Mount Snow - Summit Express

[freddy1111]

Anyone know when the summit lift may re-open ?

 

[drjeff]

Anyone know when the summit lift may re-open ?

Probably another 2 to 3 days. Green Mountain Power line crews were on the mountain until around 8 Sunday night and back out early Monday AM, clearing out the downed lines/transformers. Still need to set some new telephone poles and then run the new powerlines. LOTS of work to do, and understandedly when a significant portion of So VT is STILL without power, getting power fully restored to Mount Snow takes somewhat of a backseat to getting power to peoples homes.

On the flipside, the warm air that was at Mount Snow today, basically eliminated the MAJOR lift de-icing that would have been needed if it had stayed below freezing

 

[drjeff]

Couple of pics of the repair efforts

Sunday AM, the heavy duty line equipment showing up



Dinnertime Sunday, that bright light about 3/4ths of the way up is where the heavy duty line damage/work was happening



Random ice shots from the weekend

Saturday AM, fanguns and iced trees



Sunday on Standard

 

[WJenness]

What happened with the Summit Express?

Electrical line damage from the ice? or something else?

-w

 

[Euler]

What happened with the Summit Express?

Electrical line damage from the ice? or something else?

-w

The power lines running to the summit were badly damaged in Thursday/Fridays ice storms. The Mt has had no power to the summit since, so only lower mountain lifts have been spinning. Schools here are still closed and many homes remain without power. We just saw that more freezing rain is possible tonight and tomorrow morning and we're NOT psyched about that.

 

[Glenn]

Nice pics Jeff!

That's too bad people are still without power up there Euler. Let's hope the freezing rain holds off for now.

 

[drjeff]

What happened with the Summit Express?

Electrical line damage from the ice? or something else?

-w

For those that didn't get to see the massive extent of the damage the ice storm did to the heavily affected regions, it's really tough to comprehend just how destructive it was! The amount of effort/work that Mount Snow + the power crews + their employees did to get what they got open as quick as they did was really impressive. Now it's just time for a little patience, and with any luck, the couple of smaller systems earlier this week and hopefully a biggie late this weekend, will have things GREAT, quickly, and atleast on the mountain, the only remnants of the ice storm will be the site of many downed/broken tree limbs.

 

[vcunning]

The amount of damage in Southern Vermont was staggering. Route 9 from Wilmington to Brattleboro was very unique. Telephone pole after telephone pole had just snapped. On Sunday evening, crews were still working. Many of the power lines were nearly touching the ground.

Sorry I didn't get pictures, the camera was packed away. However, if you ever drive that route, you will see brand new poles side by side with the snapped ones.

Although there are still quite a few people without power, I commend the Green Mountain Power folks and their associates for all the effort they put in. I'm sure they're working on very limited sleep.

 

[billski]

So in the case of an ice storm, a resort would be able to operate sooner with compressed air (assuming they could still power their compressors one way or another.) I presume all the electric to the fan guns is above ground and that's what the Mt. Snow difficulty is. I'll postulate that Mt. Snow will suffer the most damage from this ice storm since they did a huge fan gun upgrade over the past year or two. I know, the odds of ice storms are not that high, but when they do happen, they do spectacular damage.

 

[drjeff]

So in the case of an ice storm, a resort would be able to operate sooner with compressed air (assuming they could still power their compressors one way or another.) I presume all the electric to the fan guns is above ground and that's what the Mt. Snow difficulty is. I'll postulate that Mt. Snow will suffer the most damage from this ice storm since they did a huge fan gun upgrade over the past year or two. I know, the odds of ice storms are not that high, but when they do happen, they do spectacular damage.

No quite so. ALL the individual power line to the fan guns run along the ground in basically 1" diameter plastic covered cable. Those were unaffected, and as you could see in 1 of the pics I posted, they were running fan guns EARLY Saturday AM. The limiting factor they had this weekend was the amount of power that Green Mountain Power had available for them to use with GMP's infastructure in the state of disarray they were in. Saturday evening, they actually had ALL of Standard, All of Nitro, All of it looked like Inferno from the angle I saw, Grommet, and the Sundance/Beaver Hill area lit up with fan guns (over 100 running), so snowmaking wasn't the issue.

Mount Snow's main power issues is with the main power line to the top being out, and since the lifts have top-drive electric motors as their primaries, that's the problem.

 

[vcunning]

No quite so. ALL the individual power line to the fan guns run along the ground in basically 1" diameter plastic covered cable. Those were unaffected, and as you could see in 1 of the pics I posted, they were running fan guns EARLY Saturday AM. The limiting factor they had this weekend was the amount of power that Green Mountain Power had available for them to use with GMP's infastructure in the state of disarray they were in. Saturday evening, they actually had ALL of Standard, All of Nitro, All of it looked like Inferno from the angle I saw, Grommet, and the Sundance/Beaver Hill area lit up with fan guns (over 100 running), so snowmaking wasn't the issue.

Mount Snow's main power issues is with the main power line to the top being out, and since the lifts have top-drive electric motors as their primaries, that's the problem.

So this poses an interesting question. I believe most lifts are powered via electricity at the top. I'm guessing most ski areas run the electricity above ground (since it's less expensive). Mount Snow (which really has one summit peak) could consider on their next lift upgrade to put power underground for the summit (assuming there are 5 lifts that touch the summit).

So the question is: "What do other ski areas do?"

 

[mlctvt]

So this poses an interesting question. I believe most lifts are powered via electricity at the top. I'm guessing most ski areas run the electricity above ground (since it's less expensive). Mount Snow (which really has one summit peak) could consider on their next lift upgrade to put power underground for the summit (assuming there are 5 lifts that touch the summit).

So the question is: "What do other ski areas do?"

Several years ago Mount Snow buried the power lines underground from a point about 3/4 of the way up the mountain to the top. This helped considerably with power outages since most icing happens at the top of the mountain. I guess the cost to bury the entire line would have been too expensive?

 

[WJenness]

Mount Snow's main power issues is with the main power line to the top being out, and since the lifts have top-drive electric motors as their primaries, that's the problem.

This is what I was wondering...

Since some lifts are running, it's obvious the resort at the base has power... I didn't know if the summit express wasn't working due to lack of power at the summit, or if something more severe happened, like the electrical components at the top terminal being destroyed by the ice storm, trees fallen on sheave trains, etc.

-w

 

[Glenn]

Several years ago Mount Snow buried the power lines underground from a point about 3/4 of the way up the mountain to the top. This helped considerably with power outages since most icing happens at the top of the mountain. I guess the cost to bury the entire line would have been too expensive?

Interesting, I never knew that.

I'm going to assume cost was a factor. I bet a lot depends one what's up there. I'm sure the more ledge there is the more the cost goes up per foot.

They're blowing snow on Standard right now...I can see it on the webcam The place is empty too! It was packed last week with all the ski instructors. I really need to do a TR for that trip.

 

[Method9455]

Did the warm up yesterday take care of the ice?

My girlfriend and I just booked a room for this weekend, I'm going no matter what even if they don't have the summit, hopefully the holiday week won't be too effected because that could hammer their bottom line.

I noticed they are generally very transparent about the goings on at Mount Snow but haven't posted much about this one, where are the pictures of the crews trying to fix it to placate everyone going up this weekend?

 

[drjeff]

Did the warm up yesterday take care of the ice?

My girlfriend and I just booked a room for this weekend, I'm going no matter what even if they don't have the summit, hopefully the holiday week won't be too effected because that could hammer their bottom line.

I noticed they are generally very transparent about the goings on at Mount Snow but haven't posted much about this one, where are the pictures of the crews trying to fix it to placate everyone going up this weekend?

As of yesterday, the ice was 100% off the trees (amazing what 50 degree temps and some wind can do )

As for the pics, well after seeing stuff first hand, frankly it isn't very exciting, and it's not very quick!

Here's a couple that I snapped this weekend

Ski patrol do some tree removal work at the bottom of snowdance Sunday (you could very easily just substitute Mountain Ops crews for ski patrol and then just vary the tree size for the rest of the mounrtain)



I've already put this one up, but for the SLOW major line work, just picture the yellow tractor like device(infront of the white line truck) in the background high up on the hill with it's boom extended pulling out downed poles and then resetting new ones. Probably the most exciing thing about this was watching it SLOWLY climb the mountain led by the cat in the picture. Glamorous, nope.



What's taking so long, is that the downed power wires basically need to have multiple treelimbs worth of debris cut free of them before they can then get to the broken pole removal/new pole placement and then running the new electrical wires. Tough enough for a line crew to do on roads, even more fun up on the side of the mountain.

 

[Method9455]

Haha no I didn't mean "sweet show me pictures of them doing powerline work", though thank you for the pictures, I just meant I was surprised there was not a note on the snow report to quell people's concerns and generally at Mount Snow they make a lot of those asides as pictures or videos.

I notice that since this morning this was added though:

"The electricians and mechanics have been working around the clock at the summit removing debris and making repairs to get power restored as fast as they can. The electricity could come back any day now, so the groomers are planning ahead by grooming our once opened terrain from top to bottom tonight. Assume we’ll be open tomorrow with mid-mountain terrain available, but know that summit to base is just a few days (or sooner) away."

Emphasis mine, but thats basically what I was looking for.

 

[Glenn]

I just did my daily AM check of the webcams on at mtsnow.com. The summit cam is up and running. I'll assume they have power back to the summit if that cam is working again. Or at least partial power. Fingers crossed.

 

[drjeff]

I just did my daily AM check of the webcams on at mtsnow.com. The summit cam is up and running. I'll assume they have power back to the summit if that cam is working again. Or at least partial power. Fingers crossed.

Yup, re-opens this morning along with Nitro and the North face chairs!

 

[Glenn]