Ragged Mountain 12/5/2010

[deadheadskier]

Date(s) Skied: Sunday, December 5th, 2010

Resort or Ski Area: Ragged Mountain

Conditions: Loose Granular / Hardpack

Trip Report:

Was thinking of heading elsewhere today to ski a bit more terrain, but decided to hit the home mountain instead. As with last year the opening Top to Bottom run was Blueberry Patch > Chute > Village Green. The top was covered about 80% side to side, Village Green more like 30% due to how wide it is. I imagine it will be wall to wall by next weekend. The hardpack / loose granular service skied great with only a few small patches of skied off surface. Pretty quiet, only about 100 or so people there. I enjoyed that as you could really open it up as fast as you wanted today without having to dodge people.

Snowmaking was ongoing all day on the terrain park. This is a change from last year as they worked on getting several top to bottom runs open before working on the terrain park trail. Maybe park is a 'niche' they're trying to capture through improved focus. Hopefully they are able to work on other trails throughout out the week as skiing the one groomer gets a tad boring after ten or so runs. Terrain expansion was fairly slow last year. They claim to have increased their capacity by 30% and early season terrain expansion will be noticeably improved. We shall see

 

[deadheadskier]

crappy cell phone pic

 

[mikestaple]

I hope they speed up the open trails this year. Not having Exhibition open until after New Years was weak. Any word from employees on the possibility of more bumps this year?

 

[deadheadskier]

didn't get a chance to chat up any employees regarding operational plans for the year, but rest assured I will once things get going a bit.

last year was a tough start for sure, but we're a couple weeks earlier getting started this season. Hopefully they make a lot of head way expanding terrain with the cold temps.

Overall I'm intrigued to see how the new GM does. I should email him about bumps now

 

[KD7000]

How busy does Ragged get during the holiday week?

I'm thinking of heading up there on the 27th or 28th if there's decent snow coverage, but I don't want to kill myself standing around in lines. The only other times I've been up there have been midweek/ non holiday days, which were basically ski-on to the chair.

 

[deadheadskier]

longest wait I had all last year was maybe 10 minutes (singles line) That was on a Saturday with many busses there. You'll be fine on the 27th / 28th. Bigger concern is how much terrain they have open. I'll report this weekend what I see in terms of snowmaking improvement. Wasn't much open last year christmas week, but they did have a later start.

 

[powbmps]

Cool. Didn't know Ragged was open.

 

[KD7000]

Cool, thanks for the info.

Bigger concern is how much terrain they have open.

We're still ~3 weeks out, so I'm really hoping for some actual snow storms by then.

 

[mikestaple]

I was there on New Year's Eve last year. Didn't wait more than 3 minutes to get on the six pack. Some terrain was open off the Spear Triple, but Exhibition (main blue under the six pack) and all the sweet tree blacks weren't open yet.

It looks like they are ahead of schedule with snowmaking (new guns) but we'll see in the next 10 days whether they use those on the groomers or if they put them on the terrain park.

I'm planning on going up early in the week of Christmas week and will have a trip report with pics then (come on big snow storm!)

 

[deadheadskier]

I have a feeling the new fan guns are being used on the lower portion of the terrain park. They were only blowing the top last weekend with the tower guns. Down low did not have mobile guns set up.

 

[speden]

Did you notice if they did any trail work in the off season? Particularly wondering if they added a culvert for the big stream on Showboat.

Did they add any fixed snowmaking guns, or is it all portables?

 

[deadheadskier]

Didn't look for the culvert and I'm not sure you'd be able to see if they did from the Six Pack.

As for the guns, all I've heard was they received new fan guns on Monday and they were put into use, so definitely portable. I don't know how many. My guess on them being placed on the lower terrain park was because they were only blowing the top of it on Sunday with tower guns. The bottom didn't have any temp guns set up. They also added the lower part of the park to 'snowmaking' on their snow report.

Ragged is a pretty funny operation. Most places scream at the top of their lungs when anything new happens. The first time any mention of new fan guns was made was this Monday on the website.

I'll be up there Saturday and will definitely report back at what I see.

 

[deadheadskier]

Pretty cool shot they put up on facebook today