drjeff
Well-known member
The Vermont Ski Area Association was struggling with trail count validity, since there were so many different ways of naming trails or sections thereof. Many areas complained of unfair practices. So they researched a little bit and decided that the typical trail or section of trail with a name was comprised of about 5.6 acres. Then they took the total skiable acreage divided by 5.6 and that was the new trail count, overnight. It was an attempt to level the field and give the public a slightly fairer approximation of size and availability of terrain. I do not know if the 5.6 acres is still the standard today, probably is since the VT areas I ski have had stable trail counts over time. If you had a lot of skinny trails like Sugarbush you did not fare as well with the new math as Mt. Snow with many wider trails. Although the savvy skier/rider will point to the many tasty slender trails at the bush as an example of how the new count system missed the mark. Someone like Killington came out well, since they had a combination of wide highways and narrower winding trails. Their count went up from 108 to over 200 overnight.
This happened around the mid-90's, not sure the exact year. Someone with a pile of old trail maps can figure it out.
The simple, honest answer is to report # of trails open, miles those trails cover and acres that make up the trails.
80 trails could be a whole variety of things from ski area to ski area. 25 miles of terrain or 300 acres of terrain should be fairly similar from resort to resort, especially mid season when some wide trails should be skiable full width (which can effect the skiable acreage of a trail if it's in WROD mode as opposed to mid season coverage