Jay Peak Conceptual Development Plan (2011-2016)

[JPTracker]

GRRR!!! I would have made the Bonnie replacement a priority before the terrain park chair!

Oh well, at least there will be more to do on the wind hold powder days!

They are putting in this chair because the tbar is down for the count and instead of spending money to fix it it makes more sense to replace it.

 

[gregnye]

They are putting in this chair because the tbar is down for the count and instead of spending money to fix it it makes more sense to replace it.

Good point. I totally forgot about the T-bar being broken. The order of this replacement now makes much more sense.

 

[riverc0il]

Because of the lousy winter this year only one new lift will be going in this summer. A new fixed grip quad will be going in along side of the terrain park to replace the t-bar, per the plans previously posted. The new six pack and relocating the Bonnie has been put off a year.

Fine with me.

Though this certainly puts that big sales increase everyone in Jay management is talking about in perspective. They probably didn't make their bottom line goal this year by a long shot after expenses.

 

[thetrailboss]

They are putting in this chair because the tbar is down for the count and instead of spending money to fix it it makes more sense to replace it.

That lift must be pushing 40 years old or so.

 

[Tin Woodsman]

Color me unimpressed with this whole plan from a pure skiing perspective. We hear all the time from Steve Wright and Co how they will never lose the soul that made Jay great while undergoing this modernization. With this newest plan, I just don't see it. And for me, it continues a pretty long track record of lousy mtn ops decisions by Bill Stenger, his commitment to gladed skiing notwithstanding.

- Can Am trail: complete disaster from a skiing and ecological perspective
- GM Freezer: made his patrons endure several minutes of he most brutal ride in New England solely to provide chair access to Ullr'sDream? Was that really worth it? Should have topped out at the 2nd tram tower and it would have provided access to everything except Ullr's but with a shorter, more wind protected ride
- Extensive trail widening in the works: is this really in keeping with what made Jay great? It's certainly in keeping with what made a lot of resorts lousy.
- West Bowl layout: Does anyone like transfer lifts? Lousy idea. The two main lifts don't seem to go to their respective peaks and seem strangely close together.
- Terrain park quad: throwing away a great opportunity to provide decent intermediate access on the lower mtn during storm days.

I'll hand it to Stenger for being at the forefront of the EB-5 movement and fundamentally transforming Jay as a business enterprise. But the glading stuff was a no-brainer given the snowfall they get and the fact that he just brought on map what locals had been doing for years. That's like giving the Saudis credit for building an oil industry. Any time he actually has to come up with an original idea for the mtn, it's a lousy one. If he had one of the incompetents running K-Mart's marketing dept instead of the well-respected Steve Wright, he'd be getting a lot more flack, and deservedly so.

 

[riverc0il]

If he had one of the incompetents running K-Mart's marketing dept instead of the well-respected Steve Wright...

:lol:

That irony aside, for all the bad decisions you say have been made, Jay is one of the greatest mountains for tree skiing and powder skiing in the east and has a much better vibe than many other VT mountains despite the resort build up. There is a lot of room for criticism over the years, lots of bad decisions. But Jay is still an awesome place despite those decisions.

 

[gregnye]

Because of the lousy winter this year only one new lift will be going in this summer. A new fixed grip quad will be going in along side of the terrain park to replace the t-bar, per the plans previously posted. The new six pack and relocating the Bonnie has been put off a year.

So--a completely new lift! Gotta give it a completely new name!

I could see the new bonnie 6-passenger chair named the "Powerline 6-pack" or perhaps just the "Bonnie express" but I can't think of a good name for this terrain park quad.

What do you think the name should be?

 

[thetrailboss]

The new lift is interesting because wasn't the original plan to reuse the Jet for that lift? Guess not now.

 

[thetrailboss]

And re: the "bad decision" post by Tinny:

It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback or an armchair resort operator, and we all do it. But the truth is I see and hear a lot of good things about JPR and what they have done. Yeah we all don't the expansion, but honestly folks, they have had plans for 20 or 30 years and it comes as no surprise.

Some specific points: trail widening. That was done in the 1980's when everyone else, Killington, Sugarloaf, Sunday River, and Sugarbush included, were doing it. Doesn't make it right, but snowmaking, grooming, and handling traffic demanded it.

As to the new trail widening plans, I thought that the last plan was not so bad?

GMF: I do agree that it is not a good idea with the winds and weather. But it made sense to get people as spread out to the underutilized terrain as possible. It looks good on paper. If they had ended it where the former GM Double ended then those trails were just get scraped down even faster. So it's a Catch 22.

West Bowl: not sure why the connector lift, but may have to do with the topography they are working with. As to why not all the way to the top, might have to do with the fact that the land borders the LT and their ROW/Conservation Easement might prevent Jay from going to the top. Plus, if the aforementioned weather is so bad, why would they want to run the lifts to exposed peaks? So folks can bit^& some more and be guaranteed an opportunity years down the road to say, "see, I told you so" ? :lol:

 

[riverc0il]

Regarding the Freezer, any one that has skied Jay has cursed its position and resulting wind issues. But I've often thought about how it could have been better placed.

Right up the gut of River Quai seems like a good idea but the Bonnie is already there and it is hard to traverse uphill to get to Weddlemaster that services the Ullr's terrain. A new cut thru trail is unreasonable as it would be going against the fall line. And some terrain would have been missed. The tram now becomes required to ski some trails that are currently skiable from the Freezer. Could they have known how bad the wind would be when building it? I don't know.

Only going to the Goat ridge seems like a good idea, that is a good trail pod with GMB, NWP, Expo, Lower Quai/Goat, etc. But that leaves the entire Ullr's area requiring a tram trip or up hill traverse from the Bonnie. Using the Bonnie, it can't be lapped.

So my thought is why didn't they cut down below the Ullr's drainage. This would have worked amazingly well with the West Bowl expansion eliminating the need for a transfer lift if the lift was cut low enough. You'd need to take the Bonnie or the Tram to get to Ullr's to get down to such a lift. Staircase/Everglade fans would be a little pissed that run would have a liftline cut through it. But a lift in that position would be protected from the ridge right until the unload station. It would eliminate the Kokomo run out (there would still be a run out) making that pod much more fun to ski. They could retain another fixed grip lift servicing Expo/GMB/etc and terraform NWP into an intermediate snow making trail to the Non-Freezer lift.

Fun to imagine at this point, any ways.

 

[Sick Bird Rider]

....

Only going to the Goat ridge seems like a good idea, that is a good trail pod with GMB, NWP, Expo, Lower Quai/Goat, etc. But that leaves the entire Ullr's area requiring a tram trip or up hill traverse from the Bonnie. Using the Bonnie, it can't be lapped.

So my thought is why didn't they cut down below the Ullr's drainage. This would have worked amazingly well with the West Bowl expansion eliminating the need for a transfer lift if the lift was cut low enough. You'd need to take the Bonnie or the Tram to get to Ullr's to get down to such a lift. Staircase/Everglade fans would be a little pissed that run would have a liftline cut through it. But a lift in that position would be protected from the ridge right until the unload station. It would eliminate the Kokomo run out (there would still be a run out) making that pod much more fun to ski. They could retain another fixed grip lift servicing Expo/GMB/etc and terraform NWP into an intermediate snow making trail to the Non-Freezer lift.

Fun to imagine at this point, any ways.

Hey! You stole my idea! Ha, I have been scheming this lift for many years. The Freezer should have stopped where the old Green Mountain Chair did. The base of our imagined lift would be somewhere around the Kokomo/Ullr's intersection, taking a line as riverCoil describes up to the existing Freezer drop-off. Totally desecrating Staircase and Everglade but opening up some great upper mountain skiing. I would ride that lift all day.

 

[BigJay]

Hey! You stole my idea! Ha, I have been scheming this lift for many years. The Freezer should have stopped where the old Green Mountain Chair did. The base of our imagined lift would be somewhere around the Kokomo/Ullr's intersection, taking a line as riverCoil describes up to the existing Freezer drop-off. Totally desecrating Staircase and Everglade but opening up some great upper mountain skiing. I would ride that lift all day.

Bottom of Everglade would be my pick but you would loose some of the bottom part and run on JFK for a bit.

No need to go on the flats... and at the end of the season, you can extend how much you use the Ullr's bowl trails instead of having that atrocious flat melt away in seconds.

 

[fbrissette]

Regarding the Freezer, any one that has skied Jay has cursed its position and resulting wind issues. But I've often thought about how it could have been better placed.

Right up the gut of River Quai seems like a good idea but the Bonnie is already there and it is hard to traverse uphill to get to Weddlemaster that services the Ullr's terrain. A new cut thru trail is unreasonable as it would be going against the fall line. And some terrain would have been missed. The tram now becomes required to ski some trails that are currently skiable from the Freezer. Could they have known how bad the wind would be when building it? I don't know.

Only going to the Goat ridge seems like a good idea, that is a good trail pod with GMB, NWP, Expo, Lower Quai/Goat, etc. But that leaves the entire Ullr's area requiring a tram trip or up hill traverse from the Bonnie. Using the Bonnie, it can't be lapped.

So my thought is why didn't they cut down below the Ullr's drainage. This would have worked amazingly well with the West Bowl expansion eliminating the need for a transfer lift if the lift was cut low enough. You'd need to take the Bonnie or the Tram to get to Ullr's to get down to such a lift. Staircase/Everglade fans would be a little pissed that run would have a liftline cut through it. But a lift in that position would be protected from the ridge right until the unload station. It would eliminate the Kokomo run out (there would still be a run out) making that pod much more fun to ski. They could retain another fixed grip lift servicing Expo/GMB/etc and terraform NWP into an intermediate snow making trail to the Non-Freezer lift.

Fun to imagine at this point, any ways.

This would work perfectly with the re-positioning of the Bonnie that would allow for direct access to Ulr. Otherwise, the access would be too difficult, especially with the Tram on wind hold. This also means that Hotel Jay and Tramhouse guests would be stuck with the mind-boggling slow metro chair (or low capacity tram) in the morning. There would be traffic jam at the Metro and Bonnie in the morning.

But looking at the map, I think you are definitely onto something. Instead of the awkward transfer lift, they could effectively put a lift up Ulr's and JFK (not into Everglade please !) to just beside the Flyer unload station. On the West bowl, adding a trail south-west of Chairlift 'I' would give access to that new chair. Getting out of the West bowl would require using chairlift 'I', skiing down to Ulr's Chair and back up. Looking at the topographic data, the beginning of this new lift would have to be below the flat part of Ulr's, otherwise skiing down from the west bowl would be impossible. This would be perfect. No weird transfer lift, and a dedicated chair for the Ulr's area without the flat part and frigid ride up the flyer.

Francois

 

[riverc0il]

I figured out that problem halfway through my post... shorten the Freezer to the Goat ridgeline and cut an intermediate trail with snow making down the NWP area. That would get folks over to the repositioned Freezer lift. Sorry, it would cut through Everglade, no way around it. But it would make skiing that pod actually worth while on a cold day.

 

[Tin Woodsman]

:lol:

That irony aside, for all the bad decisions you say have been made, Jay is one of the greatest mountains for tree skiing and powder skiing in the east and has a much better vibe than many other VT mountains despite the resort build up. There is a lot of room for criticism over the years, lots of bad decisions. But Jay is still an awesome place despite those decisions.

I guess it is ironic that Steve used to work for K, but that is now many, many moons ago.

I would argue that Jay's awesomeness is mostly, if not entirely, due to gifts from Mother Nature rather than from current mgmt. Pretty hard to screw up a mtn with 2000 vert that claims to receive over 20% more snow than anywhere else in the East.

 

[Tin Woodsman]

And re: the "bad decision" post by Tinny:

It's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback or an armchair resort operator, and we all do it. But the truth is I see and hear a lot of good things about JPR and what they have done. Yeah we all don't the expansion, but honestly folks, they have had plans for 20 or 30 years and it comes as no surprise.

I guess I don't understand the Monday Morning QB claim. It's not like I was at the table for many of these decisions. In the case of the Can Am trail, the internet didn't exist for anonymous posters to lob in their $0.02 and for the GM Freezer, I disinctly recall its alignment being a surprise to just about everyone after the fact. If the Web had existed back to the 80s, and Jay had been as forthcoming about its previous plans as it has been with the current ones, I should have been saying the same things mid-game on Sunday afternoon. It doesn't take 20 yrs of hindsight to realize that a trail like Can Am is no only a bad idea in the northeast, it is also wildly inconsistent with the character of the other Jay trails. It doesn't take even 10 yrs of hindsight to realize that enabling access to Ullr's and Wedlemaster was a pretty lame payoff for creating the worst chairlift ride in the East and destroying the upper sections of Everglade and Staircase.

Some specific points: trail widening. That was done in the 1980's when everyone else, Killington, Sugarloaf, Sunday River, and Sugarbush included, were doing it. Doesn't make it right, but snowmaking, grooming, and handling traffic demanded it.

This is addressed above, but none of the elements you names "demanded" so-called supertrails like Can Am. They may have enabled them, but they didn't demand them. We still have snowmaking, grooming and skier visists that are as high as ever, yet the days of the supertrail are blissfully in the past. It was pure fashion and fad, and shame on any resort that fell for it, in the process ruining what had been fantastic trails and/or stashes forever.

As to the new trail widening plans, I thought that the last plan was not so bad?

I guess we'll agree to disagree. I don't have a problem with widening if it is intended to address a dangerous intersection or if there's a specific trail that the mtn wants to turn into a race course, but the proposed widening in the new plan is pretty pervasive, impacting a large % of the names runs. If the excuse is that it's needed to handle projected increases in traffic, I thought that's what West Bowl is for in the first place. More width just means less character, more wind, more sun and less snow. It does absolutely nothing for the skiing experience in the vast majority of cases.

GMF: I do agree that it is not a good idea with the winds and weather. But it made sense to get people as spread out to the underutilized terrain as possible. It looks good on paper. If they had ended it where the former GM Double ended then those trails were just get scraped down even faster. So it's a Catch 22.

This is a false choice. They could have ended it near the 2nd tram twoer, thereby providing access to the entire Bonnie trail pod, which wasn't possible with the old terminus. By extending it to its current terminus, they added only Ullr's, Wedelmaster and JFK to the tally. Yes - you would have been left with those three trails served only by the tram - so what. You can only access some of the best terrain at MRG via the single, and I don't see too many people clamoring for that lift to be upgraded or replaced.

West Bowl: not sure why the connector lift, but may have to do with the topography they are working with. As to why not all the way to the top, might have to do with the fact that the land borders the LT and their ROW/Conservation Easement might prevent Jay from going to the top. Plus, if the aforementioned weather is so bad, why would they want to run the lifts to exposed peaks? So folks can bit^& some more and be guaranteed an opportunity years down the road to say, "see, I told you so" ? :lol:

I think riverCoil's suggestion of a lift from the bottom of West Bowl terminating somewhere on the shoulders of Jay would have had more merit and logic. This is, BTW, another shortcoming of the Freezer, as it effectively prevents any reasonable alignment of a lift out of West Bowl connecting to the main mtn. The original plans had such a lift terminating at the same spot as the GMF, but that was a disaster waiting to happen due to all the traffic in that small spot. As for the weather, those peaks are below treeline and much more sheltered than the shoulder of Jay where the Freezer terminates. If the reason is for ROW/conservation easement, then that's a different story.

Either way, I stand by my original assessment here - Stenger has not done all that well with his major mtn ops decisions and it basically gliding by on the strength of Jay's snowfall, which he has nothing to do with.

 

[Tin Woodsman]

Regarding the Freezer, any one that has skied Jay has cursed its position and resulting wind issues. But I've often thought about how it could have been better placed.

Right up the gut of River Quai seems like a good idea but the Bonnie is already there and it is hard to traverse uphill to get to Weddlemaster that services the Ullr's terrain. A new cut thru trail is unreasonable as it would be going against the fall line. And some terrain would have been missed. The tram now becomes required to ski some trails that are currently skiable from the Freezer. Could they have known how bad the wind would be when building it? I don't know.

I would argue that access to those trails wasn't nearly worth the pain it inflicts on every guest who rides that chair, or the increased wind holds, or the destruction of the upper parts of Everglade and Staircase. The way I look at it is that the GMF was designed to be the workhorse people mover out of the Tramside base. By stopping at tower 2, you would have accomplished two critical goals with this lift:

1) Enabling access to mutliple trail pods in order to spread the crowds out and
2) Providing a pretty good terrain pod to lap from tower 2 on down to the base

Was the price they and their guests have paid worth accessing 3 more trails and forever precluding the oppty for a more usable egress lift out of West Bowl? I would submit not.

Also, if they didn't know how bad the wind would be, then that doesn't speak very well for their planning. It's not like the wind blowing at Jay Peak is a new phenomenon.

So my thought is why didn't they cut down below the Ullr's drainage. This would have worked amazingly well with the West Bowl expansion eliminating the need for a transfer lift if the lift was cut low enough. You'd need to take the Bonnie or the Tram to get to Ullr's to get down to such a lift. Staircase/Everglade fans would be a little pissed that run would have a liftline cut through it. But a lift in that position would be protected from the ridge right until the unload station. It would eliminate the Kokomo run out (there would still be a run out) making that pod much more fun to ski. They could retain another fixed grip lift servicing Expo/GMB/etc and terraform NWP into an intermediate snow making trail to the Non-Freezer lift.

Fun to imagine at this point, any ways.

No chance to build a lift on this alignment now that the GMF cuts across that entire shoulder of the mtn.

 

[riverc0il]

Tin- Most of your assessment is good sound opinion. But comparing the Tram to the MRG single. W-T-F Dude. The tram already has multiple car waits on most weekends for a few trails off the ridge. The tram isn't worth riding unless you specifically want to ski something off the ridge aside from the trails. Whereas the Single at MRG accesses a massive amount of terrain that you can't get to from the Double (especially the 20th). Your suggested lift placement, without some crazy terrain altering if even possible, would make it difficult for people to get the entire Ullr's area without a tram ride and that includes the much beloved Beaver Pond (I don't understand the love, just reporting the facts). It would make Tram waits in excess of an hour due to it actually servicing legit terrain, not just a couple hundred feet of terrain that occasionally has merit when conditions are good. The MRG Single is a critical and critical lift. The Tram is a token lift that rarely is worth the wait. Making the Tram into a critically needed lift would be horrible.

 

[Sick Bird Rider]

Too bad JPR can't go back to this and start over:

Photo from Vermont's Northland Journal

 

[Tin Woodsman]

Tin- Most of your assessment is good sound opinion. But comparing the Tram to the MRG single. W-T-F Dude. The tram already has multiple car waits on most weekends for a few trails off the ridge. The tram isn't worth riding unless you specifically want to ski something off the ridge aside from the trails. Whereas the Single at MRG accesses a massive amount of terrain that you can't get to from the Double (especially the 20th). Your suggested lift placement, without some crazy terrain altering if even possible, would make it difficult for people to get the entire Ullr's area without a tram ride and that includes the much beloved Beaver Pond (I don't understand the love, just reporting the facts). It would make Tram waits in excess of an hour due to it actually servicing legit terrain, not just a couple hundred feet of terrain that occasionally has merit when conditions are good. The MRG Single is a critical and critical lift. The Tram is a token lift that rarely is worth the wait. Making the Tram into a critically needed lift would be horrible.

Steve -

The MRG Single reference was a bit toungue-in-cheek but I used it to make a point. Namely, as you point out, the Single accesses a HUGE swath of some of the best terrain MRG has to offer. In contrast, even if the Freezer terminated at tower 2 instead of its current location, there would only be a small handful of trails accessible solely by the tram. Moreover, of that handful, only Vermonter, Ullr's, Wedelmaster and I guess Poma line are runs that the key intermediate/family demographic are likely to venture into.

My whole point is that you don't need to provide access to Ullr's with a chair out of the Tramside base for that lift to accomplish its primary objectives. For intermediates, you still would have access to all the front side runs via Goat Run and access to all the Bonnie Bowl runs via Northway - this would have effectively doubled the amount of terrain accessible from the previous GM double. I would argue that accessing Ullr's from the base is a "nice to have" but not a "need to have". In addition, by terminating the GMF at tower 2, it would have enabled a MUCH more rational lift layout for the eventual West bowl expansion, consistent with the very alignment you proposed. You would have a lift from the bottom of West Bowl to where the GMF terminates today that would have four important attributes:

1) Wind protected until the very top
2) Due north alignment enabling the possibility of early/late season skiing
3) Convenient and useful egress out of West Bowl
4) Ability to avoid the painful Ullr's run out and lap some of the best quality terrain at Jay

The current terminus of the GMF effectively precludes this option, all so that you can access a few intermediate runs with a painfully long slog out. Doesn't seem like there was much payoff for the immediate and longer term adverse impacts this alignment created.