First to fire up the snowguns ...

[drjeff]

damn that looks sweet at both places. and there's snow in the forecast. looks like they could open tomorrow if they wanted.

The big thing that you need to remember about the snowmaking systems at Loveland and A-Basin is that they are by far and away not large! And to put it in perspective, Spinmaster K's home hill, Killington probably has 3 to 4 times the snowmaking firepower on Snowshed Slope alone as Loveland or A Basin has for their entire mountain! They just can't pump enough water up the hill run enough guns at once to open up a trail or two in much under a weeks worth of time.

 

[millerm277]

The big thing that you need to remember about the snowmaking systems at Loveland and A-Basin is that they are by far and away not large! And to put it in perspective, Spinmaster K's home hill, Killington probably has 3 to 4 times the snowmaking firepower on Snowshed Slope alone as Loveland or A Basin has for their entire mountain! They just can't pump enough water up the hill run enough guns at once to open up a trail or two in much under a weeks worth of time.

Agreed. For example, A-Basin's press release says they fired up 16 snowguns. Around here, that's just a little resurfacing. A-Basin is using fan guns, so the maximum possible is probably still way south of 2000GPM. Killington and Hunter are both around 10000GPM+. *

Also, from the looks of things, their trails are much, much rockier than comparable EC ones, so I'd expect they need a lot more snow depth to open.

Heavenly's snowmaking system is the only Western snowmaking system I know of that's comparable in size to the EC areas.

*Disclaimer: I just like to read about snowmaking, and have some small homemade snowguns to play with, and that's most likely way on the high side for A-Basin's numbers.