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Rocking chair has been a mess. The line was originally skier's left and when LBO made that the dedicated park trail, they moved the lines to come right down along the liftline and buried them. All the hydrants pop up at the old tower bases, usually 3 at each tower. Then they drag hose and guns as needed for the make. Now, with the lift line shifted skier's left, those clusters of hydrants will be out in space in the middle of the trail by themselves. I have hopes they go back to a more traditional hydrant alignment as I always thought coming down Punch then onto RC early season would make the most sense. You don't have to deal with the extended flats on lower Puch to cut back across to the base of the Locke Chair. Of course, now they would have to deal with the base of the T-Bar. But always seemed like the better first TTB route.
Hmm, why do I get the feeling that I'm going to have to eat shit from you and MB on opening day when I am wrong. LOL We will see. I hope your right. Killington can be painful early season.
They have been making a lot of snow there after everything else has been blown to create their border cross track. Will they be able to open them up to make that track?
Lower Punch is on skier's left so not really practical. The current RC setup is designed for park builds, not a full trail quickly. Kind t enough hydrants for that. Will be interesting to see what they do with that trail this season. If the new upfeed is going up Agony, likely will go up RC as well so probably will have to wait til the Barker rebuild in 2 summers.
Well, I guess they could be shifting it to Loon, but not out of the West Basin side. That was a one off last year with the work being done to finish the 7 Bros Express, including killing power to the Octagon base for a time during those opening days. They will shift back to East Basin and Higher this year to start.
The top of north Peak was open from West basin as I recall last season when they opened. They had the most acerage open in NE when they opened. Kinda of showing off their snowmaking horsepower.
Did you ski final weekend last year? No food trucks, all closed.You mean its not unusable yet after how many floods they've had in Barker
My personal opinion is Jordan (and by proxy, Oz given the snowmaking boost) will be the home to end of season skiing and to me, that makes a ton of sense. Don't really need ticketing too much on that end as it is mostly passholders, gives the resort slopeside lodging for those guests who are not locals and you have Slidders and their deck, plus the food truck venue for food/beverage options. Higher elevation for the base and summit holds snow longer and better than Barker can and if they cover all of Oz with manmade again, those runs are a blast in the spring sun and corn. Especially love Eureka in spring bumps, but given they haven't blown a flake on that run in almost a decade, been a while since it held out real late.
But for early season, you really need some type of base lodge and ticketing. Even when we open on just passholder/Ikon days alone, you still need that for passes the do not work/need replacement. And once you open to day tickets and the rest, there is more traffic of those folks early season than late season. Not to mention that with the parking lot situated as is, they must get Lolla open completely to open at Jordan. That run takes a while to lay down cover on its total length and the lower part is a bad angle into the sun for early season to hold snow. If they had direct parking access to the lift base, then Rogue/Excalibur might work ok for quicker early season opens. But unless they really upped the gun count and mixed types (thinking Fan/Impulse alternating) to give a greater throw distance than Impulse alone, that trail will be a drag to an early open.
they opened with Kanc and north last year because 7 bros was not done. Suspect they go back to gondi base this year for opening, less total snow required. Would be happy opening off east basin with downloading but they tend to wait until more routes are ready.
Nope, went out to Mammoth on this year's Ikon. But did hear that, big miss IMHO.
I was right there w/ ya from B&B #1 in 1989 all the way thru the end....
