K's 50th weekend that bad?

[mountainman]

Alot of bashing on the K-zone for this past weekend. Was it really that bad? I guess the thaw freeze recovery was pretty poor ( lifts and grooming took the brunt of bashing). To bad. Most be all the staff cuts are starting to show. Sad but life goes on. Hope things turn around for the K. Once a leader in the industry now just trying to keep up.

 

[2knees]

Alot of bashing on the K-zone .

No way. i simply refuse to believe it.

 

[mondeo]

Really wasn't that bad after Saturday morning. Once they got the gondi going, Snowdon and Ramshead thinned out a bit. Golf balls all over the place, but they were loose enough that it was still plenty skiable. Sunday was some nice granular, with the wide open trails getting the granular swept to the side by the afternoon.

Definately not the best conditions, but without any of us actually knowing how hard it is to deice lifts and how hard it hit Kton specifically, I'm willing to give them a little bit of slack. 3/4 of a good weekend.

 

[Geoff]

The issue is that Killington trimmed so much of their staff that they can no longer quickly recover from an ice storm. You can't ask some H2B visa foreign worker from Jamaica who has never seen snow to climb lift towers and bash the ice off the shieves. A bunch of the people who used to do that in lift ops were full timers who got pink slips two summers ago. SInce they had mechanical skills, they gave POWDR the finger when they were offered part-time jobs at lower pay and without benefits. I can't say that I blame them.

You get what you pay for. On a 'normal' day when the resort isn't stressed, things run OK. This is a repeat of last year when this happened several times. It was worse last year because it happened after the mountain was 100% open. On a Wednesday ice storm, there were still major lifts like Superstar and Needles Eye that weren't running by the Saturday.

 

[mister moose]

Really wasn't that bad after Saturday morning. Once they got the gondi going, Snowdon and Ramshead thinned out a bit. Golf balls all over the place, but they were loose enough that it was still plenty skiable. Sunday was some nice granular, with the wide open trails getting the granular swept to the side by the afternoon.

Definately not the best conditions, but without any of us actually knowing how hard it is to deice lifts and how hard it hit Kton specifically, I'm willing to give them a little bit of slack. 3/4 of a good weekend.

And how bad was it Saturday Morning?

Only Snowdon Quad was running, and the line was up to the Great Northern Crossover. An hour wait to ski death cookies in the cold. Horrific grooming. Had this just happened the night before, we'd understand. It happened Thursday night, and while there was a power outage Friday morning, groomers run on diesel engines, not 110V AC.

Why was there no lift deicing Friday? Why wait until Saturday when all of your invited birthday guests are standing around waiting?

Other than the medalion idea, which was overall well executed and a great deal if you weren't a passholder, POWDR doesn't seem to know how to throw a party. One day before the biggest celebration of the year, when they invited the whole world to come party, they sent employees home instead of mitigating the storm's damage. They ignored their passholders. (Sorry, but $20 to wait in a special medalion line isn't that special) They hired a same old been there done that got the CD local band. Once every 50 years, you hire the same happy hour band you hire the rest of the time? By the time the evening concert rolled around, no one was there to hear it. There was supposed to be a Poker Run on Saturday, but I have no idea what it was, what time it was, where it was held, or what the rules are, because they never explained it on anything I saw or was emailed. The whole thing echoed the low attendance and completely empty beer corral last march at the BMMC.

The World's Most Extensive Snowmaking System didn't resurface a thing Friday night. On the 50th birthday, there could have been a few fresh runs on signature cold dry temps type man made snow. Nada.

The bag check was overwhelmed, and since they removed all the shelves and pegs, there was no other option. Bags were on the floor and under tables.

Rather than shine on a 50th celebration, all the weekend did was point out POWDR's weaknesses. Yes, there was a bad hand dealt with the ice storm. How POWDR was unable to cope with it was very evident.

 

[rachelv]

Here's a pic of the gondola line from my friend's facebook. Not sure if this was Saturday or Sunday:

Pretty nuts. I've been there over a lot of holiday weekends and have never seen lines like that.

Not trying to jump on any K-bashing bandwagons -- I just booked a long weekend there over new year's. That's some line though. Makes the lines that I thought were bad at Stratton on Sat & Sun look like nothing.

 

[tjf67]

Here's a pic of the gondola line from my friend's facebook. Not sure if this was Saturday or Sunday:

Pretty nuts. I've been there over a lot of holiday weekends and have never seen lines like that.

Not trying to jump on any K-bashing bandwagons -- I just booked a long weekend there over new year's. That's some line though. Makes the lines that I thought were bad at Stratton on Sat & Sun look like nothing.

A picture speaks a thousand words. You have to go to hills in your own state and you would not have those problems.

 

[billski]

Here's a pic of the gondola line from my friend's facebook. ... Makes the lines that I thought were bad at Stratton on Sat & Sun look like nothing.

Egads! How long (a wait) do you estimate that line was? If it was me, I'd have packed up and headed for someplace else/some other lift.

 

[rachelv]

Egads! How long (a wait) do you estimate that line was? If it was me, I'd have packed up and headed for someplace else/some other lift.

Hm, well -- the maze starts at the tan building on the right, and when the maze is full it's maybe a 15 minute wait. If I had to guess I'd say 40ish minutes, but that's a pretty rough guess.

I think if it were me I would have taken it up once, then just found a park to hike.

 

[Geoff]

Egads! How long (a wait) do you estimate that line was? If it was me, I'd have packed up and headed for someplace else/some other lift.

What other lift? Superstar was closed. The Snowdon Triple was closed. They'd made snow on Needles Eye for a week but it's now end of day Tuesday and that area still hasn't been opened yet. I guess they're saving it for May skiing or something.

The only other way out was the Snowdon Quad and that was a mere 30 minute wait when that shot was taken.

Sunday, they added the Canyon Quad but Superstar never moved.

Imagine if this were midwinter when they have to dig out:
Bear Quad
Skye Peak Express Quad
Needles Eye Quad
Skyeship Gondola Stage 1 and Stage 2
Snowshed Express Quad

plus some fixed-grip lifts like:
Southridge Triple
Sunrise Triple

If they dropped the ball with a limited amount of terrain & lifts and a relatively small number of customers, imagine what it will be like with an ice storm a couple of days before Presidents weekend. They simply don't have enough staff able to dig out lifts.

 

[mondeo]

And how bad was it Saturday Morning?

Oh, it was complete crap. But the question was was the weekend that bad. And I don't think it was the epic failure people are making it out to be. Sat morning sucked. I did 3-4 runs, actually hit up the magic carpet/rope tow a couple times. Hung around in the lodge until they opened up the gondi.

But after that, it was fine. Sat afternoon, everything but the K1 was ok. And Sunday was just another day.