Sunapee's Sunbowl fiasko - Sunday 3/11

[Bumpsis]

Sunapee 3/11

Today would have been a pretty stellar day at Sunapee if it weren't for the breakdown of their Sunbowl Express Quad. The Sunbowl lift usually carries a substantial load of the mountain's traffic, so not being in service today really put a damper on the day.

Arrived at about 10:15 and the lines at their main quad lift and the Spruce Triple were massive. Wait times at the Quad about 20-25 minutes. The Spruce Triple's line moved a bit faster if you stayed in the singles queue.
What a PITA on a day when the snow conditions and the weather were just great.
The Sunbowl quad never opened up, and I managed to hang in there until about 3:00 pm.

From the conversations that I heard, the Sunbowl Quad is not a very reliable lift and when it goes down on a busy Sunday like today, the result is a just the sub optimal experience like today.

I realize that any ski area can experience a lift malfunction, but if so, most of the traffic is funneled onto one main lift, it just sucks. You would think that management would take all possible preventive steps not have a whole day shut down of one of its main lifts.

Today was just an annoyingly painful reminder to stay the hell out of Sunapee on weekends.

 

[chuckstah]

That sucks. It's been at least 10 years since my last visit, thanks for the reminder to not go on weekend's. I do like it there and had a midweek pass for a few years.

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[deadheadskier]

I imagine days like today are why they are considering putting a chair up Cataract. The combination of that and the West Bowl lift and terrain hopefully makes Sunapee a bit more tolerable on weekends

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[speden]

Ugh, I was there yesterday also. I would hardly even call it skiing the crowds were so bad.

With the time change I didn't want to get up super early, so decided to hit Sunapee instead of driving further north. I figured on a Sunday the crowds wouldn't be too bad, but the lift failure killed that. I talked with an instructor about it, and he said a module had failed, and they didn't have a replacement on site, and the closest replacement would probably be at Okemo, so no way it was getting fixed that day.

It was a shame because the snow conditions were pretty decent. The glades were a little thin, but not bad, and there were quite a few nice bump runs scattered around. But the crowds were just unbearable. How can you keep any stoke going when you have to wait in line forever to do each run. Even the singles lines were painful. I tried some of the lifts at the beginners area and the terrain park runs where the crowds were smaller, but they were overrun with hordes of little kids.

I wasn't having fun so I bailed at about one. Here's a few pics of the conditions:

 

[thetrailboss]

FWIW Sunbowl is a refurbished HSQ from Okemo. An old one as well. Probably part of the issue. The last time I skied there would have been 2006! Yikes!

 

[speden]

I think it had been about five years since I'd last gone to Sunapee. Nothing of significance has changed in all that time. The lodges are still too small, the lifts are all too slow, the lines are too long, and they blare music at the base areas. And they attract lots of families with small children, which I guess is great if you have small children, but otherwise makes it feel like an amusement park instead of a ski resort. It will be a cold day in winter before I ever go back there again...

 

[Rushski]

Also takes away a fair amount of their terrain if the Sunbowl quad is down... Doesn't sound like a good day. I'll never touch it on any weekend day.

 

[deadheadskier]

This is probably the reasoning behind the plan to add a chair up Cataract. If the Sunbowl chair ever goes down, folks can still ski the terrain and have another option to exit out of there.

 

[gnardawg]

If they add a chair up Cataract and Sunbowl lift goes down everyone will still have to congregate at the main lift correct? I guess you spread people out a little more on the mountain but it would be a mess still.

When are they slated to expand to the "west bowl"?

 

[The Sneak]

I hate that chair. But there's good tree skiing over there so...
But yeah I hate it almost as much as when it was the glacial fixed grip.

 

[podunk77]

I've always wondered what happens when a pod lift like this goes down for good with people still in line, and there's really no way for the people in line to ski toward another lift (i.e, in this case, there's no outlet trail to ski down, and Cataract is obviously too long a trail to side-step up). Do staff just grab all available snowmobiles and give people rides to another lift?

 

[deadheadskier]

I believe there's a work road to the bottom of Sunbowl, so I'd imagine they use their shuttle buses to get people out of there

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[podunk77]

I believe there's a work road to the bottom of Sunbowl, so I'd imagine they use their shuttle buses to get people out of there

Ah okay.... that would make more sense.