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Ski Area Management Magazine Articles about 2021 season

MikeDeJ

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My question I guess is what is capacity of a ski area. The lodges are easy to define capacity 25% or 50% of fire code. How do you put a number on the skiing itself? parking? Some % of hourly uphill lift capacity? Or chair lift capacity (number of chairs on the line /2 times chair capacity double, triple, six pack) times a multiplier ???

MikeD
 

EPB

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My question I guess is what is capacity of a ski area. The lodges are easy to define capacity 25% or 50% of fire code. How do you put a number on the skiing itself? parking? Some % of hourly uphill lift capacity? Or chair lift capacity (number of chairs on the line /2 times chair capacity double, triple, six pack) times a multiplier ???

MikeD

Acreage, too. A few years ago, I watched a video of the Peak Resorts CEO talking about this at an investor meeting. The CEO claimed that Mt. Snow was larger than Stratton and Okemo because they were lying about their trail acreage. No idea if he was onto something or blowing smoke, but I thought it was interesting. Because they were acquired by Vail, the investor relations site at Peak has been scrubbed. This was where the presentation used to be:

http://ir.peakresorts.com/Presentations
 

deadheadskier

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My question I guess is what is capacity of a ski area. The lodges are easy to define capacity 25% or 50% of fire code. How do you put a number on the skiing itself? parking? Some % of hourly uphill lift capacity? Or chair lift capacity (number of chairs on the line /2 times chair capacity double, triple, six pack) times a multiplier ???

MikeD
There is a formula used for Comfortable Carrying Capacity (I believe it's called that or similar). Ski resorts often use this figure when creating a master plans to justify the need for trail and lift expansions. I would think that would be the number they would base capacity restrictions off of.

Sent from my motorola one action using AlpineZone mobile app
 

cdskier

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From a social distancing/COVID perspective, I think trail acreage is pretty irrelevant as downhill capacity already assumes people aren't skiing down the trails one on top of the other. In my opinion, what matters most is your "capacity" at "choke points". So how many people can you fit at the base of a lift and still be able to maintain any potential social distancing requirements while they're in line?
 

EPB

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From a social distancing/COVID perspective, I think trail acreage is pretty irrelevant as downhill capacity already assumes people aren't skiing down the trails one on top of the other. In my opinion, what matters most is your "capacity" at "choke points". So how many people can you fit at the base of a lift and still be able to maintain any potential social distancing requirements while they're in line?

Agreed. But if the number of tickets/visitors that a resort will allow (100% capacity) is based in part on acreage, then I would expect it to have an effect on the amount of skiers allowed in a reduced capacity scenario. I would expect a safe/reduced capacity methodology to be applied with a broad brush by states based off 100% capacity methodology.
 

FBGM

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Acreage, too. A few years ago, I watched a video of the Peak Resorts CEO talking about this at an investor meeting. The CEO claimed that Mt. Snow was larger than Stratton and Okemo because they were lying about their trail acreage. No idea if he was onto something or blowing smoke, but I thought it was interesting. Because they were acquired by Vail, the investor relations site at Peak has been scrubbed. This was where the presentation used to be:

http://ir.peakresorts.com/Presentations

Mount snow used to get a hard on for acrage - what a dumb and pointless stat.
 

Glenn

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Oct 1, 2008
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CT & VT
My wife and I held off on buying passes for next season. Just too much uncertainty going forward. Even if things get better, I still see limits on lifts or the outright non use of gondolas/bubble chairs. The areas we could potentially ski at are typically pretty busy; this will probably make things all that more 'interesting'. Worse case, we'll buy passes when things start to look a bit clearer regarding operations or just do a few day passes. Maybe we'll finally get over to Magic this year.
 
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