The NEW Magic Mountain

[NYDB]

Anyone sensing the "well that storm didn't quite amount to what we were hoping for...." update in the next few days...

I think it is going to be more ' the snow wasn't dense enough'...... which will probably be the truth.

Either that or they'll lose power for the day.

 

[skithetrees]

Unbelievable. They say they are looking to test this month. Is that the new wiring for the drive, or the whole lift? Will it run this year? They need to be honest and give a truthful answer. Even if it is that they don’t know. I think this just solidifies not buying passes next year for most of the family. I want them to survive, but this is getting ridiculous.

 

[JoeB-Z]

Unbelievable. They say they are looking to test this month. Is that the new wiring for the drive, or the whole lift? Will it run this year? They need to be honest and give a truthful answer. Even if it is that they don’t know. I think this just solidifies not buying passes next year for most of the family. I want them to survive, but this is getting ridiculous.

As I stand in line for MLK weekend I will be seething. I ski for fun. A guru once said "I don't pay people to give me headaches."

 

[kendo]

Why don't they run a couple snowcats pulling sleds to the summit (assuming they have trails open), exclusively for pass holders to restore some goodwill that's nearly gone?

Created Butte has a simple cat+sled setup for getting 12+ up to Uleys Cabin for on mtn dining... cold ride with bench seating but it beats skinning.

 

[zoomzoom]

"one of the towers need a sheave assembly change and working with engineer on that"

are they trying to say the sheaves need to be changed on that tower? a lift designer wouldn't be needed for that task.

therefore one could infer that the number of sheaves on one assembly needs to be revised. it's real difficult to ascertain that sheave loads are too high without being run for a long time, but if a tower assembly is "light" that would reveal itself under varying load conditions. so i'd guess the sheaves are lightly loaded and the number of sheaves need to be reduced. unless the tower is too short, or a combination assembly is needed. just a guess, for entertainment purposes only!

 

[ss20]

Is this the re-re-re engineering or the re-re-re-re-engineering of the lift profile?

One day I hope we get the truth on the absolute SAGA of a lift installation project. This hasn't added up since essentially day 1... which was summer 2019 for those who had to Google it like I did.

 

[RH29]

Over under a 30% loss in season pass sales next season?

I know two families that have/had Magic passes. One has had a house nearby and was a 10+ year pass holder. They get Bromley passes now and plan to simply get day tickets when things look good at Magic (which, considering how this season has gone, worked out well for them). The other, and I think I referenced them before in this thread, has had enough after no Christmas skiing and is switching to Indy next year. I don't think there's any way people can justify an 800 dollar pass for a place that gives a two and a half month season and has reasonably cheap day tickets for the five or six days a year where it's actually worth going there.

 

[Bubba]

I know two families that have/had Magic passes. One has had a house nearby and was a 10+ year pass holder. They get Bromley passes now and plan to simply get day tickets when things look good at Magic (which, considering how this season has gone, worked out well for them). The other, and I think I referenced them before in this thread, has had enough after no Christmas skiing and is switching to Indy next year. I don't think there's any way people can justify an 800 dollar pass for a place that gives a two and a half month season and has reasonably cheap day tickets for the five or six days a year where it's actually worth going there.

You mean over promising, under delivering aaaannnd raising pass prices in the same season wasn’t a good idea? If I didn’t live in VT and get a steep discount, no way I’d be a pass holder. And I’ve been one since 2008. I’ve been adding an Indy pass for the last few years and it’s been the only saving grace.
The real drama will come Sunday. Geoff seems to be pushing tickets hard. Pushing tickets to access one mid Mtn lift. Nothing like 30 minute wait times to ride 14 minutes up, to ski a 45 second lap. Sounds like a good day to redeem an Indy pass elsewhere.

 

[KustyTheKlown]

I know two families that have/had Magic passes. One has had a house nearby and was a 10+ year pass holder. They get Bromley passes now and plan to simply get day tickets when things look good at Magic (which, considering how this season has gone, worked out well for them). The other, and I think I referenced them before in this thread, has had enough after no Christmas skiing and is switching to Indy next year. I don't think there's any way people can justify an 800 dollar pass for a place that gives a two and a half month season and has reasonably cheap day tickets for the five or six days a year where it's actually worth going there.

“Switching to Indy” is weird. Indy isn’t a primary product for anyone who likes to ski more than 20 days.

 

[Bosco DaSkia]

what now? indy has 134 alpine resorts on it's pass. that's 268 skiing days available to the passholder... yet if i like to ski more that 20 days a year it's useless as a primary product? hell, i got 10 days skiing in Japan alone on this card last year plus another 16 out west in addition to my 28 east coast days. The rest were on my ski cooper pass or industry letters.


guess i'm just "weird" for "switching to indy"....

 

[RH29]

“Switching to Indy” is weird. Indy isn’t a primary product for anyone who likes to ski more than 20 days.

I live in Connecticut. Both the families I described are weekend warriors who don't typically ski more than 20 days up in VT.

And for the record, Indy is my primary product and I ski 30 or so days a season. Granted, that usually breaks down to 12-15 Indy days, 12 cheap weeknight laps at local hills, and a few days in early season where I suck it up and pay for tickets.

 

[NYDB]

so they are opening off green tommorow and offering to add kinderspiel, Phoenix, vertigo and LMC if it snows like it should. so basically a foot on dirt.

and they already are teasing next weekends storm in the snow report. ha ha.

 

[doublediamond]

So we’ve heard of profile issues with the rope coming off the sheaves

Then we’ve heard of tower alignment issues

Now we’ve heard of yet more sheave trains need to be swapped

Did Stevens, a well known rope engineering firm,
really fuck up that bad? Or do the fingers get pointed at the excavation/ cement crew(s). Who was the contractor for that work to be so so off design specs?!?

 

[Newpylong]

That's the million $ question, maybe literally at this point.

 

[thetrailboss]

So we’ve heard of profile issues with the rope coming off the sheaves

Then we’ve heard of tower alignment issues

Now we’ve heard of yet more sheave trains need to be swapped

Did Stevens, a well known rope engineering firm,
really fuck up that bad? Or do the fingers get pointed at the excavation/ cement crew(s). Who was the contractor for that work to be so so off design specs?!?

Are you saying that more work is needed for the quad?

 

[NYDB]

Are you saying that more work is needed for the quad?

see post 5292

 

[chuckstah]

At this point I'm pretty sure they could have installed a brand new lift for less five(?) Years ago. Cheap interest rates was still a thing, with easy borrowing terms. Taking everything into account-lost revenue, higher interest rates, lost customer good will, pass sales increase, much higher daily ticket limit and so on....my friend there just laughs at this point when I constantly ask for updates

 

[ne_skier]

It’s not even like there was anything fundamentally flawed with the lift when it was brought over other than the steeper pitch it was going to be installed on. Just somehow all of these problems got by everyone working on the lift and now every time progress is made, there’s another setback discovery.

 

[kancamagus]

At this point I'm pretty sure they could have installed a brand new lift for less five(?) Years ago. Cheap interest rates was still a thing, with easy borrowing terms. Taking everything into account-lost revenue, higher interest rates, lost customer good will, pass sales increase, much higher daily ticket limit and so on....my friend there just laughs at this point when I constantly ask for updates

Magic is certainly in the find out phase of f* around with used lifts reinstall. Good, fast, cheap, usually you can only pick two, but I don’t think they had the money to choose more than cheap.

From the outside looking in, they certainly seem to have fallen into the poverty trap of it “being really expensive to be poor”. E.g. you can’t afford to buy genuinely cheap and cost efficient per unit of X items in bulk quantity at Costco, so they go to Dollar Tree because they don’t have that much money in their wallet, even through the dollars per unit of X at Dollar Tree is 3x that of Costco. So over the long run, they end up wasting a LOT more money than if they had a few dollars to spare to buy the more cost efficient method from the start, but because they are relatively hand to mouth, they can‘t save enough never escape. Hence, the poverty trap.

While this winter is a fluke for the past 30-50 years, it’ll be a normal, average year towards the later part of this century at likely CO2 increase trajectories.



This winter is a shot across the bow. Any ski area that could reliably open at least some terrain for Christmas this year will likely still be financially viable in a few decades. Anyone that faltered, likely will go NELSAP. You need to have top notch snowmaking that can operate in extremely marginal conditions, and you need to be ready to pounce at every window, to get and stay open. FFS, even Mount Southington had two runs off their summit open the weekend before Christmas this year. Granted it‘s a small hill, but they had air/water guns seemingly every 50 feet on one run and giant tower mounted fan guns ever 100 feet on the other run, but that is what it is going to take.

I wouldn’t be surprised if southern Vermont in the latter part of this century is basically Connecticut now: if a trail doesn’t have snowmaking, it won’t be open 99% of the time.

Once they get Black open, they need to focus 100% on increasingly uphill GPM pumping capacity, and increasingly marginal condition snowmaking capability, and improving the operational competence to pounce on every window possible.

 

[NYDB]

is there some reason they aren't open thursday 1/11?