Crotched 1/22/14

[deadheadskier]

Mountain skied pretty well today. I arrived late morning and found the Rocket down (surprise, surprise) and did some laps on the Park Trail and Meteor to start the day skiing off the Park Chair. Both had seen a significant refresh and were near perfect packed powder. Rocket opened about noon and outside of a couple of runs, I spent the rest of the day skiing Pluto's with the guns blasting on it. The carryover from the guns was coating the bumps under the chair a fair bit, so I spent most of the afternoon under the chair trying to ski in some bump lines. They need a lot more traffic than what I was providing by myself to really get going, but still fun none the less down to about Tower 6.. Hopefully some of the night skiers tonight spend some time in there to ski them in some more.

Skied UFO and Jupiters once. Both had seen some snowmaking, but it appeared only a little bit compared to the other trails as there was still an occasional frozen granular area on UFO and quite of you hard pack / ice areas on Jupiters. Didn't make it further west on the mountain than UFO. Once I found the snow good on the ungroomed terrain under the Rocket I didn't bother skiing elsewhere.

I bet conditions there will be quite good this weekend.

Oh and I'm sure most aren't surprised, the mountain got pretty much zilch from the storm last night. Just a dusting.

 

[Tin]

Nice to hear about the guns and bumps. I'll be there Saturday.

 

[dmw]

Nice, might hit it Friday. I think someone last weekend said there was coverage in the woods - guessing its sketchy if not mentioned here?


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[deadheadskier]

Nice, might hit it Friday. I think someone last weekend said there was coverage in the woods - guessing its sketchy if not mentioned here?


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I didn't duck in. Looked a little too thin to me.

 

[dmw]

Yeah, wishful thinking.


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[Tin]

The bumps and Final Frontier can keep you busy dmw.

 

[dmw]

True.


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[Tin]

Any idea what was up with The Rocket? This is getting annoying. They had it really cranked.up speed wise on Saturday, felt like one of the faster quads I've been on besides the Forerunner and Wildcat's.

 

[deadheadskier]

no clue. asked the lifty at the park lift what was up and he didn't know.

 

[Tin]

Part or most of the problem seems to be none of them seem to know. Saturday it stopped when we were up to load and the guy running it just hit a bunch of random buttons, walked into the shed, and then hit a bunch of the same buttons until it started again.

 

[yeggous]

That lift is definitely fast enough for that hill. It seems like a pipe dream that it will run reliably. It's not nearly as fast as Wildcat, but it beats a lot of detachable quads like those at Bretton Woods. I talked to the lifties and a manager about the Curse of Ascutney.

The lifty said that because the lift moves so quickly it is always tripping one or another of the numerous safety sensors. I roughly translate this to: I'm 18 years old and making minimum wage. Our lift maintenance and operations team is too inexperienced to know what they are doing.

The manager implied that the fundamental problem is that Ascutney let the lifts sit and age in place for many years and so it just was not well maintained. He said they have started intentionally closing the lift for 20 minute periods in the middle of the day to do preventative maintenance.

I chalk this up to another case of Peak Resorts pinching pennies and paying the price instead.