Did Mount Snow lose the Dew Tour?

[millerm277]

Even if the rest of the mountain got a little less snow-making and they closed a weekend earlier than they could have isn't it worth it to have the Dew Tour?

For the mountain? From their perspective, perhaps.

For most of the people that ski Killington, which has a significantly greater portion of people and owners in the area there to actually ski as opposed to say, Okemo, I'd say most definitely not.

They agreed to host the event, they ought to budget for what it requires, in snowmaking as well. If they can't afford it without shortchanging the skiing (obviously, the trail closures/crowds during the event are understandable) for the paying customers during the rest of the season, then they shouldn't be holding the event.

I'm not saying they will, I'm hopeful that they "get it" as far as expectations goes.

 

[SkiDork]

Someone should prolly update the Winter Dew Tour wiki page. It makes no mention of Killington... Still has a lot of links to Mount Snow though.

 

[drjeff]

Well the math is not very complex if you have some idea of the rough dimensions. A massive pro/superpark level tabletop jump is somewhere around 5-10 acre feet of volume. (One of the tables in the dreamaker park is around 1 acre foot, BTW) Considering the snow/ice to build one is denser than normal manmade snow once moved around, so add 50% on top of that - so call it 7 to 15 acre feet snow needed for a massive jump. Consider there's 3-4 jumps like that in a pro course, plus various rail features, it probably amounts to somewhere around 50-100 acre feet for a course. A halfpipe 450ft long with roughly 50ft wide walls and 25 ft overall depth comes in at around 40 acre feet of snow. So, call it 150 acre feet of focused snowmaking, for good measure.

Killington makes approximately 3000 acre feet each year, so 150 acre-ft is 5% of that.

There whole system could produce 150 acre ft in two days of optimal snowmaking, however it would be spread out.

Suppose they can only put 10 snowguns on the halfpipe and 25 on the slopestyle, each outputing at a rate of 50 gpm. It's going to take them nearly 11 days of snowmaking to produce 150 acre feet of snow.

A "supertrail" 3500ft long, 200ft wide takes 80 acre feet to cover to a 5 foot depth.

These are just some very rough estimates to give an idea of scale.

Of course HS, there's that slight variable of temps/humidity to put into the equation, and then, from having watched them build the courses the last 2 winters, what usually happens is after the mounds of snow are roughly set, they'll need to turn a few of the guns back on for a day or 2 to make things the full size they want them. My hunch is that the snowmaking folks will have a roughly 3 week window penciled in for product production

 

[Highway Star]

They agreed to host the event, they ought to budget for what it requires, in snowmaking as well. If they can't afford it without shortchanging the skiing (obviously, the trail closures/crowds during the event are understandable) for the paying customers during the rest of the season, then they shouldn't be holding the event.

Assuming my number of 150 acre feet is accurate, that's about $200,000 of snowmaking or so in optimal conditions. A fairly small number compared to their overall operating costs and and reasonable number compared to other costs they may incurr to put on the event. I would assume they stand to bring in....$1m+?

I wonder if Killington gets paid by the dew tour, or the other way around, or if they just agree to host it - incurring costs, and gaining revenue?

 

[Newpylong]

I would be willing to bet Mount Snow blew that much money in one day of snowmaking production for the Dew tour. They made snow for a couple weeks.