Saddleback

[loafer89]

Steve, the snowmaking system that they use is airless and only uses water and fan jet snow cannon which they move around to different trails as needed.

Hunter Mountain uses some of this type of snowmaking as DMC can tell you. It eliminates the need for compressed air, but the cannon cost about $15,000 each.

You will notice that they only have heavy duty electric lines with outlet boxes along the snowmaking trails.

Maine has been suffering through a snow drought for the last few season, relative to the rest of New England. Alot of the storms just do not seems to hit the Sugarloaf/Saddleback area,very frustrating actually :x :x So snowmaking has been important in Maine lately.

Kevin

 

[loafer89]

Airless snowmaking information:

www.snowmaking.com

 

[awf170]

hey steve i really loved this trip report on FTO
http://www.firsttracksonline.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=703&highlight=saddleback

muleskinner looks so awsome... kinda looks like your pics from mittersil

 

[loafer89]

One more bit that I can add to this thread is that if anyone is visiting Saddleback with begginers, the South Branch Quad area is PERFECT for novice skiers.

My son thorughly enjoyed his lesson and skiing there, and improved his skiing alot. The quad chair has fantastic spacing between chairs, so it is easy to load,

 

[riverc0il]

ah, okay. i forgot about those style guns. but crotched uses a similar system by SMI (http://www.snowmakers.com/smi_fanproducts.html) and their man made snow is incredible. i actually raved about the condition of crotched's snow back in december as the best snow conditions very likely in all of new england at that time. perhaps the guns saddleback are using are either not calibrated correctly or older equipment? or perhaps the snow just was in a sad state when you were there, often times snow conditions stink regardless of how the snow got there when the weather does funny things.

 

[loafer89]

Well as I said to Austin, the conditions at Sugarloaf were stellar, it's just the Saddleback got less out of the storm than Sugarloaf.

The only real bad part was the sheet ice (I am being nice) at the top of the runs on the Kennebago T-bar. The wind had scoured away ALL soft snow and left nasty ice behind. The ski patrol people were falling on it

I still like Saddleback, I wish the new owner the best of luck, and I hope they can expand their terrain further.

As for the snowmaking, it is on the weak side, and they are slow to recover after bad weather. The cannon look to be on the older side, and they are mobile, not fixed at the sides of the trails.

Judging by what you like to ski, you will thoroughly enjoy the glades, but be bored with the main runs.

 

[bigbog]

Saddleback....

awf...I got over there for the very first time :roll: on the LAST DAY of their 04/05 season :lol: after getting in a few runs @Sugarloaf. I have to start branchin' out more;-)&#$^$** Some nice country houses possessing some beautiful W-SW views across the mountains, lakes, and rivers of the most western stretch of Maine...into New Hampshire. I'm definitely going get over there before the last day of the 05/06 season.. :lol: The AT and the resort intersect and I can't remember what the situation is now...but it seems like the resort has plenty of tree skiing potential...maybe, maybe not...the guys who've hiked the area are in the know as to their freedom for trail/glade development. Just thinning is all I would want...get the ground-level root/weed-growth out and give us a little room around trees....that would be fine by me...

 

[awf170]

hey so im going to hike saddleback this weekend... pretty cool, hopefully ill be able to find some cool off the trail map glades

 

[ozskier]

Saddleback is really a nasty mountain...
One of the new trails this Summer is off of the old Lazy River trail. It is the summer jeep trail that you can ride to the summit. They are going to widen it out and run it down to the lower t-bar near the lodge. The other trail is going to come off of that same t-bar and meet at the base lodge.

Muleskinner is a gnarly ass trail and there are dozens of secret lines off of Eagle's Ledge. Sorry if I'm calling the trails by their old names, I don't really know the names of the new trails.

 

[GloryHole]

Ozskier, are you planning to update your site?

 

[thetrailboss]

Ozskier, are you planning to update your site?

Hey, not sure if it has been said yet, but welcome to the forums, GloryHole. Hope to see more of you in here!

 

[awf170]

Hey, I got some new info on saddleback:

OZskier was right about them adding the new intermidiate trail. It is skiers left of blue devil and it is called red devil

There is a new single black to the skiers left of the t-bar. Supposidly it is very skinny, and very turny. Also has a few glades next to it.

There is a new single black glade to the skiers right of the t-bar. I dont know anything about it.

America is now widened and is downgraded to a single black. Which seems like a good thing because it will take some traffic of tri-color.

The main mountain double added more chairs

Also I almost forgot, there is a new begginner glade located to the skiers left of the quad

 

[awf170]

Was kinda bored today, and felt like screwing around with a topo-map and a saddleback expansion. I'm pretty sure they own all the land i devolped in my design, and I heard they wanted to expand to the horn in the future.

The red lifts and white trails are existing right now. And yellow trails and purple lifts are my design. Obviously the 2 summit lifts I put in would be t-bars. And the other 2 would be doubles. The square on the t-bar is a mid-station, because the rest would be above tree-line and not open much.
As you can tell I have too much free time :wink: