Sunday River So Far

[SkiFanE]

They were blowing the top end of Obsession this morning when I came in. Snowbound had been blown previously and they knocked over the whales, just cat tracks on it for now, but they're getting close!

Regarding the hazards on Gnarnia. Those were all there last year, as someone noted previously. But to hit those obstacles, you had to hike up from Aurora, and once people did that, the skiing was so good on Risky and American that few bothered with Gnarnia. This year, they'll have lift service there. Things could be a whole lot different.

We enjoyed gnarnia a couple times last year. It really was nice. But I'm generally pretty cautious so had my guard up. No worse than year before - but less traffic to uncover the junk. This year the tree crap is worse - probably avoid it - even the part below three mile - they left a lot of obstacles from widening lift line over the summer.

 

[Jully]

They were blowing the top end of Obsession this morning when I came in. Snowbound had been blown previously and they knocked over the whales, just cat tracks on it for now, but they're getting close!

Regarding the hazards on Gnarnia. Those were all there last year, as someone noted previously. But to hit those obstacles, you had to hike up from Aurora, and once people did that, the skiing was so good on Risky and American that few bothered with Gnarnia. This year, they'll have lift service there. Things could be a whole lot different.

Never did end up doing anything on Spruce last year. Took a year off the Boyne pass when I moved out of Maine so only made it to the River early and late season.

Great to hear about Obsession! Sounds like they might be close.

 

[Jully]

booked motel 6 Portland tonight, a place in Gorham NH fri and sat nights. 30 from river, 60 from loon. options.

Gorham is one of my favorite locations to stay. SR, Wildcat, Attitash, Cannon, Loon all a very reasonable trip away.

 

[Jully]

Well, folks, seems I may have mislead some of you. It is not the upper part of obsession they are blowing snow on, it is the lower part, from Snowbound down past the White Heat quad onto Road runner. Just want to clear that up.

I had some friends come up today, and the skiing was pretty good. All that maintenance snow they pasted out there has had a great effect. Just before we left, we saw a group of 16, perhaps, ski down American Express under the guns. More terrain!!!

And some freshies coming tomorrow in the for of natural. It'll be a great weekend!

Shucks. Any word on what other trails are just about ready? Snow reporting has been scarce on what trails are next to come online since they struggled to make some of their advertised openings this fall.

 

[machski]

Glad we are getting a bunch of snow. Even the mix will be good to pack the fluff into a base today. Really need it this year at the pace Snowmaking is going. With the December we've had, the place would normally be wide open to the ends and in-between by now.

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[Jully]

Glad we are getting a bunch of snow. Even the mix will be good to pack the fluff into a base today. Really need it this year at the pace Snowmaking is going. With the December we've had, the place would normally be wide open to the ends and in-between by now.

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Any more official word on what the reason for that is beyond potentially frozen pipes? Is the reduced staff hurting them too? Or is it purely technical?

 

[machski]

Any more official word on what the reason for that is beyond potentially frozen pipes? Is the reduced staff hurting them too? Or is it purely technical?

Sounds more like very low staff. I think they like having around a 60 person team for peak season, sounds like they only are staffed to half that.

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[machski]

Hopefully Boyne doesn't just pocket the coming $$ saved from Uncle Sam and instead invests in employees. IE, hard to hire seasonal positions when wages are too low (you can get hired at Dunkin or McDonalds and make more an hour in many locations) and unemployment is super low as well.

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[Jully]

Hopefully Boyne doesn't just pocket the coming $$ saved from Uncle Sam and instead invests in employees. IE, hard to hire seasonal positions when wages are too low (you can get hired at Dunkin or McDonalds and make more an hour in many locations) and unemployment is super low as well.

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Hopefully this year is a tipping point for them regarding seasonal employees. This year seemed worse and at a minimum it got press attention. It seems everywhere pays above minimum wage now except ski resorts.

 

[machski]

Wow!!!! The river is opening up terrain. We basically had no natural snow until mid December, not even winter, and trail count advanced slowly. Not so slow now!!! 82 of 135 trails open. Almost legit one end to the other skiing. ( You need to take the double traverse lift out of Jordan as Kansas is not open quite yet. And the little white cap chair is not open yet, so getting back to the Summit involves some walking).

Years back, I wouldn't plan on starting skiing until christmas, and look at this. 82 trails!

We went today for a few hours. What a crowd! I am spoiled with mid week skiing, this was just like a weekend. Anyways, if anyone has been waiting for decent trail count, it is there now! Have fun!!!

Yes, great mother nature is delivering. But without ma nature coming to the rescue, count would have been much lower. Still amazes me we have Aurora open with just Northern Lights. This is a first for Christmas week. Normally have Vortex and Airglow by now. So thanks nature for delivering good presents this year!

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[machski]

Little White Cap has not run yet this year (for guests anyway, may have run for tests/snow making crews) and that is late. Rogue Angel is open on natural only making just Lolla and Kansas the only groomers opened in Jordan for the holiday week. Most of the naturals are open in Jordan and Oz now, along with LP/TW on natural only as well. Had an absolute blast today out there. But all this natural is not the vast majority of skiers cups of tea. Only having Lolla and Northern Lights for cruisers on the west side of the resort diminishes the use of those pods. Lines haven't been bad this week (Cold and wind likely) but Barker has been busy at times.

All this said, it did look like hose is set on Excalibur (cat track up the Snowmaking line side of trail too). My guess is as 3D and Bear Paw wrap up, Excalibur is the next up. Would like to see Vortex and Paradigm up soon too.

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[machski]

Thanx for the update, I won't be getting there until Monday (bronze pass).

By then they may have Bear Paw open. Hope they don't loose a cat into the trees, whales are just about as tall as them in there!!

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[SkiFanE]

Did you see this on their website?

Rolling with the punches is what we do around here but Grayson seems to be packing a little extra punch than our average winter storm. During our normal daily lift inspection routine on Saturday morning, our team discovered wind and temperature related issues on several lifts and trails across the resort, such as downed trees. We've since identified the complications caused by Friday night's weather and developed a plan to get the resort back to its normal scheduled operations as quickly, efficiently, and safely as possible. Thankfully the forecast is calling for significantly warmer and calmer days ahead, which will provide our team the opportunity to get the majority of operations back within the next day or two, and the remaining well before the holiday weekend ahead.



Seems the River is being reactionary about things. Don't actually maintain it, fix it or replace parts until they finally fail, right in mid season. I'm a big homer for the River, but their modus operandi of wearing everything completely out before taking care of it is a little tiresome. They probably don't even have the replacement parts on the shelf for the upcoming repairs, which just keeps things down even longer...

Really, temperature related issues on several lifts???? They didn't they might need to run these lifts when it got cold outside?

You complain about crowds on weekdays. I don't think you will ever be happy at SR. Go find a place that suits you pickiness. Give them a break....it's freaking miserable outside - if people's trucks won't start in this weather maybe they have similar problems. Our car battery decided this cold was just waaay too much for it. So we had to replace last weekend. If it was never -15 we would not have known and would still be using old battery. Maybe I don't maintain stuff as should - but shit like this happens to me, so it's not out of the question that others have to deal with affect of cold.

 

[Newpylong]

[FONT=&quot]Did you see this on their website?

Rolling with the punches is what we do around here but Grayson seems to be packing a little extra punch than our average winter storm. During our normal daily lift inspection routine on Saturday morning, our team discovered wind and temperature related issues on several lifts and trails across the resort, such as downed trees. We've since identified the complications caused by Friday night's weather and developed a plan to get the resort back to its normal scheduled operations as quickly, efficiently, and safely as possible. Thankfully the forecast is calling for significantly warmer and calmer days ahead, which will provide our team the opportunity to get the majority of operations back within the next day or two, and the remaining well before the holiday weekend ahead.
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[FONT=&quot]Seems the River is being reactionary about things. Don't actually maintain it, fix it or replace parts until they finally fail, right in mid season. I'm a big homer for the River, but their modus operandi of wearing everything completely out before taking care of it is a little tiresome. They probably don't even have the replacement parts on the shelf for the upcoming repairs, which just keeps things down even longer...

Really, temperature related issues on several lifts???? They didn't they might need to run these lifts when it got cold outside?[/FONT]

This is independent of SR but You can't stock every spare part especially when you have 20 lifts. Also, machines typically don't care what people want, they're going to work or not work when they want to. The temperatures have been abnormally low for sustained periods of time. Stuff happens.

 

[machski]

It's like that nearly everywhere now uphillklimber. I fly for a living, we used to have approval as pilots to change out cockpit switch light bulbs on the ground (we had a bunch of them and they burnt out frequently). Well, maintenance control decided down the road that each little bulb (4 in a switch) was $12 (got to love aviation) and they didn't like having a lack of control on the inventory when pilots changed them. So now we had to defer systems and some switchlights could not be deferred if it didn't illuminate (even if system worked with said switch). So now we had hard breaks and jet sitting on the ground for light bulbs instead of making $$.

It's just the way it is in slim margin businesses.

In the case of cold weather issues, note they did say trees down across the line. I had confirmation that did affect at least 1 lift. Not sure how you could prevent that, all the lines are trimmed back to reasonable widths.

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[MEtoVTSkier]

Can you stand another Sunday River Maintenance story? Well, here it comes anyways.

I maintained the North Peak condos (primarily), the brick red buildings right up next to the North Peak chair. It was my job to keep an eye out for burnt out lightbulbs, among other things. Initially, I was instructed to walk the hallways first task of my shift, and make a note of which light bulbs were burnt out. Then drive down to inventory in the basement of the White cap Lodge, and sign out the requisite number of lightbulbs. Then drive back to North peak and walk back up and change those bulbs.

After a couple weeks, I tried to sign out some extra bulbs to save me the daily drive, and have a little stockpile in my maintenance room. With over 800 light bulbs I was responsible for, it seems there was always one or 6 burnt out every morning. I dutifully did my best to keep up with them, just part of the job. Anyways, you should have seen the heat I got for wanting to have some light bulbs at the ready, in my maintenance room.

So, I went into the boss's office. Mark was a good boss, IMO. I explained the issue to him. All the time lost driving each day down to inventory for sometimes a single light bulb, but never more than 6. He had to go to the big boss's office and go to bat for me. He came back and he had secured permission for me to maintain a level of up to 6 of each type of light bulb in my maintenance room. He also told me how hard it was to convince them to allow this. I said I'll take it. My daily trips to inventory were reduced to once or twice weekly.

From that point on, I'd do my daily walk thrus with a work bag carrying some of the lightbulbs that frequently would be burnt out, and I was able to change them immediately as I walked thru in the morning. I was able to do my job better, and save a good deal of time in doing so. But you'd think I needed an act of congress just to do so...

Because Beancounters don't understand common sense. Just high numbers vs. low numbers.

 

[Jully]

Ain't lightbulbs maddening? And then inventory control efforts that probably cost as much as just throwing half the lights in a ditch....

Cold weather issues. From the scuttlebutt I am getting, it basically means the windows or doors were blown open and control panels froze. Yeah, sure some trees came down, saw a few on the roads today, that's legit. But doors and windows not being secured at the end of shifts?? This is not the first time the winds have blown this hard. Or that it has been this cold. Or both at the same time, shucks several times last year as I remember. I'm, okay, call me cynical, but I'm saying there is more to what has happened here than just the cold weather.

Was there today. Word was a tree hit and was resting on North Peak Express haul rope. Also chondola and SRX backup engine pumps froze. One was permanently broken.

Didn't hear what was up with Jordan, Oz, or Aurora.

Seems the issues were legit this time and not actually due to deferred maintenance.

 

[SkiFanE]

Despite everything you'd think was awful about SR - had a fantastic Sunday. Woods were loaded with sticks and branches and you could see where some trees had fallen but were removed (agony - possibly hit the rope?). Great conditions. Gnarnia was open top to bottom - tons of snow. Agony was great. Stuck to Barker and Spruce and had a blast.

 

[machski]

Was there today. Word was a tree hit and was resting on North Peak Express haul rope. Also chondola and SRX backup engine pumps froze. One was permanently broken.

Didn't hear what was up with Jordan, Oz, or Aurora.

Seems the issues were legit this time and not actually due to deferred maintenance.

Jordan sounded like the control room door blew open and it froze up completely (probably wind packed with snow too). Oz just hasn't run this year since they have not blown Cowardly Lion off the top. Would think there is enough natural to pack down and run that chair to comp. For jordan

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[Jully]

Jordan sounded like the control room door blew open and it froze up completely (probably wind packed with snow too). Oz just hasn't run this year since they have not blown Cowardly Lion off the top. Would think there is enough natural to pack down and run that chair to comp. For jordan

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Well that completely stinks about Jordan. Any idea if they'll have to replace the panel? If they do it sounds expensive. They announced today that they expect to have Jordan up and running by midweek, so hopefully it isn't that bad.

I forgot they hadn't blown anything off the top of Oz.