Cannon 2/3/11

[Cannonball]

I don't really have the time or energy to write a real trip report. So I'll just mention the 2 most salient points of the day:

1) It was super good everywhere on the mtn all day. Possibly the best day of the season.

2) The Profile chair was closed for most of the day on 'visibility hold'. This was strange/hilarious/annoying in a big way. Strange, because zero viz on the upper mtn at Cannon is par for the course. When did that change? Hilarious because the reason was that they were blasting snow on Profile creating the viz problem. Again, they alway do this so what's new? But annoying because that effectively shuts down the entire upper mountain since they have already decided it's not worth running the tram mid-week. When they finally realized that shutting the guns off would solve the problem they lift opened and even more goodness was had.

 

[Puck it]

Wtf

 

[Cannonball]

wtf

ikr

 

[riverc0il]

Wtf

Qft

 

[Puck it]

Qft

Lol

 

[thetrailboss]

It's easy. Sugarbush has done this before. It saves the upper mountain and its snow for the weekend crowd.

 

[Cannonball]

It's easy. Sugarbush has done this before. It saves the upper mountain and its snow for the weekend crowd.

Hmm maybe. We discussed that. But that didn't really make sense for a bunch of reasons:
1) They eventually opened up in the afternoon and it got tracked out fast.
2) They had the lift spinning all day with top and bottom lifties working. So it was a pretty expensive closed lift.
3) They had the Tram cafe open but with no access to it. A lot of $7 mac & cheeses didn't get sold.

I don't doubt that the viz was truly horrible and that there are associated liabilities. It was just a first for Cannon. 2 weeks ago they had Taft open with snow guns placed down the center line of the trail blasting full on during a whiteout snowstorm....and the trail was open!! Talk about zero viz. I'm guessing there was an incident or complaints that changed their policy.

 

[thetrailboss]

If it opened than my theory didn't explain it. Must be they were concerned about snowmaking going on the liftline. Maybe it was wind? I don't know.