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Crotched Mtn. 2016-17

Savemeasammy

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For now, the only moguls are on UFO and while yesterdays photo shows two rows of moguls, today, there are three. I prefer the irregular natural ones, but I'm told these are being set up for an upcoming competition.

Aside to savemesammy: Sorry. I don't do photos.

Do you know anything about the comp? I'm assuming it's for kids...?


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Edd

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Yikes it's busy as shit here today. Fox 25 news is here. Tons of kids. Buzz = killed.

They don't seem to be on the Rocket though, thank geowd.
 
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joshua segal

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Yikes it's busy as shit here today. Fox 25 news is here. Tons of kids. Buzz = killed.

They don't seem to be on the Rocket though, thank geowd.
This morning we had a few busloads of beginners + a local school that comes every Friday AM.

Also, FOX-25 gave away about 200 CM comps. Most of the guests with whom I road this AM (who weren't CM regulars) were on that FOX-25 free-bie. But as you point out, as long as you didn't want to ride the Magic Carpet, there were no lines.
 

puckoach

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I was there Friday as well, on the Fox25 promotion. First time I have been there.

Looks to me, that they are doing a great job, servicing "their" market. Which is as a community, not destination facility.

Great rental set-up. Although, I almost never enter the rental area, it's well located. Adjacent to the learning side of the hill. Loved the boot storage racks. Carpet an 2 person chair to service the Greens.

No lines to speak of. Good coverage. The cruisers pretty empty. Only concern, is a green cross trail from Rocket, to return to Rocket. like any crossing trail, in intersects other down hill trails. But, in this case, they had set up a race course, with start and 2-3 gates above the crossing trail. This was a practice course, not one with a gate/timer start area. IMHO, should have set up start below the crossing trail.

Every staff member I talked to, was great. Good conversations on the lifts. To me, a great place for me, an older cruiser.

Thank you Crotched and Fox25 !
 

joshua segal

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I was there Friday as well, on the Fox25 promotion. First time I have been there.

Looks to me, that they are doing a great job, servicing "their" market. Which is as a community, not destination facility.

...
Welcome and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Excellent observation about the ski area - and that's probably why the Mountainside Condos (the ones along the West Double) are as inexpensive as they are. When they were built, there were grandiose plans to interconnect the East (original Crotched) and West (originally Onset and currently called Crotched Mtn.) and to develop all the land in between. At that size (acreage), it would have been more a competitor with Sunapee and Gunstock as a destination resort rather than a community (or day trip) area like Wachusett and Pat's.

Many of our regular customers are ones who came here by accident when they went to areas with full parking lots and came up here just to find a place to ski that had a place for them to park. Many of those discovered an excellent hill with minimal lift lines and more and now have season passes and are counted among our regulars.
 

thebigo

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Finally made it back to crotched yesterday after a month in the hospital with a baby that decided to show up six weeks early. Surface was scratchy, probably the worst of the roughly dozen days I have been this year but understandable given the weather we have had and the fact that it was sunday afternoon. More a testament to the surface they offered in December than a complaint, a month of inactivity may have also contributed to my perception.

Good to see the bumps on UFO, fairly regular if widely spaced. Would be excellent with a little natural, hopefully next week. $29 sunday afternoon deal is appreciated, got my dad to join us for a couple of hours.

Put my four year old daughter in an afternoon lesson. I have taken her out a half dozen times over the last couple years with results ranging somewhere between utter failure and disaster. Cannot say enough good things about the session yesterday. Before the lesson she was having trouble standing on skis, after she was linking turns. Watched the instructor from a distance a few times, unlimited patience and positive encouragement. She did not want to leave after the lesson and has talked about nothing other than going back next week. A season pass for lessons or value pack of some sort would be enticing, not sure how this would work but it may get more to commit if you could spend $500 at the start of the year rather than $80 per week. With this said, $80 is an excellent value for nearly one on one instruction - it was her and another boy of similar age with a single instructor for three hours.

If anyone from management reads this, please drop the rope on the small connector from re-entry that runs back to the lodge under west lift. As a parent with a child in lessons it is nice to be able to watch for a few minutes but without the connector you are forced to either hike out of the learning area or ride the dreadfully slow west lift.
 
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drjeff

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Crotched was flat and fast, short of the seeded dual rows of now ice bumps on UFO.

16 mainly high speed GS runs in an hour and 35 minutes this morning, and the only time I had to even wait a single chair to board the Rocket was when an ability plus skier in a sled and escorts loaded Infront of me.

A fun, quick morning session at Crotched today

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dlague

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Crotched was flat and fast, short of the seeded dual rows of now ice bumps on UFO.

16 mainly high speed GS runs in an hour and 35 minutes this morning, and the only time I had to even wait a single chair to board the Rocket was when an ability plus skier in a sled and escorts loaded Infront of me.

A fun, quick morning session at Crotched today

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5.9375 per run. not bad - 4 minute ride up and quick ride down.
 

drjeff

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5.9375 per run. not bad - 4 minute ride up and quick ride down.
Good visibility, non existent crowds and smooth corduroy made it easy for me to feel like I was back in highschool and college racing days again!

Fortunately for those few other folks on the hill with me this morning I was in my snowpants and ski coat rather than the GS suit of my past racing days!!! [emoji12]

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joshua segal

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Feb. 8, 2017 - Weds.
After a lackluster January, February is off to a great start. One of the great beauties of living on a mountain and skiing every day is just how different every day can be.

After Tuesday's powder day, Weds. was a combination of groomed powder. (The groomer broke the crust left by the freezing rain.) As the day warmed up, the ungroomed started to ski well as a combination of spring snow plus soft chop. The natural-mogul lovers will appreciate the run under the Rocket.

But today (Feb. 9), that's just history as the new storm has already started dumping. About an inch is down and the forecasts are calling for 3" per hour snowfall rates meaning every run is a powder run! Local forecasts are calling for more than a foot - although with our bad luck this year, I suspect most of us will be pleased with a foot! Stay tuned - and if you dare to drive - come on up!
 

xwhaler

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Josh, let us know how the glades are skiing if you venture in. We were there for ARL last night so didn't sample the woods.
The bumps on UFO continue to get better every week.

I'll be up on Sunday with my family so hoping to get a few turns in the trees.
 

yeggous

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Josh, let us know how the glades are skiing if you venture in. We were there for ARL last night so didn't sample the woods.
The bumps on UFO continue to get better every week.

I'll be up on Sunday with my family so hoping to get a few turns in the trees.

Yes, I'd like to know too.

Yesterday's conditions were a constant evolution. When we first arrived at 4pm everything was soft and spring-like. With each run things firmed up until we hit that awkward teenage phase where the uneven snow surface was frozen solid in place. It was not fun. Fortunately within an hour skier traffic scraped loose the top of it and by 8pm it was much better -- loose granular over frozen granular.

Joshua, what is the story with the lights? There are a number of bulbs out all over the mountain and it is getting to be unsafe. I've noticed this all season and it doesn't seem to be getting better although I've seen people on the towers looking at lights.
 

Savemeasammy

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Trees are skiing better and better each run.

We were speculating last night that if the base solidified overnight that the trees would be in good condition. This is great to hear. Crotched is so much better when the trees are in play!


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joshua segal

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Feb. 9, 2017 - Thurs.
When the lifts opened this AM, it was dust-on-crust and not much fun. By 11AM, pretty much everything was skiing nicely, but especially the glades which are all pretty much protected from the wind. The only glade that I thought was particularly bad was Kuyper Belt. It would have been fine had it received even minimal care last summer.

While there were short (less than half-minute) liftlines, it is most unusual to see a crowd of this magnitude on a non-holiday Thursday.
Nothing happening overnight to change condx, so tomorrow (Fri., Feb. 10) should be super also.
 

snoseek

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Yeah that worth the drive over. Glad I stayed south. I hit a few things in the trees today but that mostly because it fell super light blower. There's still some crust but other trees were super smooth goodness. Place skis a lot different with some snow and was surprisingly entertaining I thought. Gonna do some midnight madness tomorrow night bumps should be a blast!
 

deadheadskier

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Credit to Crotched for starting to ski-in some moguls.

View attachment 21632

You can see by the amount of space in between (side to side) that these won't be zipper-liners. If they get bigger they will be good for people who are aspiring bumpers who want to work on rhythm and take it slow. Hopefully people will take an interest and put these to use (and hopefully they get some help from the fan guns).


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I was with Savemeasammy when these bumps went in. I thought no way they'd ever be that great. I didn't want to complain though because it was a better effort than I'd seen in recent years.

Well, the bumps have grown well enough over the past month to offer some pretty fun zipper lines in places. Still has some funky spots that require line adjustments, but I was very content lapping this trail most of the day today.

Great Job Crotched! I hope this is the operating plan every year moving forward. Only thing I'd change is that I hope you get started on bumping up UFO a bit earlier in the year next year. It would be great to get started over Christmas vacation week when you have the traffic on the hill to ski them in.
 

snoseek

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There were some bumps on jupiters storm that were skiing awfully nice the other day as well.

I'm going out for a MM session tomorrow night while its all still soft. Good thing you guys got on those nice bumps before the freeze. I too appreciate the effort for moguls even though I'm not really a true bumper its been great practicing and overall makes the mtn a lot more compelling
 
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