Snow Report Lies

[awf170]

I know all ski areas lie in their snow reports but which ski area do you think is the worst??? I would have to go with Wildcat because they say trails are really open when there not and post probably double the snow they really get.

 

[riverc0il]

wildcat, hands down no contest.

 

[andyzee]

wildcat, hands down no contest.

Hey, hey, don't take nothing away from Killington!

 

[riverc0il]

i have only skied kmart a few times and didn't find their snow reports to be full of lies. i don't particularly like how they list only the open trails on their web site and don't show all the trails that are not open, but that's witholding information instead of lieing. the arguement could be made that this is actually worse :? regardless, i have yet to ski wildcat and find their snow report is accurate and i have no idea where they get their snow totals from.

 

[andyzee]

i have only skied kmart a few times and didn't find their snow reports to be full of lies. i don't particularly like how they list only the open trails on their web site and don't show all the trails that are not open, but that's witholding information instead of lieing. the arguement could be made that this is actually worse :? regardless, i have yet to ski wildcat and find their snow report is accurate and i have no idea where they get their snow totals from.

Maybe not straight out lies, but damn, no one can beat them in stretching truth or withholding bad info.

 

[JD]

Jay is pretty bad. They seem to find the deepest spots on the Mnt. and report that as new snow fallen. They need to do something to make people drive all the way up there. Also, Stowe's web site is almost never right. The biggest bitch there is that they have lifts listed as open for the weekend, then never mark them as closed for the week. This is a real pain when you make your way all the way over to the big pig and find it's not running. :angry:

 

[SAB]

What burns me the most isn't the lies in the snowfall totals (I guess I have gotten used to it and have learned how to translate). What gets me is when a ski area advertises '100% open - 73/73 trails'. Then I get there, head down a faily uninteresting trail just to get to this one trail I really like, only to find it isn't open. And neither is the one next to it. By the end of the day, I had found 4 of the 73 trails that weren't open on the 100% open mt. That happened last year at Jay by the way.

Also happened at Stowe. I don't usually ski there, but the front 4 were advertised as open, so I made the exception and made the trip, only to find that 2 of them were closed.

Ski areas lose buisness quickly when they start playing these games.

SAB

 

[thetrailboss]

My experience with Tenney was the worst in my 15 years of skiing. :angry: I've alluded to it several times, including in my questions posed to them for the AZ Ski Challenge.

To Sum, they had a problem with updating reports...some being the same for 48 hours at a time. They also had an interesting ruler and closed "open" terrain as well.

 

[bvibert]

Must be that special ski area ruler that starts at 3"+...

 

[awf170]

ya stowe is really bad i remember looking in there bochure a few years ago and it said average snowfall like 280 and a year or 2 ago they just randomly jumped it up to 300 something i think it is like 330 but im not sure. What is with that.

 

[DJAK]

I'll play a little devil's advocate since I'm in a unique position to do so. While there is def some embelishment that goes on. Many trail open vs closed issues are not marketing trying to get you on the hill when they know the trails are closed but rather when a trail is anticipated to be open (so they call it open) and then it turns out that A) patrol is simply not on the same page and hasn't been told to open it, B) A different patroller is on duty the next day and he/she declares it not openable, or C) it didn't get the groom it was scheduled to and therefore cannot open.

Also if a lift ends up on wind hold, that is exaclty what has happened - it has "ended up" on wind hold. A resort can't predict that a huge chunk will be closed the next day when they don't know - do you like shooting yourself in the foot?

Alot of it is borne of the consumer. If most resorts are reporting packed powder, the truth of the matter is that the resort that goes ahead and calls its surface frz gran will see less business. They may be the only one telling the "truth" but they also apparently don't want skier visits. The 99% of skiers days are taken up by guests who don't take into account a ski areas reputation for truthful reporting - if they look into reporting at all.

Painting the grim reality picture will only get you praise in small circles such as these. If you owned a beach resort on the sea coast and the forecast was for grey skies - would you call your guests and tell them not to come, or would you say come on out and visit we'll make sure you have fun. Ski resorts are telling people to come and they are doing they're absolut best to make it fun regardless of the conditions. But they need folks to come to the mountains to have a chance.

Sorry long winded

btw - conditions are great right now. and you can ski and still make it home in time for the super bowl.

 

[awf170]

ya i get where your coming from sry for being so negative about the ski areas. Who wouldnt do that if they owned a ski area, but i still have to say some ski areas are getting too outragious like when they get an inch or 2 of snow they report like 3-6(wildcat). Even though i dis wildcat about all this i still love the place and it is probably still my favorate ski area, but it doesnt take away from them being real liars in the snow report.

 

[awf170]

i always wondered where jay peak gets their daily photo, even like weeks after fresh snow they have powder shots, there must be something sneaky going on :-?

 

[riverc0il]

a rebutal to the devil's advocate is look at area's like MRG that call it exactly how they seem them. it can be done. MRG has to make money to stay in business just like any other ski area despite their unique ownership holders. and a wind hold really isn't what this topic was about, it was about lies in snow reports. clearly a wind hold isn't a lie, it's a weather change and even the worst snow reporters usually let skiers know if a wind hold is possible. regarding patrol and the snow reporter not being on the same page, that means there is some really horrible communication occuring on the mountain and management needs to better assess where the snow reporter's information is coming from. patrol sweeps the night before and chances are someone on patrol took a peak at a trail that was "suspect" on staying open or opening. that should be reported back to the snow reporter that night and a maybe should be noted in the reporting. true, sometimes conditions change over night, but this is very rare except when it shuts down half the mountain due to a rain/freeze event.

one of the biggest lies is the partial trail open issue. in this case, 100 feet of a 1000 foot run is "open" yet the entire trail is listed as open on the report. it should be noted it's a partial open. it really gets silly when the trail is already broken down into upper/middle/lower because then you have a situation when only uppper upper is open! :roll:

i've called for this on another forum, but i really think it's long past due for ski area operators, the ski industry trade organizations, the snow reporting players such as snocountry, and the skiers themselves through surveys and the like to all get together and come up with some standardized reporting techniques. obviously the problem is that "everybody's doing it" so you gotta do it too to stay competitive. standardization would bring everyone into line with truthful, fair, honest, and accurate reporting that every skier could understand without the resort losing the ability to put the best spin on the conditions as possible. i hate spin, but i realize it has to be done to get skiers up there. but having a standardized spin would better allow everyone to acurately identify and be prepared for what the conditions actually are. until that happens, the ski industry in general is really looking dumb in my opinion. but hey, it's not like complaining is going to ever do anything unless we all go on strike :evil: :roll: :| so it's not like we even have much power to affect change. certainly my consistent critism of wildcat's snow reporting over the last few years has done very little to change things there.

 

[riverc0il]

btw - conditions are great right now.

i really wouldn't call conditions great right now. but we make due with what we got and hope for another storm now that the base has finally been set proper in most places.

 

[SAB]

To respond to the 'devil's advocate' statements above - at least in regard to the trails being open vs closed.

I realize that conditions change and trails may open or close from day to day. However, I do not believe that to be the case in the situations I described above. In both cases, a visual inspection of the trails I was interested in made it clear that the trails were 'unskiable', and in both cases it appears that the trails were probably unskiable for a number of days. Then, on the other side of the calendar, the trails remained open on the conditions report for days after I went despite the fact that there was no new snowfall, and in neither case did the trails have snowmaking. I realize that trails can open/close on a daily basis based on the ski patrol, grooming, etc. but I still believe that in these two cases, the ski areas knowingly inflated their trail report for a number of days. Either that or they were just really, really slow in updating their information - and if you ask me, that is just about as bad.

Nonetheless, if ski areas continue to play these games, they will lose buisness. My situation at Stowe happened a number of years ago and I have refused to go back since.

SAB

 

[DJAK]

I cannot speak to your situation or for stowe.

But i can say that ski areas do not "decide" to misrepresent. 90% of the issues that skiers gripe about in snow reports are mistakes taken as lies. You don't know how hard communication between patrol and admin is until you've tried it.

Like SAB says, not sure if that makes it any better, but I feel it is the truth from my intimate experience in this realm at multiple ski areas.

Behind the logo, brand guidelines and hype, ski areas are run by people who love to ski/ride and don't get paid much to do it. They take it personally when people accuse them of lying - there's alot of info to get across and not alot of space to do it in.

river coil - if large resorts had to itemize what pieces of trails were open to the dime it would take a novel a day. 99.9% of people who ski cannot digest all the info they are presented with already, they simply hop on a lift.

FYI

Don't want to blow my cover - but i do like to read these boards to get the views of everyone.

 

[riverc0il]

DJAK, i don't think it would take long to itemize which selected trails are only open on portions. it's as simple as having a "notes" column next to the open/closed designation such as "natural snow", "thin cover", and "upper only." i don't think any one is having a hard time digusting snow conditions. rather, i think most folks are having a hard time digesting the poor excuses for them. just my two cents, but this is the second thread i've seen on a north eastern ski forum highly critical of snow reporting with most people chimming in that they've had it, fwiw. personally, i think there is a VERY open market for some ski area to capitolize on by reversing the trend and giving people the straight poop and giving themselves props for doing it. i'd shut up and listen and ski if some resort said "you think MRG has good snow reports, check ours out!" in new england, i think most people would agree that MRG is the yard stick against which all other ski reports are measured for honesty and accuracy and straight forwardness.

 

[Mr MRG]

DJAK, i don't think it would take long to itemize which selected trails are only open on portions. it's as simple as having a "notes" column next to the open/closed designation such as "natural snow", "thin cover", and "upper only." i don't think any one is having a hard time digusting snow conditions. rather, i think most folks are having a hard time digesting the poor excuses for them. just my two cents, but this is the second thread i've seen on a north eastern ski forum highly critical of snow reporting with most people chimming in that they've had it, fwiw. personally, i think there is a VERY open market for some ski area to capitolize on by reversing the trend and giving people the straight poop and giving themselves props for doing it. i'd shut up and listen and ski if some resort said "you think MRG has good snow reports, check ours out!" in new england, i think most people would agree that MRG is the yard stick against which all other ski reports are measured for honesty and accuracy and straight forwardness.

I hope that members of the forum don't mind hearing directly from an "industry insider" again. I am the marketing director at MRG and am ultimately responsible for snow reporting.

Thanks to everyone that hold us up as an example of accurate snow reporting. Yes, we take it VERY seriously and are VERY proud of our reputation. Our goal is to develop a long-term relationship with our skiers based on mutual respect and trust. To this end check out the latest thing we devised to ensure that MRG has the most honest snow report in the business.

We call it our ISR, for Interactive Snow Report. It gives skiers the opportunity to comment and criticize the daily snow report each day. It's the most honest report because it comes directly from you, the skier. This is a relatively new thing on our website and we are still "beta-testing".

You can visit it at:
http://www.madriverglen.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=2


As an aside I must say that we do make mistakes and sometimes the information does change. I was recently accused of "lying" on our snow report just a couple weeks ago by one of our shareholders no less. We reported all lifts and trails open at 6 AM on a very warm morning. The reports were sent out then and we believed them to be accurate. By the time 8:30 AM rolled around temps dropeed 30 degrees (we can porove it with our summit weather station) and the soft snow turned to unskiable glare ice. We closed down the entire main mountain. Most skiers understood, but a few were downright nasty about it. People should have a bit of compassion for the reporters as it is not an easy job and mountain conditions change all the time.


Please let us know what you think of our new ISR.

Eric Friedman
MRG's Marketing Director

 

[Greg]

To this end check out the latest thing we devised to ensure that MRG has the most honest snow report in the business.

We call it our ISR, for Interactive Snow Report. It gives skiers the opportunity to comment and criticize the daily snow report each day. It's the most honest report because it comes directly from you, the skier. This is a relatively new thing on our website and we are still "beta-testing".

You can visit it at:
http://www.madriverglen.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=2

Wow! Talk about opening yourself up to criticism. I think it's great. Do you plan to add a general discussion forum to your message board, Eric? It would undoubtedly be very popular!