a combo of trail length and width and eliminates the marketing BS of Upper, upper middle, middle, lower middle, lower and bottom traverse trail count padding that often happens.

I read 100 acres and I think 100 football fields. I can then relate that to if a ski area reports that as say 30 trails or 12 trails...

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The issue is a ski area is like 500 acres. That’s total land. A trail makes up a fraction of that. It’s not an accurate number.
 

slatham

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LI/Bromley
The issue is a ski area is like 500 acres. That’s total land. A trail makes up a fraction of that. It’s not an accurate number.

The acreage reported on snow reports is actual open trail acreage, and if done correctly, is further corrected by only counting the part of the trail with skiable coverage (so a wide trail with only one side skiable would report 1/2 total trail acreage).

Also when a ski area says that have 500 acres, they are referring to open trails (ok, some may throw in marked glades) but it is NOT the total acreage of the mountain, including un-skiable woods.
 

bdfreetuna

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Jan 12, 2012
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keep the faith
The issue is a ski area is like 500 acres. That’s total land. A trail makes up a fraction of that. It’s not an accurate number.

I thought Western Resorts generally counted total land and Eastern resorts generally count actual trail acerage plus on-map tree skiing?

Jay peak says 385 skiable acres with 100+ acres of tree skiing. This is probably what counts for almost 1000 acres by western measures.
 

ss20

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A minute from the Alta exit off the I-15!
Snow reporting, ski area size, and steepness are all of the best ski forum debates. Just enough balance of fact and opinion to strike the perfect harmony between "technically correct" and "still total BS".
 

cdskier

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I thought Western Resorts generally counted total land and Eastern resorts generally count actual trail acerage plus on-map tree skiing?

Jay peak says 385 skiable acres with 100+ acres of tree skiing. This is probably what counts for almost 1000 acres by western measures.

I’ve seen eastern resorts do it multiple ways. Some even list multiple metrics in their stats (ie total acres, skiable acres, on trail acres, and official gladed acres).


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crazy

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I believe that most resorts, be they Eastern or Western, list out skiable acres, NOT total acreage unless explicitly saying so. They way that they can really fudge the numbers is by overstating the amount of gladed acres. I get the feeling that a lot of resorts will list the total acreage of, say, a forest between two trails as part of their gladed acreage, even if there are only one or two lines cut through that forest, with each line being as little as 10 or 20 feet wide.

The Western resorts are able to fudge this number much better because they have way more gladed terrain. To be fair, some Western resorts like Brighton can legitimately claim virtually 100% of the area within the ski boundary as skiable terrain because thanks to the resort staff and the nature of the forest, you can ski in any trees between pretty much any trail. It's all not only accessible, but actual nicely-spaced gladed terrain. Very enjoyable.

To see the converse of this, look at the Sunday River trail map. The map would make you believe that huge swaths of the mountain are gladed, like almost all of the space between the trails on White Heat, or the entirety of the forest between Lollapalooza and Excalibur, when in actuality most of those glades involve specific lines cut through the forest, it's not like the entire forest is gladed (the exception here is the very end of Blind Ambition).
 

chuckstah

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Killington counts everything. Boundary to boundary pretty much, so they can claim more acres than Sugarloaf.

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