Ski Area Statistics

[BushMogulMaster]

Andy's blasphemous ( :wink: ) Sugarbush thread has me thinking about statistics, both from a skier's point of view, as well as from an industry standpoint. Let's look at advertised stats from the major New England players, and see what we find. To me, the most important stats are skiable acreage, mileage, vertical drop, average snowfall, and uphill capacity, not necessarily in that order. I actually prefer VTFH (vertical transport feet per hour) over uphill capacity because it also factors in total vert of each lift, but most areas don't publish that metric. We'll have to settle for capacity.

Gore
Vert: 2100
Skiable Acreage: 347
Mileage: Not Available
Uphill Capacity: 17,400 (assuming avg. capacity. actual capacity is probably less)
Snowfall: 150"

Whiteface
Vert: 3460 (3144 without slides)
Skiable Acreage: 225
Mileage: Not Available
Uphill Capacity: 16,500 (assuming avg. capacity. actual capacity is probably less)
Snowfall: 200"

Okemo
Vert: 2200
Skiable Acreage: 632
Mileage: Not Available
Uphill Capacity: 33,450
Snowfall: 200"

Mount Snow
Vert: 1700
Skiable Acreage: 590
Mileage: 37
Uphill Capacity: 30,370
Snowfall: 156"

Stratton (their website doesn't have mountain stats... wtf?)
Vert: 2003
Skiable Acreage: 581
Mileage: Not Available
Uphill Capacity: Not Available
Snowfall: 175"

Killington
Vert: 3050
Skiable Acreage: 1215
Mileage: 87
Uphill Capacity: 33,691
Snowfall: 250"

Sugarbush
Vert: 2600
Skiable Acreage: 508
Mileage: 53
Uphill Capacity: 25,463
Snowfall: 269"

Stowe
Vert: 2160
Skiable Acreage: 485
Mileage: 39
Uphill Capacity: 15,516
Snowfall: 333"

Smugglers' Notch
Vert: 2610
Skiable Acreage: 310
Mileage: 27
Uphill Capacity: 8400 (assuming avg. capacity. actual capacity is probably less)
Snowfall: 288"

Jay Peak
Vert: 2153
Skiable Acreage: 385
Mileage: 50
Uphill Capacity: 12,175
Snowfall: Not on their site, but I think they said something like 400"

Bretton Woods
Vert: 1500
Skiable Acreage: 434
Mileage: Not Available
Uphill Capacity: 14,000
Snowfall: 200"

Sunday River
Vert: 2340
Skiable Acreage: 667.7
Mileage: 49.8
Uphill Capacity: 32,000 (assuming avg. capacity. actual capacity is probably less)
Snowfall: 155"

Sugarloaf
Vert: 2820
Skiable Acreage: 651
Mileage: 54
Uphill Capacity: 21,810 (assuming avg. capacity. actual capacity is probably less)
Snowfall: 200"



There you have it. Looking at all of those stats sheds some new light on what we perceive as "big," don't you think?

 

[highpeaksdrifter]

Good stats, but I always question skiable acres in the East. WF at 225 is understated by alot. They've added a few trails over the years I've been there and the reported acreage never changed. This year they'll add over 100 acres with the new trails and glades.

 

[JerseyJoey]

Slow day at the office?

 

[BushMogulMaster]

Good stats, but I always question skiable acres in the East. WF at 225 is understated by alot. They've added a few trails over the years I've been there and the reported acreage never changed. This year they'll add over 100 acres with the new trails and glades.

Interesting. I've also noted that most of the areas haven't updated their annual "average" snowfall in years. You'd think that it would change every year, based on the previous year's snowfall. I guess not.

I think I'm going to come up with a formula that combines all of these stats and boils down to one number, a ski area size index, if you will. Ooooooo... math!

 

[BushMogulMaster]

Slow day at the office?

The ski industry IS my office!

 

[billski]

Tony Crocker at http://www.firsttracksonline.com has done a HUGE analysis on this topic. He has even gone as far as measuring top and bottom elevation of the mountain versus top and bottom of the lift elevations, not only acreage stats. His quest is to assess 'skiable". He once indicated that it "changes all the time", No need to conjure up the data from scratch (I did that once and was seriously rebuffed by Tony!)

I have to run off to a meeting now, I'll leave it to this fine team to find out where he stuffs that analysis. I believe it's on a web page somewhere.

 

[billski]

http://bestsnow.net/

Here is the analysis I did

http://www.iabsi.com/public/ski/us_resorts_sorted_by_skiable_acr.htm

I'm admittedly off by some percentage here and there, but the relativity resort to resort stands.

 

[JerseyJoey]

The ski industry IS my office!

Sweet. Not a bad career path. Not bad at all.

 

[BushMogulMaster]

Interesting studies. I think what would be useful is one mathematical formula that boils each resort down to a single figure. Of course, that would be a very broad metric, as it would encompass all of the various stats. But I still think it might be neat to say, for example, that Killington is a 19.4, and Sugarbush is a 16.8, and Denton Hill, PA is a 4.6. This isn't based on resort quality or anything, just sheer statistical information.

Of course, you would have to weight the metrics differently. But something to think about. Maybe a good idea, maybe not. Jut trying to step a little outside the box, and maybe alter the paradigm a bit.

 

[BushMogulMaster]

Sweet. Not a bad career path. Not bad at all.

I'm certainly not complaining

 

[billski]

Of course, you would have to weight the metrics differently. But something to think about. Maybe a good idea, maybe not. Jut trying to step a little outside the box, and maybe alter the paradigm a bit.

It's so subjective. Greg likes moguls, me not so much. I like eating bark, others like groomers. Everybody has their own hot buttons.

If you created a little program that put all those aspects on the screen, allowed you to rank and weight them, they you can create your own custom ranking, just for your likes and dislikes. The program could then churn the stats and come out with a quantitative result. Then, you'd have to add your qualitative aspects, salt and pepper to taste.

That beats the broad-sweeping rankings I see in the mags.

 

[BushMogulMaster]

It's so subjective. Greg likes moguls, me not so much. I like eating bark, others like groomers. Everybody has their own hot buttons.

If you created a little program that put all those aspects on the screen, allowed you to rank and weight them, they you can create your own custom ranking, just for your likes and dislikes. The program could then churn the stats and come out with a quantitative result. Then, you'd have to add your qualitative aspects, salt and pepper to taste.

That beats the broad-sweeping rankings I see in the mags.

Hmmm, I could probably write a program in QBASIC that would do that perfectly! But then... QBASIC is so old, no one would be able to operate the program. They'd have to use the keyboard

 

[scootertig]

This is probably all on some other site, but I thought it was easier to digest this way (info taken from OP). I read this much more easily than a long list...

On the other thing - I work for a software development company, and I talked with our CTO about how we could develop something to do exactly what was suggested - take raw stats, let people indicate preferences, and spit out "suggestions". There was more to it than that, of course, but I can't give that away at this point!


aaron

 

[mattchuck2]

Gore's vertical drop increases to 2300 with the addition of new terrain this year. Also 35 more acres and 6 more miles.