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Ragged: Where it stands today

StormRider

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Really like Ragged, but there are a couple things I'm not interested in; 1) tubing parks, and B) snowmaking (on tubing parks). What would I care about? Summer grooming. Hit their existing glades with some axes and jackhammers and you'll make them worlds better.
 

deadheadskier

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Really like Ragged, but there are a couple things I'm not interested in; 1) tubing parks, and B) snowmaking (on tubing parks). What would I care about? Summer grooming. Hit their existing glades with some axes and jackhammers and you'll make them worlds better.

I agree with you on the first part, but definitely not the second. Ragged's glades are about the cleanest manicured of any mountain in New England. The entire ravine area can open on about an 18inch base. The problem is Ragged only gets about 120" of natural per season. Throw in thaw and freeze cycles and it's often hard for that mountain to achieve an 18" base in the woods. That's why many seasons Ragged's glades are only a open for a few weeks.

Don't believe me? Check out this very recent trip report from Abubob hiking in the Ravine. It's so well manicured, you could practically play golf in there.

http://forums.alpinezone.com/showthread.php/125039-Glade-hike-you-tell-me
 

canobie#1

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The ravine is great, it was open til closing day last season since the year was so great in weather.
The new glades will not be located in the ravine, the Abyss will be found between flying yankee and showboat. The other glade apparently is going to go somewhere by easy winder.
 

deadheadskier

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I've skied the woods between Lower Ridge and Easy Winder. It wouldn't take much thinning to open those up. Interested in seeing the Abyss. That area is pretty tight with soft woods, so it must have taken a lot of work to open something up in there.

My biggest complaint with Ragged is Showboat. Longest sustained pitch on the hill. Perfect for bumps. It shouldn't be groomed - ever.
 

deadheadskier

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They usually leave one side groomed and the other untouched. This is a picture of the Abyss. It's on their FB page. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...83980305.31427.155209207855796&type=1&theater

Abyss looks sweet.

The fact that they leave one side of Showboat untouched is largely irrelevant because they don't make snow on the skiers right ungroomed side of the slope. That terrain is skiable less frequently than Raggeds glades due to all the rocks and the giant ice boulders that get pushed off the groomed side over there. In two years I had a pass there, skiers right of Showboat was only enjoyable to ski a handful of times and it certainly never developed good bumps because not enough people skied it. Ragged lacks any compelling trails for advanced skiers to go the mountain when the glades aren't open. Leaving Showboat to be a bump run solves that. Kind of like Flying Goose does at Sunapee. I'd consider getting a pass at Ragged again if they offered something for advanced skiers, but the place gets boring pretty quick when the glades aren't open.
 

canobie#1

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Yeah I agree. But there are some fun trails like cabin fever, sweepstakes, birches and lower crewcut. Was the trail Wilsons a glade? I never got the chance to see it and I can never find it.
 

deadheadskier

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Yeah I agree. But there are some fun trails like cabin fever, sweepstakes, birches and lower crewcut. Was the trail Wilsons a glade? I never got the chance to see it and I can never find it.

Wilson's glade? I'm not sure what you're referring too. If you mean the woods I was talking about off Lower Ridge, that was nothing officially developed. It's just fairly spread out hard woods in there.

I like the trails that you're referring to, but none of them have much pitch at all except for the very top of Sweepstakes. Showboat on the other hand is probably the steepest pitch trail at any mountain in Southern NH except for Hurricane at Pats. Pat's leaves that a bump run as they know they need to offer some challenge to keep the advanced skiers in a family happy. Ragged really needs to do the same with Showboat. There's nothing else on the hill with that kind of sustained pitch. As it is currently configured it's a boring straight cruiser.
 

thetrailboss

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Is Ragged under the same ownership that took it over after the Endriunas Family was forced out?
 

Smellytele

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The ravine is great, it was open til closing day last season since the year was so great in weather.
The new glades will not be located in the ravine, the Abyss will be found between flying yankee and showboat. The other glade apparently is going to go somewhere by easy winder.

I have skied in those woods between FY and SB. They are fun and must be better cleaned out.
 

deadheadskier

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Is Ragged under the same ownership that took it over after the Endriunas Family was forced out?


Been owned by the Pacific Group since 2007

http://pacific-group.com/?refreshed

Only other ski property they own is Wisp in Maryland. The Wisp situation is very similar to Endriunas Family's ownership of Ragged. When I worked for Wisp in 2003, it was the 3rd season of ownership by 5 partners. The only partner with ski industry experience was a guy who owned a couple of ski shops. They basically blew all their dough making dumb decisions both in infrastructure investment and personnel. The GM when I was there bolted to Purgatory after two seasons realizing it was a sinking ship.

It seems like Pacific has a good handle on lodging operations and does well with REIT's, but I'm not so confident they have what it takes to bring Ragged to the big leagues, well even the minor leagues. The ski area has improved considerably over the past five seasons, but when you hear every year about a HSQ install on Spruce happening the following season and it never does, it makes you wonder. I think they're relying heavily on EB-5 investment to come through to finance Pinnacle Peak and real estate development to turn Ragged into something more than a day trip ski area.
 

canobie#1

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Yeah they are relying on that. Apparently they will need to blast up top on spear. A ski patrol told me that along with that, they need to add another trail for capacity reasons. My guess is why they added that glade, but I think we will see another trail on spear very soon.
Bob is trying to prove to pacific that they need the lift so he takes pictures of the long lines it gets.
 

thetrailboss

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Been owned by the Pacific Group since 2007

http://pacific-group.com/?refreshed

Only other ski property they own is Wisp in Maryland. The Wisp situation is very similar to Endriunas Family's ownership of Ragged. When I worked for Wisp in 2003, it was the 3rd season of ownership by 5 partners. The only partner with ski industry experience was a guy who owned a couple of ski shops. They basically blew all their dough making dumb decisions both in infrastructure investment and personnel. The GM when I was there bolted to Purgatory after two seasons realizing it was a sinking ship.

It seems like Pacific has a good handle on lodging operations and does well with REIT's, but I'm not so confident they have what it takes to bring Ragged to the big leagues, well even the minor leagues. The ski area has improved considerably over the past five seasons, but when you hear every year about a HSQ install on Spruce happening the following season and it never does, it makes you wonder. I think they're relying heavily on EB-5 investment to come through to finance Pinnacle Peak and real estate development to turn Ragged into something more than a day trip ski area.

+ 1. I think a lot of places are trying the EB-5 route...but Jay is the king of it. I wonder if the whole Tea Party debt ceiling fiasco will deter EB-5 investors now.
 

deadheadskier

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Better proof would be taking pictures of the long lines at the Six Pack when the Spear lift is empty. That certainly isn't because the terrain on Spear isn't good. It's because people don't want to take a 14 minute lift to ski 1000 feet of vertical, especially when that vertical has a much more significant run out than on the main mountain.

If they're concerned with trail crowding by adding a high speed quad, it would be cheaper to just add snowmaking to the skiers right side of Show Boat. That trail probably has the most acreage of any trail on the mountain yet half of it is unskiable most of the season. Showboat could handle a ton of skier traffic if it was skiable edge to edge. The only viable place to add a trail would be skiers right of Showboat, which would impact some of the glades in the Ravine. No one wants to see that happen.
 

canobie#1

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I confused on when you say skiers right of showboat. Do you mean Flying Yankee?
 

deadheadskier

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A second and cheaper option for Spear would be to either increase the line speed of the triple or if that's not possible add a new fixed grip with a conveyor loading system at the base. That worked very well at Sugarloaf. Such a set up can run lifts at 500 feet per minute, which would drop the ride time on Spear down to around 8 minutes, which would be fine. You also wouldn't need to do any blasting at the top of Spear to accommodate it.
 

deadheadskier

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I confused on when you say skiers right of showboat. Do you mean Flying Yankee?

No, I mean skiers right of Showboat. The snowmaking is on skiers left of the trail. Those guns don't have enough throw to cover the right side of the trail, hence why half of it is never open.
 

canobie#1

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Oh at the bottom of the trail? The top of the trail has snowmaking on the right side. If they open the whole trail up at the bottom, it would be nice since all the glades dump out right there.
Even an 8 minute ride is too long for spear mountain. I'd rather see them eventually get a high speed. Apparently they've been working with Doplymyer.
 

deadheadskier

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wow, you're impatient :lol:

The lift is 14 minutes now; 8 would be fine by me. Other factors to consider on a Fixed Grip over High Speed is, cheaper to run and maintain as well as being less prone to wind holds.
 
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