Cannon Mtn expansion is a go

bluishgreen · Mar 27, 2009

riverc0il said:
I am all for no lease, especially since it might have been the GM and not the state that made Cannon not a profitable area. The place has really changed in a lot of ways since the new GM. Right now, the biggest argument for a lease, the red ink argument, is no longer valid.

I go back-and-forth on the issue.

I'm not against leasing, but there are business realities about Cannon that people who take the "it worked for Sunappee, so it must work for Cannon" argument completely miss (and like you said, even more so in the current economy):
--Distance. Sunapee makes a huge amount of money simply on being close enough to the Boston and southern NH area for day-trippers. Cannon is not within a close enough range to get nearly the number of day-trippers that Sunapee gets. Yes, hard-core people will drive that far, but this is far too small a population to determine profitability.
--Weather. Sunapee has very moderate weather, so it is more reliable in terms of getting an enjoyable day. Cannon of course, isn't quite so forgiving, scaring away people, and you can't do anything about the weather, regardless of how much money you have.
--Terrain. Cannon is a far more advanced mountain, deterring some people, while Sunapee can cater to all people.
--Real estate. Even throwing-out politics of fed/state land issues, there just isn't anywhere to build logistically. On the tram side, it's all cliffs and ledges, the bottom has Echo Lake and and an interstate highway. The private land on the other side of Mittersill has been bought and built-out through the last 20 years. The only place to really build slope-side is Mittersill Village, which already exists and owned. All the real money in running a ski place is in building and selling new condos, and but there just isn't anywhere to build from a practical standpoint.

Again, I'm not against leasing--I just can't stand the current arguments, which all revolve around Sunapee's success. I'd like to see someone with a plan that focuses on how Cannon can succeed, and not simply "it worked in that place, so it must be able to work here...", which I find as naive. I actually like what the Muellers have done with Sunapee, however, Sunapee and Cannon are two completely different beasts. One big risk with leasing is: the state leases it out, the company fails, and then Cannon closes-down because the state budget is now used to not paying for it. I just want it done in a more thought-out manner, rather than on a whim because someone got excited when they saw a shiny object down south...

One thing on the GM's, though. Cannon was profitable under the previous GM in the early 2000's. The last few years that he was there were not profitable, but we also didn't have good snow years. The current GM had a record snow year his first year, and and extremely above average year his second year, so he's also been somewhat fortunate. I'm not saying the current GM couldn't do it without record snow, since I like a lot of the things he's done, but I think it's a bit of an unfair comparison.

michael

St. Bear · Mar 27, 2009

bluishgreen said:
I go back-and-forth on the issue.

I'm not against leasing, but there are business realities about Cannon that people who take the "it worked for Sunappee, so it must work for Cannon" argument completely miss (and like you said, even more so in the current economy):
--Distance. Sunapee makes a huge amount of money simply on being close enough to the Boston and southern NH area for day-trippers. Cannon is not within a close enough range to get nearly the number of day-trippers that Sunapee gets. Yes, hard-core people will drive that far, but this is far too small a population to determine profitability.
--Weather. Sunapee has very moderate weather, so it is more reliable in terms of getting an enjoyable day. Cannon of course, isn't quite so forgiving, scaring away people, and you can't do anything about the weather, regardless of how much money you have.
--Terrain. Cannon is a far more advanced mountain, deterring some people, while Sunapee can cater to all people.
--Real estate. Even throwing-out politics of fed/state land issues, there just isn't anywhere to build logistically. On the tram side, it's all cliffs and ledges, the bottom has Echo Lake and and an interstate highway. The private land on the other side of Mittersill has been bought and built-out through the last 20 years. The only place to really build slope-side is Mittersill Village, which already exists and owned. All the real money in running a ski place is in building and selling new condos, and but there just isn't anywhere to build from a practical standpoint.

Again, I'm not against leasing--I just can't stand the current arguments, which all revolve around Sunapee's success. I'd like to see someone with a plan that focuses on how Cannon can succeed, and not simply "it worked in that place, so it must be able to work here...", which I find as naive. I actually like what the Muellers have done with Sunapee, however, Sunapee and Cannon are two completely different beasts. One big risk with leasing is: the state leases it out, the company fails, and then Cannon closes-down because the state budget is now used to not paying for it. I just want it done in a more thought-out manner, rather than on a whim because someone got excited when they saw a shiny object down south...

One thing on the GM's, though. Cannon was profitable under the previous GM in the early 2000's. The last few years that he was there were not profitable, but we also didn't have good snow years. The current GM had a record snow year his first year, and and extremely above average year his second year, so he's also been somewhat fortunate. I'm not saying the current GM couldn't do it without record snow, since I like a lot of the things he's done, but I think it's a bit of an unfair comparison.

michael

A lot of good points.

I just want to elaborate on your point about the terrain. Along with it, Cannon has a reputation for being a very icy and windy. I went there twice last year, and when I mentioned that to my mother (who skied in her youth) and my uncle (who had high school ski jumping competitions there), the first thing they said was, "Must have been windy and cold, huh?"

I invited a good friend of mine for my 2nd trip up. This was his 2nd year on skis, and he's a solid intermediate. First response from him was, "Isn't Cannon really hard?" A reputation like that is tough to overcome in the minds of the average skiing family, and everyone knows that is the sweetspot where resorts make their $$.

By the way, my friend loved the mountain so much, he's entertaining getting a season's pass for next year.

bluishgreen · Mar 27, 2009

Trail widening

deadheadskier said:
I'm sure once they open up the can of worms with a lift, the intermediate skiing populous will bang the drum for more grooming and trail widening. Their voice $$$$ is louder than those who appreciate slack country.

They cannot legally build any new trails and/or expand beyond the current setup (or how it was in 1989) nor can they install lifts in new areas, per the agreement with the land swap. That is the reason why they must stick with a double chair--they can't widen the lift trail for anything bigger. That should at least keep things from getting too crowded on the slopes going down, which is good.

Of course, I remember Mittersill as a kid in the 70's as the "wide-open" place, as opposed to Cannon's narrow trails, so it's a bit amusing/ironic to me to think of Mittersill terms of keeping trails "narrow". On a side topic, I still don't understand the reasoning behind building "Profile" as a wide-open trail on Cannon--there's a reason all the trails on upper-Cannon are narrow and winding. Every time I'm on Cannonball Express a day or so after a big storm and see grass poking through because the wind blew-away two feet of powder, I wonder, "whose idea was this?"

michael

bluishgreen · Mar 27, 2009

Funny--I remember everyone saying this as a kid when they closed in '81 that this would happen. It only took 28 years to come true!

michael

deadheadskier · Mar 27, 2009

They should just plant a row of trees down the center of profile and make it two separate trails. Of course, getting any vegetation to grow in that exposure would be difficult.

I also think they should do some planting on some of the Front Five trails. Doesn't make sense to me why those trails are as wide as they are either.

bluishgreen · Mar 27, 2009

deadheadskier said:
They should just plant a row of trees down the center of profile and make it two separate trails. Of course, getting any vegetation to grow in that exposure would be difficult.

I also think they should do some planting on some of the Front Five trails. Doesn't make sense to me why those trails are as wide as they are either.

That was my thought too--not only is the exposure bad for growing, but you can't usually do things like transplanting on such thin amounts of soil, so you have to really wait for it to grow back naturally, and it would be a more long-term initiative.

One wind pattern difference between Profile and the front five are that the snow just seems to disappear completely from Profile, while the lower ones can sometimes produce some crazy drifts to one side, which can actually be cool sometimes.

michael

bluishgreen · Mar 27, 2009

bluishgreen said:
One wind pattern difference between Profile and the front five are that the snow just seems to disappear completely from Profile, while the lower ones can sometimes produce some crazy drifts to one side, which can actually be cool sometimes.
michael

Actually, I should correct myself on the snow "disappearing" from Profile. That's actually the snow that ends-up on i-93 on those days when it's a blue sky in both Franconia and Lincoln, but a blizzard in the notch!

michael

riverc0il · Mar 27, 2009

bluishgreen said:
--Distance. Sunapee makes a huge amount of money simply on being close enough to the Boston and southern NH area for day-trippers. Cannon is not within a close enough range to get nearly the number of day-trippers that Sunapee gets. Yes, hard-core people will drive that far, but this is far too small a population to determine profitability.

Cannon is not that much further from Boston than Sunapee. From Concord, Cannon is just over an hour's drive. Sunapee has to be at least 40 minutes or so I would imagine? I think the distance is negligible in the grand scheme of things. Both are within the magic 2 hour time frame from Boston.

bluishgreen said:
--Terrain. Cannon is a far more advanced mountain, deterring some people, while Sunapee can cater to all people.

On the flip side, a lot of people choose Cannon over Sunapee because of its terrain. I have never skied Sunapee in my life. Was not worth the drive compared to Cannon when I lived in MA and definitely not worth the drive now that I live in NH. So the terrain goes both ways. Upper intermediates can handle most of Cannon no problem and Tuckerbrook, while not leveling the playing field completely, certainly put Cannon into the position of being able to offer an experience for the entire family and all levels.

bluishgreen said:
Again, I'm not against leasing--I just can't stand the current arguments, which all revolve around Sunapee's success. I'd like to see someone with a plan that focuses on how Cannon can succeed, and not simply "it worked in that place, so it must be able to work here...", which I find as naive. I actually like what the Muellers have done with Sunapee, however, Sunapee and Cannon are two completely different beasts. One big risk with leasing is: the state leases it out, the company fails, and then Cannon closes-down because the state budget is now used to not paying for it. I just want it done in a more thought-out manner, rather than on a whim because someone got excited when they saw a shiny object down south...

Excellent point. For some reason, talk of leasing Cannon always draws in Sunapee and the Muellers even though it is a completely different issue, different mountain, different time, etc. and who even knows if the Muellers would want to run a mountain without real estate options (apparently, that seems to be why they wanted Sunapee...). Cannon already has the infrastructure that Sunapee then lacked. Definitely a different beast.

riverc0il · Mar 27, 2009

bluishgreen said:
Of course, I remember Mittersill as a kid in the 70's as the "wide-open" place, as opposed to Cannon's narrow trails, so it's a bit amusing/ironic to me to think of Mittersill terms of keeping trails "narrow".

:lol: :lol: :lol:

I love the irony. While I never skied Mittersill as an open area, nor did I ski Cannon much prior to Phase I of the redesign when they installed the Peabody High Speed and widened things out a bit, I can say that Cannon's reputation as having lots of old school narrow trails is a bit blown at of proportion. Cannon is home to a lot of really wide trails. They just happen to have a better balance than most areas with retaining some narrow windy trails as well.

bluishgreen said:
On a side topic, I still don't understand the reasoning behind building "Profile" as a wide-open trail on Cannon--there's a reason all the trails on upper-Cannon are narrow and winding. Every time I'm on Cannonball Express a day or so after a big storm and see grass poking through because the wind blew-away two feet of powder, I wonder, "whose idea was this?"

I am with you there!!! michael--welcome aboard AZ! I appreciate your thoughtful posts in this thread and share many of your thoughts regarding Cannon.

bluishgreen · Mar 28, 2009

riverc0il said:
:lol: :lol: :lol:

I love the irony. While I never skied Mittersill as an open area, nor did I ski Cannon much prior to Phase I of the redesign when they installed the Peabody High Speed and widened things out a bit, I can say that Cannon's reputation as having lots of old school narrow trails is a bit blown at of proportion. Cannon is home to a lot of really wide trails. They just happen to have a better balance than most areas with retaining some narrow windy trails as well.

I thought of that too after I wrote it. I think it's because the first thing that comes to mind for me when I think of Cannon is the upper mountain, such as Upper Cannon (which I still think is one of the most fun trails in NE), Taft, the Hardscrables, Ravine, etc. Most people tend to think of the front five, which are all wide, other than Paulie's.

Thanks,

michael

bluishgreen · Mar 28, 2009

riverc0il said:
Cannon is not that much further from Boston than Sunapee. From Concord, Cannon is just over an hour's drive. Sunapee has to be at least 40 minutes or so I would imagine? I think the distance is negligible in the grand scheme of things. Both are within the magic 2 hour time frame from Boston.

Once you're on i-93, and keeping at or under 70mph, from actual Boston (ie, inside rt-128), Cannon is usually closer to 2:15, while Sunapee is a little over 1:30 minutes. I only go to Sunapee maybe once every two years, so I may be off some, and maybe more like 1:45, but I've driven to Littleton/Franconia 1000 times, since I'm from there, and my family is still there. There's definitely over an hour difference round-trip, which makes a big difference if you have kids in the car. I don't actually have kids, people joke that, like "dog years" vs regular years, there are "kids in the car hours" vs regular hours when planning a trip.

A big thing, too, is distance perception, and not actual time--people simply look at a map and see Cannon "way up there", and Sunapee closer to home. That same perception stops people from going to Cannon vs Loon/Waterville, even though there's less than a 15 minute difference.

riverc0il said:
On the flip side, a lot of people choose Cannon over Sunapee because of its terrain. I have never skied Sunapee in my life. Was not worth the drive compared to Cannon when I lived in MA and definitely not worth the drive now that I live in NH. So the terrain goes both ways. Upper intermediates can handle most of Cannon no problem and Tuckerbrook, while not leveling the playing field completely, certainly put Cannon into the position of being able to offer an experience for the entire family and all levels.

It goes both ways, but there's a bigger population of casual people looking for "blues", and a bigger pool of money. Cannon has definitely made strides with the Tuckerbrook area, but there is again the perception vs reality thing, which the new GM is certainly trying to fix in their marketing with much more family focus.

The weather has the same perception issue--while Cannon certainly has its share of bad days, its reputation has taken on its own exaggerated legend. That perception is a lot tougher to shake than the terrain one, though. I ski Jay a good amount, and love the place, but Jay easily has as bad wind as Cannon--people think they pioneered glades out of foresight, when it was really out of necessity. It also isn't a coincidence that both Cannon and Jay have weather-shielded trams. When I go to Burke, a lot of NEK locals say they don't go to Jay as much because of the wind, but they've managed to avoid the reputation that Cannon got for non-locals, maybe because of the glades' shielding the weather.

bluishgreen · Mar 28, 2009

riverc0il said:
:lol: :lol: :lol:
I love the irony. While I never skied Mittersill as an open area, nor did I ski Cannon much prior to Phase I of the redesign when they installed the Peabody High Speed and widened things out a bit, I can say that Cannon's reputation as having lots of old school narrow trails is a bit blown at of proportion. Cannon is home to a lot of really wide trails. They just happen to have a better balance than most areas with retaining some narrow windy trails as well.

I actually didn't ski in the 90's, so I missed all those year-by-year changes. I grew-up there in the 70's and 80's, and stopped skiing/boarding the winter of '89, and didn't really get back into skiing again until after 2000, so there's a big gap in my recollections.

In any case, I believe what they did is just turn the entire width of what used to be two parallel T-bars into one big trail. When the snowpack is really low, I've noticed in previous years, that you can see various metal posts, etc, sticking out of the ground on the far left (going up) under the Cannonball lift, which I thought was the remnants of one of the old T-bars, although maybe it was just snowmaking equipment. Either way, I always cringe when I see people skiing outside the fence, with metal scraps lurking under the snow.

michael

SIKSKIER · Mar 30, 2009

Blueish,you must have spent a fair amount of time in the Cannon area for you make some solid comments.Welcome.Is Loon really closer than Cannon in terms of travel time?It takes about 8 minutes to get to the Tram after Lincolns exit 32.I would estimate that its about the same time to go through Lincoln.

St. Bear · Mar 30, 2009

SIKSKIER said:
Blueish,you must have spent a fair amount of time in the Cannon area for you make some solid comments.Welcome.Is Loon really closer than Cannon in terms of travel time?It takes about 8 minutes to get to the Tram after Lincolns exit 32.I would estimate that its about the same time to go through Lincoln.

I think when people say that Loon is closer (and I say the same thing), what is meant is perceived closeness. Just the fact that it's further south on the map and its exit comes first, then a day tripper will target that area first. The same thing goes for Waterville Valley. It may be a good 10-15 minutes off the highway, but it's exit comes first so it seems closer. Plus, especially if it's a far drive, just getting off the highway for gas, food, or just a change of pace is just as good as being there.

I may be wrong, and I'll defer to someone like Blueish who is local and would have a better perspective than me.

eatskisleep · Mar 30, 2009

SIKSKIER said:
In short, Mittersill will become a part of Cannon, but plans for its eventual appearance are merely in the beginning stages. There will be very limited grooming and patrolling over there in the early stages, with a bit more in the future. There is no snowmaking right now, but there may be limited snowmaking on just a couple of primary trails some time in the future. We don’t want to take away what’s so special about Mittersill, or infringe upon its culture, so as the terrain area is incorporated into Cannon, there will certainly be slower changes on that side than on Cannon proper as the entire ski area continues to evolve.

Stay tuned!

So don't groom it... leave it natural...

Cannon Mtn expansion is a go

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