Treeskier
Member
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2005
- Messages
- 180
- Points
- 18
Exceeding Expectations:
What a testing winter at Sugarbush. A good friend of mine Claudio coined the phrase "The Mountain continually exceeded expectations", and I could not agree more.
First, there was the reorganization that brought in some very good “ski minded” people like Hardy Merrill, John Egan, and Doug Lewis. These are the people who helped management realize what Sugarbush Skiers are truly looking for, and ultimately fulfilled these desires with their wide ranges of skill, expertise, and experience, as well as their hard work, and attention to detail. Permissions and encouragement from management allowing these people to hire and oversee some excellent prodigies no doubt improved the success of their efforts.
Then, when Mother Nature continually threw curve balls they where able to swing back and here are just a few of the examples:
One day during February Spring Break, rather than putting a thin coating of snow all over the place after one of those rain events (that the first hour of skiers would enjoy, but everyone else would be skating on all day) they instead chose to build a good deep base on an expert/intermediate trail and a beginner trail, so everyone had at least one place on each Mountain to ski on and have fun all day.
When Castlerock and Moonshine trails were too thin to open, they transported snow or dragged snow guns in to build enough of a base to open these gems.
On one of the last weekends of the season the wind gusts were so high that they could not open any of the North Lifts, but they groomed out Sunny D to keep the area open, which meant they where the only VT ski area open that day.
And let’s not forget that unique event of the hurricane force wind spinning the chair into the lift tower on Super Bravo! How quickly and efficiently they repaired the damage, and rumor has it that they flew the State Inspector in on a Sunday to expedite the reopening of this lift.
They also followed through with their promise of starting to blow snow early in the season, and kept it up much later than most other Mountains; which allowed them to be open earlier than other ski areas in VT, and to be the second last to close (Kmart stayed open on more day than us, and you needed “rock skis” there).
With the new Sugarbush way of thinking and attitude they opened marginal terrain all the time…YAH! "Did We Mention the Rocks" is considered a positive Sugarbush Sign, and if anyone wants to ski vanilla they can go back to the feeder hills.
Finally, there was closing weekend. Management and a lot of the staff rallied and re-opened (as scheduled and promised). Upper management ran lifts, took tickets, and dragged band equipment up to Glenn House. To top it all off they had our favorite blues band, the Detonators, play on the Glenn House deck the official final day of the season which was Sunday, April 30th! They even left the GMX running 1 ½ hours late so that the band could play one more fantastic set! Even when the beer ran out they found a way to pull beverages out of the golf course coolers and have them quickly transported up to the deck!
Again, exceeding expectations! Hats OFF!
What a testing winter at Sugarbush. A good friend of mine Claudio coined the phrase "The Mountain continually exceeded expectations", and I could not agree more.
First, there was the reorganization that brought in some very good “ski minded” people like Hardy Merrill, John Egan, and Doug Lewis. These are the people who helped management realize what Sugarbush Skiers are truly looking for, and ultimately fulfilled these desires with their wide ranges of skill, expertise, and experience, as well as their hard work, and attention to detail. Permissions and encouragement from management allowing these people to hire and oversee some excellent prodigies no doubt improved the success of their efforts.
Then, when Mother Nature continually threw curve balls they where able to swing back and here are just a few of the examples:
One day during February Spring Break, rather than putting a thin coating of snow all over the place after one of those rain events (that the first hour of skiers would enjoy, but everyone else would be skating on all day) they instead chose to build a good deep base on an expert/intermediate trail and a beginner trail, so everyone had at least one place on each Mountain to ski on and have fun all day.
When Castlerock and Moonshine trails were too thin to open, they transported snow or dragged snow guns in to build enough of a base to open these gems.
On one of the last weekends of the season the wind gusts were so high that they could not open any of the North Lifts, but they groomed out Sunny D to keep the area open, which meant they where the only VT ski area open that day.
And let’s not forget that unique event of the hurricane force wind spinning the chair into the lift tower on Super Bravo! How quickly and efficiently they repaired the damage, and rumor has it that they flew the State Inspector in on a Sunday to expedite the reopening of this lift.
They also followed through with their promise of starting to blow snow early in the season, and kept it up much later than most other Mountains; which allowed them to be open earlier than other ski areas in VT, and to be the second last to close (Kmart stayed open on more day than us, and you needed “rock skis” there).
With the new Sugarbush way of thinking and attitude they opened marginal terrain all the time…YAH! "Did We Mention the Rocks" is considered a positive Sugarbush Sign, and if anyone wants to ski vanilla they can go back to the feeder hills.
Finally, there was closing weekend. Management and a lot of the staff rallied and re-opened (as scheduled and promised). Upper management ran lifts, took tickets, and dragged band equipment up to Glenn House. To top it all off they had our favorite blues band, the Detonators, play on the Glenn House deck the official final day of the season which was Sunday, April 30th! They even left the GMX running 1 ½ hours late so that the band could play one more fantastic set! Even when the beer ran out they found a way to pull beverages out of the golf course coolers and have them quickly transported up to the deck!
Again, exceeding expectations! Hats OFF!
