All time trail design screw ups.

So what semi-recent trail addition at any mountain do you look at and say "what the #$% were they thinking?"

my nominee is Double Dipper, killington.

from just the subject line I knew this would start off with K. :razz:

Castlerock. What an abomination.

I always have the mental debate between which was the greatest K clear-cut travesty, Double Dipper or Superstar. While Pres Smith did some amazing and ground breaking stuff over the years, that late 80's/early 90's "lets make a 20 lane wide expert superhighway trail" idea wasn't one of his better ideas! It would have been alot better if he just quit with what he did in that respect over on Bear Mountain IMHO

drjeff said:

I always have the mental debate between which was the greatest K clear-cut travesty, Double Dipper or Superstar. While Pres Smith did some amazing and ground breaking stuff over the years, that late 80's/early 90's "lets make a 20 lane wide expert superhighway trail" idea wasn't one of his better ideas! It would have been alot better if he just quit with what he did in that respect over on Bear Mountain IMHO

Click to expand...

Didnt stratton cut the first "supertrail" back in the mid 80's? I just took a look at the trail map and its called upper and lower meadow but i think it was called something else at first.

Greg said:

Castlerock. What an abomination.

Click to expand...

the anti-screw up.

i hope its good for you guys tomorrow. i expect some tortureous video to cry over also.

2knees said:

Didnt stratton cut the first "supertrail" back in the mid 80's? I just took a look at the trail map and its called upper and lower meadow but i think it was called something else at first.

Click to expand...

Yup, Stratton was mid-80's, K I guess you could say was the originator since Bear and Outer limits and Devil's Fiddle received a straighltine clearcut in the fall of '79. The only way I remember the date of Bear is from reading articles about how the great Ingemar Stenmark used OL before it's official public opening as a training hill for the 1980 Lake Placid olympics.

Plus, atleast Stratton tried to leave a few tree islands in the middle of their "supertrails" and they're not "chalkline straight" on the edges

The "New" Nosedive. Liftline and National are also retarded. We can get 24 inches of snow, and both those trails will be scoured off hardpack. Also, Mainstreet on spruce.

2knees said:

So what semi-recent trail addition at any mountain do you look at and say "what the #$% were they thinking?"

my nominee is Double Dipper, killington.

Click to expand...

I'd say both Double-Dipper and Downdraft at Killington. I think they pulled the trees off Downdraft and put in a snowmaking pipe in the mid 80s and some years later, they whacked Dipper too. When I started skiing K-mart in the 70s, the only thing in the basin between Cascade and East Fall were two heavily gladed trails you could barely make out from the base, Big Dipper and Downdraft. They were two of my favorite trails ever back then.

Superstar is another one. I remember when it kinda of zig zagged and stepped. Now it's a big rectangle with a quad up one-side and a snowmaking pipe of the other.

I didn't mind when they put in Bear. It was something different, the double-diamond "super-trail". I liked skiing the old-time New England trails but also liked Bear. I was they had left the basin the f$@# alone so we could still ski both classic and modern trails.

Here's a picture of Sugarloaf from the 60s. See the trail third from the right all by itself. That's Double Bitter. It's a good example of a classic NE trail that hasn't been f$#%ed with as it's the same now as it was back then.

It follows the terrain so it has steps. It zigzags so it's interesting to ski. You know what's the most novel thing? Because it follows the terrain and has zigzags, it holds snow!!! Isn't that a great idea!!! Back before they had snowmaking, they had to cut trails like this to keep the snow. Big open rectangles would get blown off and all the snow would end up in the woods.

I wish there were more trails like this and hope what ones are left never get Kmart-ized.

Profile at Cannon. All of it snow ends up in the trees. Thanks to the highway department changing the designed trail to be like Cannon or Ravine and wind it's way down. What a blunder.

Double Bitter is great and Sugarloaf has a few good old style trails left. But what they did to Widowmaker was a travesty.

Lower FIS at the bush

I think there's a flat 30 mile run out to the base

Double Dipper deserves a spot in the Hall of Fame of screw-ups. The clear-cutters definitely had some 'roid rage when they attacked that section of K-Mart.

While not nearly as bad as double D, I dislike what Whiteface did to Wilderness (or, using today's new-and-improved, high-counting naming system, Lower Wilderness). When you're up at Whiteface, ski Approach to Upper Wilderness to Lower Wilderness. Lower Wilderness used to be just like Upper Wilderness in terms of narrowness and lack of a straight line down the mountain.

Of course, since the widening of Wilderness, Whiteface has hosted numerous World Cup mogul contests on the trail, which is great, but I still fondly remember the old, non-generic, non-utilitarian trail.

Anyway, what's done is done, so get out there and enjoy the world-class competition this weekend!! http://www.orda.org/newsite/events/worldcups/200708/freestyle/index.php

agree with double dipper at k mart its wider than Interstate 91 north and south. grand jct at loon is also a porr lay out just cause it can get quite icy and no one yeilds to one another.

Northwest Passage at Jay is a terrible train because it doesn't hold snow and the top has never been open in thrity plus visits to Jay.

The meandering green trails at Killington that cross expert slope are another pet peave. Killington would have benefitted from a 'trail pod' design off of each chair versus what was cut.

awesome thread... have to agree with all the clearcut comments here. if i had a boat of cash and some land that always got snow, i would thin the woods into beginner, intermediate and advanced glade areas with no runs. in fact, if I could think of a way to get people to the top without clear cutting for lift towers, i'd do that too. this way, when you arrive at the bottom, all you see are dreamy powder laden glades stem to stern. but what do I know, I pound keys for a living

my nominee, although a little south for most of ya'll is all the straight down the middle runs at Belleayre:



these runs are lined up like toy soldiers.

that said, i still like the place (esp after a mid week storm) and there are 2 or 3 really fun runs there and some other gems in between.

I,m with Puck-it.The worst trail design is Profile at Cannon.It's almost impossible to make snow on it cuz the wind blows up and down unimpeded.The wide open straight shot clearing makes for very few good snow days.Having said that,this year they do have pretty good cover and they have been using the new winch cat which seems to have helped.Before it was cleared to make Profile we use to call this trail 11.There were 2 t-bars lines running in the same path and when one wasn't running......well it was a pretty cool run.

Makes you wonder why these areas don't admit to their mistakes and inact reclamation projects. Rope off parts of the trail and let things grow back in

deadheadskier said:

Makes you wonder why these areas don't admit to their mistakes and inact reclamation projects. Rope off parts of the trail and let things grow back in

Click to expand...

That would be a start, but in a lot of cases terrain features have been blasted away or filled in. No way to those back.

It's already been said (twice!!)....but Cannon's Profile is absurd.

This trail could be rehabilitated. Planting a few diaganol rows of trees to serve as wind blockers would help hold snow and would add some 'twistyness' to the trail that would be in keeping with the asthetic of the neighboring trails (Ravine and Cannon).