Superpasses: more crowds?

[cdskier]

I generally agree with this.

One thing not brought up in this running debate is are the huge crowd days more concentrated today than they were back in the 80s? In other words, there's far better forecasting and live information about when it snows in the mountains than ever before. Does that produce greater swings in typical weekend business than it did in the past?

It is certainly possible. I'd love be able to dive much deeper into data like that, but unfortunately it simply isn't available to us. Back in the 80s, it was also a lot more work to find lodging last minute so I suspect there was far more planning in advance and just going whether the weather was good or bad at the time you planned to go.

Another interesting difference in terms of live information, we're also now more acutely aware of the crowds thanks to the Internet and social media. Back in the 80s if you wanted to share a photo of crowds, you'd have to wait until you get home, get the film developed, and then show people in person the picture. Now you can snap a photo with a smartphone and share it with potentially millions of people in seconds...

 

[AdironRider]

It is certainly possible. I'd love be able to dive much deeper into data like that, but unfortunately it simply isn't available to us. Back in the 80s, it was also a lot more work to find lodging last minute so I suspect there was far more planning in advance and just going whether the weather was good or bad at the time you planned to go.

Another interesting difference in terms of live information, we're also now more acutely aware of the crowds thanks to the Internet and social media. Back in the 80s if you wanted to share a photo of crowds, you'd have to wait until you get home, get the film developed, and then show people in person the picture. Now you can snap a photo with a smartphone and share it with potentially millions of people in seconds...

It is not like they didn't have weathermen back in the 80's, or radar, etc. I don't think forecasting has changed much for the common man other than getting to look at pretty infrared maps online.

Everyone keeps making excuses for mountain management completely dropping the ball on crowd management. From an operations standpoint it is a complete and total fail at pretty much every Ikon resort.

PS, whoever said they skied 6 straight days at Jackson and never waited in a line is straight up lying. I've kept quiet this year on this problem after shouting from rooftops last year but I have lived here for 15 years and Ikon has made a noticeable difference. In the 15 years I've been here pow morning wait times have doubled while uphill capacity from the base has also doubled. Almost 200k increase in skier visits last year. That is like 40% for Jackson. IN ONE YEAR.

People act like it is a good thing but I live here. I am invested in sustainable growth for the area, but this is unsustainable and will have an affect on my livelihood and income if not kept under wraps in the medium to long term and people decide, ya know, this shit isn't worth it.

 

[jimmywilson69]

Stowe was a mad house Saturday. in a 6.5 mile queue on the Mountain Road at 7:55. Opted to Park at Tollhouse vs hoping I got a spot up top at 8:25.

Was it the 19" of snow or the Epic Pass? You decide...

Friday and Sunday were busy but manageable. Glad I hit the storm. Vermont does a shitty job of clearing their roads. Seemed worse than I had ever experienced in the past.

 

[BenedictGomez]

It is not like they didn't have weathermen back in the 80's, or radar, etc. I don't think forecasting has changed much for the common man other than getting to look at pretty infrared maps online.

Everyone keeps making excuses for mountain management completely dropping the ball on crowd management. From an operations standpoint it is a complete and total fail at pretty much every Ikon resort.

This. I was going to comment the same thing. It's was the 1980s and 1990s, not the 1680's and 1690's, we weren't relying on Galileo during the Clinton Administration. LOL

 

[kingslug]

Stowe was a mad house Saturday. in a 6.5 mile queue on the Mountain Road at 7:55. Opted to Park at Tollhouse vs hoping I got a spot up top at 8:25.

Was it the 19" of snow or the Epic Pass? You decide...

Friday and Sunday were busy but manageable. Glad I hit the storm. Vermont does a shitty job of clearing their roads. Seemed worse than I had ever experienced in the past.

My place is behind Sushi Oshi..I get up at 6 and am at the Edelweiss by 630 and the lodge by 650..its the only way to get decent parking and my 730 chair.

 

[WinS]

When I first started skiing at Sugarbush, I remember having to park on the access road which would not be allowed today. The “Sugar Bravo” triple could be 30 minutes plus. Only took the Gatehouse double to get to the North Lynx Poma. Private lessons did great because that allowed you to cut the lines. Not very much snowmaking at LP. Then Claneil put in the quad (fastest in the USA) which in now Northridge and we skied mostly at ME until the Otten days when he made the improvements at LP. According to the records we have from that era, there were about the same number of skier visits then as now. Most were day tickets,though, which is the opposite of now. And, skiing in the woods was not allowed. You lost your pass if caught. Always fun to look back on history.

 

[1dog]

aaah, a walk down memory lane . . . . my 1st year still had a ride in the 3 passenger gondola - no googles and snowing - tough run down- but it was still heaven.
Miss that Summit building though -
had the two side-by-side double/triple on Spring Fling, and I think the poma on North Lynx.

North Ridge was the yellow double too!

Summit was always the Summit lift - maybe it was a triple or double in 1982?

I have a red gondola with skis in back hanging in my yard.

In MA I have the #2 original Castlerock chair - yet to be hung.

My 1st Slidebrook was late 90's though - not sure it was 'legal' but it was not roped off.

Now - need dedicated buses just for that. ( or at least larger or more on weekends)

Great weekend in every corner - cold or not.

 

[icecoast1]

This. I was going to comment the same thing. It's was the 1980s and 1990s, not the 1680's and 1690's, we weren't relying on Galileo during the Clinton Administration. LOL

Except back in the 80's and 90's you watched the local and evening news or read the paper for the weather. Today theres cable news, internet, social media, smartphones etc. that make it possible to see weather where ever you want in real time and sensationalize everything, including pictures of ridiculous lift lines

 

[deadheadskier]

That's kinda what I mean. You watched the news once or twice a day. About the only 24 hour weather source prior to the mid to late 90s was the weather station.

To say that today's information access and distribution isn't vastly different is just not true. Hell, I grew up 35 miles west of Boston and we didn't have cable TV available on my street until about 1985. I didn't have an email address or start using the internet until 1998.



Sent from my XT1635-01 using AlpineZone mobile app

 

[cdskier]

Except back in the 80's and 90's you watched the local and evening news or read the paper for the weather. Today theres cable news, internet, social media, smartphones etc. that make it possible to see weather where ever you want in real time and sensationalize everything, including pictures of ridiculous lift lines

I agree. While weathermen existed back then, weather forecasting for the common man has changed drastically in the past 10-15 years alone. Back in the 80s/90s, no one had access to the models the way people do now. Now so many people have access to the data that "rumors" of snowstorms start spreading long before you would have heard about it from your local forecast on the nightly news years ago. Weather forecasting has turned more into entertainment where they try to hype up everything. And tons of people buy into it (and make plans around it).

It was also not as easy to know what was going on in other places in the 80s. Most of what you saw on the local news was LOCAL weather. If you lived in NJ, you didn't see VT forecasts (or CO or UT, etc). Maybe if you were lucky enough to have cable tv and had the weather channel you'd possibly see some talk of the weather across the US and might have a chance to know about some bigger snowstorms. Today I can get a forecast for any city no matter how near or far in seconds. People really seem to have forgotten how transformational the Internet really has been in our lives in terms of access to information. It was only in the late 90s that access to the Internet became more mainstream.

 

[BenedictGomez]

Except back in the 80's and 90's you watched the local and evening news or read the paper for the weather. Today theres cable news, internet, social media, smartphones etc. that make it possible to see weather where ever you want in real time and sensationalize everything, including pictures of ridiculous lift lines

CNN launched in 1980, The Weather Channel in 1982, even FoxNews & MSNBC were mid-90s.

It was simple, yes, even in the 1980s to have quick, accurate snowstorm information. I remember being glued to TWC in the 1980s as a kid for the "Weather On The 8s" for snowstorm updates, which were NWS forecasts. It's funny how quickly the internet has made people completely forget "the dark ages".

If you lived in NJ, you didn't see VT forecasts (or CO or UT, etc).

Also completely false (SOURCE: Child of the 80s born & raised in NJ).

Some of you are completely incapable of remembering life pre-internet. Long live the Dewey Decimal System!

 

[cdskier]

CNN launched in 1980, The Weather Channel in 1982, even FoxNews & MSNBC were mid-90s.

It was simple, yes, even in the 1980s to have quick, accurate snowstorm information. I remember being glued to TWC in the 1980s as a kid for the "Weather On The 8s" for snowstorm updates, which were NWS forecasts. It's funny how quickly the internet has made people completely forget "the dark ages".



Also completely false (SOURCE: Child of the 80s born & raised in NJ).

None of that does any good if you didn't have cable. I was born in the 80s in NJ as well. My family had no cable until the early 90s (at least after 1993 as I remember having only 1 or 2 channels after the first WTC attack when most local channels had their broadcast signal from WTC and only a couple still had backup transmitters on the Empire State building). This was not as uncommon as you seem to think it was...

 

[icecoast1]

None of that does any good if you didn't have cable. I was born in the 80s in NJ as well. My family had no cable until the early 90s (at least after 1993 as I remember having only 1 or 2 channels after the first WTC attack when most local channels had their broadcast signal from WTC and only a couple still had backup transmitters on the Empire State building). This was not as uncommon as you seem to think it was...

I completely agree. Most of my childhood was spent without cable. Not everybody had it and those were the days before smartphones. Things were different back then. The info wasnt nearly as accessible as it is today

 

[x10003q]

Teton Village this morning

View attachment 26198

Lifts opened at 9:45am due to avalanche control work on Feb 7th.

 

[slatham]

I completely agree. Most of my childhood was spent without cable. Not everybody had it and those were the days before smartphones. Things were different back then. The info wasnt nearly as accessible as it is today

+1

And even those that did have cable, the general awareness of the weather channel was not widespread. That didn't really change until the early 90's with the Perfect Storm (first known as the Halloween storm - was surfing on Long Island) and the Storm of the Century (skiing at Mt Snow).

Also, the accuracy 4-5 days out was not as good as it is today. Not that its great now.....

 

[BenedictGomez]

None of that does any good if you didn't have cable. I was born in the 80s in NJ as well. My family had no cable until the early 90s

Where the hell did you grow up, next to the New Jersey Devil's cave in the middle of the Pine Barrens?

I grew up in rural NJ (even had a RR address) and even we had cable in 1984.

 

[Cornhead]

I remember the Blizzard of 93. I pulled into the parking lot at work around 3 in the afternoon the day before the storm. It was sunny, temps in the 40's. I had AM radio on in the car and I recognized the voice on the radio. It was my brother. He was complaining because the Emergency Broadcast System was used to warn of the storm. It wasn't that that bothered him, it was that the fact it was a weather warning wasn't stated right off the bat. After years of hearing the warning tone followed by, "This is a test, this is only a test, if this had been an actual emergency..." The warning said, "This is not a test, details will follow in thirty seconds." Well, I guess my brother assumed the "details" were that Russian nuclear warheads were on their way. As if we'd be told if they were. What's the point?

So he was the topic of discussion on the radio that week. I think it would've been prudent to state the emergency was weather related from the start. Why would you think it was a warning of a snowstorm? I've heard it used for weather warnings since. Unfortunately I didn't ski back in 93. Fortunately I skied Belleayre and Plattekill during, and after "Stella". Beat the Blizzard of 93 by one inch as Binghamton's largest recorded snowfall, 37".

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[AdironRider]

Lifts opened at 9:45am due to avalanche control work on Feb 7th.

Your point is what exactly, that 2 hour lift lines are totally cool just because it snowed? You act like avi control did not exist previously.

Opening at 9:45 on a deep day is no different than 20 years ago, actually probably earlier. What is different is waiting twice as long and literally 4x as many people, if not more.

 

[AdironRider]

CNN launched in 1980, The Weather Channel in 1982, even FoxNews & MSNBC were mid-90s.

It was simple, yes, even in the 1980s to have quick, accurate snowstorm information. I remember being glued to TWC in the 1980s as a kid for the "Weather On The 8s" for snowstorm updates, which were NWS forecasts. It's funny how quickly the internet has made people completely forget "the dark ages".



Also completely false (SOURCE: Child of the 80s born & raised in NJ).

Some of you are completely incapable of remembering life pre-internet. Long live the Dewey Decimal System!

I'm cracking up here also. Everyone here was just waxing poetic about the snow phone a week ago even or that the weather service didn't issue weather alerts.

The "back in my day we didn't have cable and I walked uphill to school both ways" comments are a nice touch like living in the NE burbs in 1985 was basically the frontier.

 

[Scruffy]

Mount Snow today was a powder day. 8 inches and no lift lines.
Skiing for next to nothing on my $329 peak pass. :grin: