Magic 1/4/2010

[foofy]

Was there all week (Monday after Christmas through Sunday). Dust on crust early in the week with some skiable powder on the East side lower angle slopes. Fabulous as the weekend snows arrived, as already reported above. Many grins all around.

Crowds seemed to increase each day throughout the week, with Saturday being busiest. Many comments Saturday about the existence of a lift line - 10 deep, that was. :-D On a few occasions we actually needed to share the trail with other people - imagine that! Sunday, it was back to empty as everyone headed home or avoided the cold, whatever.

This is my first year skiing Magic. Love it so far, but if this is what holiday crowds look like, well...they really do need all the help they can get.

 

[polski]

I heard the bar was hopping over the weekend, but as Magic currently leases out that concession (and the cafeteria) it brings them little $$$ unfortunately. According to their business plan they plan to run the cafeteria/bar themselves when the lease expires after this season.

Anyway, brewbeer is on to the solution: Support Magic by SKIING THERE. (No offense to any AZ advertisers; I can't imagine anyone wants to see the NELSAP list grow.) Not only does it provide Magic revenues but if they can show they're continuing to increase their skier visit numbers, that can help them raise investor cash in the future, whether through partnership share sales or other means. Per their business plan, the last two seasons they had 16k visits per season (up from less than 5k in 2005-06); they say they need 25k to hit break-even; and their five-year target is 35k.

While I'm on the general topic, I presume this has been discussed here before but allow me a moment of spamminess for a good cause: Buy t-shirts & stickers from http://savemagicvermont.com (direct link to store). Here's how proceeds will benefit Magic, as it unfolded at TGR:

A mag at TGR, uppernotmaster (which refers to the "true" name of the top of Magician), had this nice-looking schwag made; he reports he's already made back his costs, and any additional revenues he's putting into Magic partnership shares. He's bought two shares with the proceeds already (in addition to one he paid for himself). Note, currently Magic is holding all the share money in an interest-bearing account and using none of it because they have not not yet hit their target for the first round of share sales. If/when they do they'll have a nice initial infusion of cash ($900k) to expand the pond and make other vital snowmaking and other capital improvements that hopefully will start to put them on a sound footing long-term. See the business plan for much more detail.

 

[SkiingInABlueDream]

I'd be careful about linking to TGR from here, they're likely to JONG you over there. But on the other hand it's to promote Magic so maybe it's ok. But then that implies that gAperZone gapers are worthy of Magic. Oh conundrum - how would a mag react.

<tip - this is all sarcasm>

 

[pepperdawg]

Attn Greg

Tried to upload a couple of pics from Magic I took on Monday but got out of space.....

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 11392 bytes) in /home/alpinez/public_html/forums/gallery/image-inc.php on line 99



33 Gig doesnt go to far these days I guess

 

[Greg]

Try resizing the images down to a max size of 1024 pixels (long side) using an image editor before you upload.

 

[Jisch]

I'd love to see those pics as I plan on heading up to Magic tomorrow too.

 

[severine]

While I'm on the general topic, I presume this has been discussed here before but allow me a moment of spamminess for a good cause: Buy t-shirts & stickers from http://savemagicvermont.com (direct link to store). Here's how proceeds will benefit Magic, as it unfolded at TGR:

A mag at TGR, uppernotmaster (which refers to the "true" name of the top of Magician), had this nice-looking schwag made; he reports he's already made back his costs, and any additional revenues he's putting into Magic partnership shares. He's bought two shares with the proceeds already (in addition to one he paid for himself). Note, currently Magic is holding all the share money in an interest-bearing account and using none of it because they have not not yet hit their target for the first round of share sales. If/when they do they'll have a nice initial infusion of cash ($900k) to expand the pond and make other vital snowmaking and other capital improvements that hopefully will start to put them on a sound footing long-term. See the business plan for much more detail.

Definitely discussed before and quite a few members bought t-shirts and stickers, but worth reminding.

 

[Jisch]

A few thoughts after skiing Magic

I skied Magic for the first time today. I was thinking about their financial predicament a bit as I skied. Considering the neighborhood, I think Magic needs to do one of two things:

1) Homogenize - The mountain has some pretty nice topography and could easily compete with Bromley or Pico, but they would need to neaten things up a bunch to be on the same page, both on and off the slopes. While I think they _could_ compete, I don't think anyone is going to put up the dinero to do that.

2) Radicalize - the mountain is already a rebel, if they accentuated that even more and added some snow making, I'll bet they could attract the radical ski/board element and still have a pretty good niche. It has a bit of a "cool" image already among those that know about it, they need to use that further separate themselves from the "normal" mountains. There are plenty of mountains with man made features, very few with natural stuff to huck.

While the second option seems obvious, I think it will be difficult considering the condos etc at the bottom of the hill - surely those are easier to rent to families than radical skiers.

John

Oh yeah, if Magic is to survive people have to start skiing there more than just when it dumps - it doesn't dump often enough to keep that place alive!

 

[riverc0il]

Magic already has the radical down. It is no secret that they have the best terrain in Vermont south of the Mad River Valley. They have also made no secret that they let the locals loose on the mountain to thin out a ton of new tree runs.

The problem is that Magic's best terrain is in play so rarely due to lack of snow making and lack of natural snow. This year they are off to a very good start with most of their terrain on the table at the turn of the calendar. However, it is not unheard of for the mountain to be struggling to get a single top to bottom run open by the turn of the year. Even expert level skier's that love Magic's terrain are not going to put up with a mountain that can not at least get open on man made snow and allow for a man made base for natural to fall upon.

Magic does not really need to Homogenize either. All they are really missing is snow making and a pair of beginner friendly lifts, one to mid-mountain below the steeps (Green Chair) and another to the defunct but still cleared out beginner's area looker's right. A Magic Carpet wouldn't hurt either. Pretty basic stuff but if these things were addressed, Magic Mountain would be on the map and people would come.

It would be great for that valley too... the three mountain marketing that could be done for the region with Stratton/Bromley/Magic all viable options would be tremendous. But that simply can not be done at this point. Its just the matter of someone wanting to make a small fortune by starting with a large one. But resort building is not exactly a growth industry any more....

 

[Jisch]

Hmmm

Magic already has the radical down. It is no secret that they have the best terrain in Vermont south of the Mad River Valley. They have also made no secret that they let the locals loose on the mountain to thin out a ton of new tree runs.....

The snow was amazing today, but I can see that's not normal if the natural snow isn't there. That said WITH the amazing conditions today, why were there so few people there? Maybe there aren't enough people looking for that type of terrain.

John

 

[2knees]

The snow was amazing today, but I can see that's not normal if the natural snow isn't there. That said WITH the amazing conditions today, why were there so few people there? Maybe there aren't enough people looking for that type of terrain.

John

i think one of the problems is that the average skier looking to take his or her family for a weekend a few times a year simply doesnt know magic is open, or exists, for that matter. Its reputation as a skiers mtn is well deserved but there are plenty of easy ways down and it's extremely family friendly. Lets just hope and pray that it stays around and is able to find a balance between what is necessary for it to make money and what makes it special for those of us looking for something completely different. My only fear is that those two statements will prove to be negatively correleated.