The "Sugarbush Thread"

Slidebrook87 said:

I think what he means is that if someone sees an extremely long line at Heaven’s Gate, they have the choice to bypass it and ski to the base where the lines are most likely shorter. And to your point, I think more trails off of Bravo will also help ease crowds at Heaven’s Gate. As I mentioned in a post a little back, if for some reason you skied downspout, organgrinder or ripcord and didn’t know how long the line was, you had to wait in it no matter what.

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cdskier said:

Yes, but don't forget they're supposedly limiting capacity to a "busy Friday". I can't really recall long GH lines on any busy Fridays that I've ever been there. Although I'm also curious to see how successful they are at limiting capacity simply by limiting the day ticket portion of skiers and eliminating discounts like the Quad packs. With there being more Ikon passholders than there ever were standalone SB passholders, it will be interesting to see whether the "no reservations needed for passholders" strategy works.

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cdskier said:

I use them the same way (or at least used to). This sounds like code for "we don't want people to see what's really happening because we know it won't look good".

That said, SB should find out how K is doing it in their app with the lift wait times. Their app shows the estimated wait times at all open lifts. For example the K app right now shows a 0-2 minute wait at all open lifts other than the Gondola which has a 2-5 minute wait. That seems like a good system to help people do what they used to do with the lift line cams at SB.

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WWF-VT said:

Lift lines are going to be a worse than usual shit show on weekends at LP. Sugarbush has traditionally had a high percentage of skiers and riders that were passholders and Ikon is just going to put more people on the hill and in lift lines. Forget about the usual uphill capacity when you need to limit the number of people per chair.

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flakeydog said:

This on the website today:

Webcams:
We are currently in the process of upgrading our webcams and updating their locations to better benefit our guests. In response to COVID-19, lift lines have been reworked to promote social distancing, and we no longer felt our lift line webcams provided an accurate representation of wait times and mountain capacity. We expect these new webcams to be available soon and give a better depiction of mountain conditions.

Would be nice to have some way of gauging the lines. I often use these to "social distance" myself to somewhere with a shorter line.

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nhskier1969 said:

If they have lower downspout open to the base it won't make a difference. The only good terrain open on the mountain is off of Heaven Gate. Adding lower downspout isn't going to excite anyone. It's basically a runout to the bottom. They really need to open up terrain off of bravo. IE domino, lower OG and bird land. This would take traffic off of Heaven Gate. Gatehouse opening won't elevate the crowd on bravo or HG, they will only have beginner terrain open.

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WinS said:

It is important to get Lower Downspout open to the bottom for two reasons. First, it does allows someone to bail out if they do not like the line or need to get to the bottom quicker than riding HG up and going down that way. But the more important reason is in case HG goes on windhold or has a mechanical. One would not want everyone walking down. It is important to get GH open for beginner and intermediate skiers, especially for the Holidays. They aren’ t the Alpine Zone participants for the most part but there are a lot and we saw that last year when GH was able to open on the first day. Many skied earlier than they ever have. Pushover and Slowepoke given their acreage come in quickly. 48 hours of really cold temps can get them in. With this week‘s temps it makes sense to go their after the second way down is completed.

Hawk is absolutely correct about pictures. There are some who are not thrilled about ski resorts being open and looking for examples. After six days, my observation is that almost all are behaving well and wearing masks, and I have observed lifties asking those who aren‘t to pull them up and people are doing it.

Final topic. Every ski area I know want lifties to ask people to take off their back packs. This is for safety. A few years ago at a western resort some had their pack caught getting off and chimed to death as I recall.

Hope the Euro model is the right one and we get some good snow with the weeks Nor’Easter.

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bumpcrasher said:

Anyone know why the snowguns are off over at Gate House? No snow being made over there today.

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WinS said:

I actually do speaking with someone from Mt Ops today. They were finishing on Downspout, Lower Jester and Coffee run and the base areas with guns firing on stage 4 in these temps and using all the water capacity. GMP is curtailing them for a few hours tonight. After that they will be switching over to Pushover on the GH side as the other trails should be done.

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Slidebrook87 said:

Any idea if Lower Downspout could possibly open this by this weekend? It would be great to have an option to bypass the Heaven’s Gate lift line and to be able to ski Ripcord/Spillsville and not have to ride Heaven’s Gate up again.

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KustyTheKlown said:

killington opened parking reservations early this morning, but after the big day of powder skiing and long icy driving yesterday, i didn't feel super motivated to drive an hour+ and deal with what i assume are going to be pretty big crowds at killington, so i just took it easy and did about 2.5 hours at lincoln peak. the ~5" made a big difference, and everything is skiing pretty nice. ripcord is bumped up, but still has big whales. organgrinder skied great. snowball/fling also very nice. but the treat was twist, which was not open but was totally skiable. the top was gorgeous, untouched, no bottoming out, silky smooth. the lower half had some chunk and bumps and snakes, but that's why we have rock skis.

i will prob ski mount ellens one route tomorrow, to avoid crowds again, and then magic sunday. 11 ski days out of 12 days in Vermont. good start to my season this.

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