Mount Snow Snowmaking Question?

[Yooper]

Can't help but notice that the Mount Snow site claims the most Powerful Snowmaking System in Vermont and the most hi efficency Fan Guns in North America. Question? How is it that as of Jan. 7 Stratton (293 acres) Okemo (384 acres) and Killington (306 acres) and Mount Snow with the least ONLY 239 acres open can make this claim? Stratton has 300 Fan Guns versus I believe 251 for Mount Snow and both are are located on the same Latitude but Stratton consistantly has more acres open how so? Only wondering.

 

[Newpylong]

Can't help but notice that the Mount Snow site claims the most Powerful Snowmaking System in Vermont and the most hi efficency Fan Guns in North America. Question? How is it that as of Jan. 7 Stratton (293 acres) Okemo (384 acres) and Killington (306 acres) and Mount Snow with the least ONLY 239 acres open can make this claim? Stratton has 300 Fan Guns versus I believe 251 for Mount Snow and both are are located on the same Latitude but Stratton consistantly has more acres open how so? Only wondering.

Stratton does not have 300 fan guns - the majority of their capacity is air/water with some fan guns on carriages mixed in for high traffic areas (mostly the Sun Bowl for the parks and the run out from the Snow Bowl by all the condos).

Despite what Mount Snow says - they do not have the most powerful snowmaking system in Vermont (search for a previous thread here). That is a recent marketing ploy which is no less annoying or different than someone else claiming the same in such a vague category. I am suprised they did so. Until they get more water it is more than evident that they do not share the same capacity of the othet two mountains.

As to why they have so many less acres? They got a much worse jump than Stratton and Okemo did, even being a little bit south. When it was marginal snowmaking at those two in early December, it was too warm in West Dover.

 

[oakapple]

Also, Mount Snow has a higher percentage of trails on which they cannot make snow at all (the ones with big black N's, for "natural," in their snow report).

According to this site, Mount Snow can make snow on 80 percent of its terrain, while Stratton and Okemo are 95 and 97 percent respectively. Killington can make snow on "only" 70 percent of its territory, but Killington is so large that you're still left with a considerable amount of terrain that can open without natural snow.

 

[drjeff]

All about the base depths and the temperatures! Having literally just sampled about 1/2 of the open trails at Mount Snow in the last 2of hours, what they've been doing is putting down a DEEP layer on each trail before they move to the next this year, arguably at the expense of more potential open terrain possibilities. Right? Wrong? Who knows, but given the wet weather pattern we seem to be stuck in now, I don't think that having a deeper base to both withstand the warmer, wetter weather than normal and also allow the cats more snow to work with on the freeze up side of our weather pattern is a bad thing.

Secondly, look at national weather service temp data for the month of december. Mount Snow was in a small area where it had the greatest temp differential from normal than pretty much any other ski area in the Northeast -over 8 degrees above normal!

As for the most powerful claim, well if you base it on how much electricity they use, then that might hold true when the system is running at max capacity with somewhere around 150 fan guns plugged into the electric lines at once

Heard from a very, very, very good source at the top of Yard Sale this AM that the snowmakers won't be in tonight based on the forecasted temps, but are set to be in Sunday to work on getting Sunbrook finished up, build up the depths for Carinthia, finish up Roller Coaster and if the wind direction cooperates, start South Bowl!

Coffee break done! Now its time to get back out on the slopes and enjoy this beautiful weather and great machine groomed manmade snow!

 

[MV Frank]

All about the base depths and the temperatures! Having literally just sampled about 1/2 of the open trails at Mount Snow in the last 2of hours, what they've been doing is putting down a DEEP layer on each trail before they move to the next this year, arguably at the expense of more potential open terrain possibilities. Right? Wrong? Who knows, but given the wet weather pattern we seem to be stuck in now, I don't think that having a deeper base to both withstand the warmer, wetter weather than normal and also allow the cats more snow to work with on the freeze up side of our weather pattern is a bad thing.

Secondly, look at national weather service temp data for the month of december. Mount Snow was in a small area where it had the greatest temp differential from normal than pretty much any other ski area in the Northeast -over 8 degrees above normal!

As for the most powerful claim, well if you base it on how much electricity they use, then that might hold true when the system is running at max capacity with somewhere around 150 fan guns plugged into the electric lines at once

Heard from a very, very, very good source at the top of Yard Sale this AM that the snowmakers won't be in tonight based on the forecasted temps, but are set to be in Sunday to work on getting Sunbrook finished up, build up the depths for Carinthia, finish up Roller Coaster and if the wind direction cooperates, start South Bowl!

Coffee break done! Now its time to get back out on the slopes and enjoy this beautiful weather and great machine groomed manmade snow!

Nice to hear the live report - great info
wish I could be out today...

 

[WinnChill]

All about the base depths and the temperatures! Having literally just sampled about 1/2 of the open trails at Mount Snow in the last 2of hours, what they've been doing is putting down a DEEP layer on each trail before they move to the next this year, arguably at the expense of more potential open terrain possibilities. Right? Wrong? Who knows, but given the wet weather pattern we seem to be stuck in now, I don't think that having a deeper base to both withstand the warmer, wetter weather than normal and also allow the cats more snow to work with on the freeze up side of our weather pattern is a bad thing.

Secondly, look at national weather service temp data for the month of december. Mount Snow was in a small area where it had the greatest temp differential from normal than pretty much any other ski area in the Northeast -over 8 degrees above normal!

As for the most powerful claim, well if you base it on how much electricity they use, then that might hold true when the system is running at max capacity with somewhere around 150 fan guns plugged into the electric lines at once

Heard from a very, very, very good source at the top of Yard Sale this AM that the snowmakers won't be in tonight based on the forecasted temps, but are set to be in Sunday to work on getting Sunbrook finished up, build up the depths for Carinthia, finish up Roller Coaster and if the wind direction cooperates, start South Bowl!

Coffee break done! Now its time to get back out on the slopes and enjoy this beautiful weather and great machine groomed manmade snow!

Thanks for the info DrJeff--it's interesting to hear various techniques and snowmaking strategies with the challenging conditions this season so far. Have fun today!

Cheers,
WC

 

[Newpylong]

Jeff I think what you said is definitely true. They have gone back and resurfaced numerous times what they do have open vs. push to expand. I can tell you first hand from Okemo that if we get any bad warmup or ra*n half of the mountain will be closed due to small base depths. Which is the right approach? Who knows... Some mountains gamble and expand, some do not. Killington and Mount Snow seem to be taking the cautious approach this year.

It is also true that Mount Snow can only cover 80% of their terrain and Okemo and Stratton are very close to 100%. You have to look hard to find a run that doesn't have snowmaking at either of the latter. So when the race begins to open up terrain, Mount Snow can only compete so far.

I look forward to additional water so Mount Snow can add addtional capacity to trails. I just hope they leave some of the narrow old school trails alone (Iron Run, Jaws, Ledge, etc).

 

[jaytrem]

I came across another Mt Snow exaggeration the other day. Not sure if it's thei fault though. In the Booklet that come with the "Ride & Ski Card" they have "Mount Snow offer up four peaks and just under 2000 vertical feet of skiing and riding". And they list the vert as 2000'. That's kinda pushing it, but like I said it might not be their doing.

 

[oakapple]

I came across another Mt Snow exaggeration the other day. Not sure if it's thei fault though. In the Booklet that come with the "Ride & Ski Card" they have "Mount Snow offer up four peaks and just under 2000 vertical feet of skiing and riding". And they list the vert as 2000'. That's kinda pushing it, but like I said it might not be their doing.

According to the guys at MountainVertical.com, Mount Snow's total vert. is 1,647 feet, and its "true" vert. is 1,590 feet. The Mount Snow website claims 1,700 feet.

 

[MV Frank]

http://trailmapcompare.com/mount-snow-trail-map
yup, about 1700 if you go all the way down to the parking lot
about 1650 peak to bottom of carinthia
slightly under 1600 peak to the base of the main lift area

 

[Newpylong]

Interestingly related and confirms out theories: http://mountsnow.com/kellys-blog-white-gold/


"The silver lining to this ridiculous weather pattern is that as soon as the rain subsides, the temperature drops dramatically. These cold temps have allowed our snowmakers to resurface everything for the weekend and then start expansion. We could have skipped the resurface step and focused on expansion, to bump our trail count higher, but that’s not even in our playbook. If we don’t have fun skiing it we know you won’t. So as painful as it was, Randy and his snowmakers have resurfaced at least 5 times, more in some areas"

 

[Newpylong]

http://trailmapcompare.com/mount-snow-trail-map
yup, about 1700 if you go all the way down to the parking lot
about 1650 peak to bottom of carinthia
slightly under 1600 peak to the base of the main lift area

The vert game is definitely one I wouldn't fault them on. Killington claims 3 K, Peak to Rt 4. Most of their pods are in the 1K to 1.7K Range.

Okemo says 2K vert. That's the top of South Face to bottom of Jackson Gore. Who skis that? No one... Their trails pods are in the 1.4K range

But if you can ski it, the mountains will claim it...

 

[drjeff]

Interestingly related and confirms out theories: http://mountsnow.com/kellys-blog-white-gold/


"The silver lining to this ridiculous weather pattern is that as soon as the rain subsides, the temperature drops dramatically. These cold temps have allowed our snowmakers to resurface everything for the weekend and then start expansion. We could have skipped the resurface step and focused on expansion, to bump our trail count higher, but that’s not even in our playbook. If we don’t have fun skiing it we know you won’t. So as painful as it was, Randy and his snowmakers have resurfaced at least 5 times, more in some areas"

Oh man, my very, very, very reliable source who I talked to at the top of yard sale this morning during the passholder only AM EXPRESS 30 minutes of skiing before the lifts open to day ticket buyers on Saturdays *might* have been exposed in that blog post!

 

[WoodCore]

I have to be a bit critical of Mount Snow when it comes to snowmaking. They do have plenty of capacity to make the same amount of snow as Okemo/Stratton/etc. however after my visits over the holiday week I see where it all goes. Carinthia!

While skiing over numerous rocks, dirt and bare spots on the limited main face terrain, serviced by the brand new 6 Million $ lift I was dumbfounded that terrain at Carinthia littered with all the "terrain park" garbage is buried with 20 foot deep piles of snow.

I understand that Mount Snow heavily markets to the park crowd but IMHO they need to find a better balance of their snowmaking resources especially in such a difficult snow year like we are having.

 

[Glenn]

They need more water. West Lake should take care of that. Fingers crossed.

 

[drjeff]

I have to be a bit critical of Mount Snow when it comes to snowmaking. They do have plenty of capacity to make the same amount of snow as Okemo/Stratton/etc. however after my visits over the holiday week I see where it all goes. Carinthia!

While skiing over numerous rocks, dirt and bare spots on the limited main face terrain, serviced by the brand new 6 Million $ lift I was dumbfounded that terrain at Carinthia littered with all the "terrain park" garbage is buried with 20 foot deep piles of snow.

I understand that Mount Snow heavily markets to the park crowd but IMHO they need to find a better balance of their snowmaking resources especially in such a difficult snow year like we are having.

Some Mount Snow snowmaking info for you - Mount Snow basically has 2 completely separate snowmaking systems, both of which have basically the same total capacity, and they operate completely independent of each other - system #1 is "fed" by water from Mirror Lake, right next to the entrance building at Haystack and pumped about 2 miles up the road to Mount Snow where its then sent up the mountain to the mid mountain pond next to the bottom of the mineshaft trail. This water, and the compressed air from the compressors in the building near the bottom of the Nitro Express supplies all of Carinthia, and the Bear trap trail and the immediate base area of the Sunbrook quad. System #2 -in gets its water from Snow Lake (below the main base lodge) and supplies all of the main face, the north face and the majority of the Sunbrook area - they can pump about an extra 1000 Gallons a minute for system 2 than system 1, and have more compressed air available, but there is a disproportionate amount of water pumping capacity vs. acres to cover favoring Carinthia for now. This will hopefully be addressed when they can build their new proposed pond to supply ALL of Mount Snow. Sounds far fetched but they can't send water/air from Carinthia to the Main Face and vice versa

 

[ScottySkis]

I came across another Mt Snow exaggeration the other day. Not sure if it's thei fault though. In the Booklet that come with the "Ride & Ski Card" they have "Mount Snow offer up four peaks and just under 2000 vertical feet of skiing and riding". And they list the vert as 2000'. That's kinda pushing it, but like I said it might not be their doing.

k
All the hills execrate their stats its all about advertising just got to read between the lines sometimes

 

[Newpylong]

I have to be a bit critical of Mount Snow when it comes to snowmaking. They do have plenty of capacity to make the same amount of snow as Okemo/Stratton/etc. however after my visits over the holiday week I see where it all goes. Carinthia!

While skiing over numerous rocks, dirt and bare spots on the limited main face terrain, serviced by the brand new 6 Million $ lift I was dumbfounded that terrain at Carinthia littered with all the "terrain park" garbage is buried with 20 foot deep piles of snow.

I understand that Mount Snow heavily markets to the park crowd but IMHO they need to find a better balance of their snowmaking resources especially in such a difficult snow year like we are having.

I was pissed off too until I found out two seperate systems that cannot be shared (except for the lower mountain ins ome cases).

I expect this to be reconfigured somewhat when West Lake is built.