Looks like they are still running at bottom of HG. Glad to see them work with the temps with the super cold coming Friday night. Maybe trying to open with Jester, OG, DS to Gondi and Snowball/Fling. Bravo, HG and VH lifts would be nice
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The "Sugarbush Thread"
- Thread starter thetrailboss
- Start date
Wow...I just saw the cam and was surprised as well. I was not expecting them to start on Spring Fling this early even with good temps down low. I wish they had an angle that showed the upper mountain so you could see exactly how much up top is still going.
Hawk
Well-known member
Win said that spring fling was the plan this year if they had the temps. But here is the Rub. They are blowing on jester on the upper mountain and only half of spring fling and a little at the bottom. My wife tells me that it is 25 degrees at the base so the only thing that is stopping them from blowing top to bottom is capacity. Something that I have been saying in one form or another for 10 years now. I say it is air but others say water. I do not believe the water story.
4000 GPM water is not enough to blow T2B on all those trails simultaneously. LP really could use somewhere in the 6-8K GPM water range if they want to blow on a bunch of trails simultaneously T2B. Of course then they'd also need a much larger snow-making pond as that much water being pumped out would drain it in no time unless you have really good flow in from the Mad River refilling it.
From the old days it was the air that was the limiting factor in capacity but I have been educated on the new snow gun technology and it is water that limits the capacity. They also use more water than the old guns, hence the wet production snow that is mostly made except when it gets very cold. From the cams snowball seems to be on also and guns on DS. On the app the HG cam in on. IF running on Jester also that is actually a good amount of guns on. After being independently educated I'm done complaining about it. Saving the cost of making air to nucleate and throw the water further and instead having guns make huge wet piles of slop is what modern snowmaking is. The savings in cost is worth it for them.
With that- there is room for one more pump at the pond and 5 more at CB-1 so water capacity could be increased...
The HG webcam isn't back on their website yet, but the static screenshot is still being uploaded behind the scenes... If you want to look at it from your computer, here you go: http://www.sugarbush.com/webcams/heavens-gate-webcam.jpg
Hawk
Well-known member
CD, if you have not seen the pond it has a direct flow from the river into it that is much larger than 4000 GPM and the river is flowing heavily right now so there are no issues there as far as I am concerned. The pipe up to the main pump is 18" and that has a max capacity of 12,000 gpm if they have pumps that can handle that. The ones they have I am told can do about 8,000gpm. That is why I do not believe the water thing. If for some reason the pumps can't handle that, which I do not believe, then why not upgrade the pump? I look at all the other resorts that blow 2 to 3 loops top to bottom and it blows my mine that SB can't even do one.
They draw water from the river proportionally based on flow that is recorded and reported to the state. More flow, more water. This time of year they should be filling. When it gets very high during a rain event there is a large gate that can be opened to fill it quickly.
I'm fine with them not being the first to open, the 18th works for me. Give them time to hopefully make a lot of snow. As i said earlier I'm surprised and happy they moved the snowball/fling so quickly to be aggresive with the temps. With what is forecasted Friday night they should be able to pound it those trails and fall back to upper elevations to chase temps.
I'm fine with them not being the first to open, the 18th works for me. Give them time to hopefully make a lot of snow. As i said earlier I'm surprised and happy they moved the snowball/fling so quickly to be aggresive with the temps. With what is forecasted Friday night they should be able to pound it those trails and fall back to upper elevations to chase temps.
Hawk
Well-known member
I'm with you on opening on the 18th. It gives me a chance to ski around at Sunday River and Killington to see old friends. I just wish they could run the System with a little more capacity. This will matter when it comes to expansion and recovery later when we get the inevitable warm weather outbreaks.
The 4K GPM number I mention came from Win himself. It was also cited in a permit or some other analysis document that I read along the way somewhere. I absolutely agree they should upgrade or add pumps especially if the main from the pond is capable of 12K. I was worried the main pipe up to the mountain was the limiting factor and not the pumps, but if that's not the case then there's really no reason to not increase the water pumping capacity (outside of budget priority decisions or arrogance with assuming it will snow and become a moot point).
I still also maintain that they need a bigger pond. You don't plan for the best case scenarios where the Mad River is flowing adequately. You need to plan for the potential low flow years like last year where they ran out of water on more than one occasion. If they had just dug the existing pond to the actual permitted depth, they'd be in great shape with the pond. I think continuing to defer the core snowmaking infrastructure upgrades is risky and a bit short-sighted. Replacing pipes on mountain, replacing the air compressors, adding new guns, etc is all great (and one can argue as important to do as well)...but having more water in storage and getting more GPM to the mountain needs to be in the master plans for the near to mid-range period. (And maybe it is). This year they replaced 2 lifts, so I'll give them that for capex this season as an excuse to not do any major snowmaking capacity upgrades.
All that said, I'm still impressed with the lower mountain snowmaking aggressiveness. I'm glad to see they are taking advantage of the cold temps down low while they have them.
slatham
Well-known member
Interesting that the snow report names trails with active snowmaking, but not Snowball or Spring Fling.
They're terrible at updating the report prior to the season starting. I'm actually surprised it lists any of the trails with snowmaking.
Also, I always forget about this camera view from across the valley. You can see where they made snow, but can't necessarily see which trails have active guns on them: http://www.mrvre.com/webcam
slatham
Well-known member
And they have now updated the report......
benski
Active member
Sugarbush added capacity to its pond after Irene. I have never heard of the pond being a limiting factor for snowmaking capacity. A few years ago Win said the biggest limiting factors were older on mountain water pipes that could not handle the full capacity of the current system, much less an improved system.
You must have missed last year where they ran the pond dry at least a couple times early in the season. Non-frozen precipitation at opportune times was actually a blessing for them last year to refill the pond otherwise they would have not even been able to make snow on all their snow-making trails. Sure last year was unusually dry...but the pond is still undersized compared to the ones other major resorts have. If I remember the numbers right, Stowe's new pond is almost 5x the size of SB's. K's "reservoir" is even bigger than that.
slatham
Well-known member
Ok, lets remember this is VT. You just don't go and build huge retaining ponds whenever and wherever you want. I have been privy to some of the requirements and let me tell you there were several WTF moments. I am therefore not sure that the cost/benefit works vs. some of the other items that have been remediated, but I will bet it doesn't because Win is a smart businessman.
Also, "Sure last year was unusually dry.." is a drastic understatement. I do not believe it wise to build to satisfy a very unusual situation.
IMHO that is......
They have (or had if it had an expiration date) a permit to dig that current pond to a depth to allow it to hold ~60M gallons from what I recall. It is only dug to a depth currently to hold about 1/3-1/2 of that. Digging it to the full depth certainly would not be cheap, but not being able to make snow in a lean snow year due to lack of water is also very costly (and could hurt even more in the long run if you lose business to competitors). Also keep in mind that last year wasn't the first time they ran out of water. Usually it happens later in the season once snow-making is less important and they can get away with not making more.
I don't want to get into the climate change debate as I'm not necessarily convinced of the impacts on skiing either way, but having a reliable water supply for snow-making is not something I would risk for long term sustainability. Stowe built a 110M gallon pond not too long ago. Mt Snow just finished their new 120M gallon pond. So saying it can't be done in VT when there's 2 very recent examples of it being done is not a great argument. You can argue that Mt Snow is further south and has more of a need for snow-making than SB...but Stowe is further north and yet has significantly more water storage than SB does. With Stowe now being Epic and relatively cheap for a season pass...do we really want to take a chance of running out of water while Stowe is able to keep pumping it out?
I also don't think my statement was drastic. Even this year, the flow in the Mad River was below average from mid-September until late October when they finally received some well timed precipitation. (It was even below the flow of that same time-period the year prior when we did have water shortage issues).
I'm not saying this is the first thing they need to address, but I really don't think you can have a serious conversation about increasing water pumping capacity from the pond to the mountain without also talking about increasing your pond size. The two need to go hand in hand. Relying only on the hope that the Mad River will be flowing enough every year to keep the pond constantly refilling as you suck the water out of it is a risk that shouldn't be overlooked.
Some of us go way back, getting the pond and withdrawl from the Mad River was very controversal and quite the accomplishment to get approved. Huge $$$ to excavate and export that material and its been done twice since then in '98 and Irene. Lincoln Peak had almost no snow making on it, Mt Ellen was the snowmaking mountain. Ripcord, DS, Snowball/Fling, Pushover/EZ Rider was about it. Does anyone remember what and where the water source was for South? It was Clay Brook at the 11th hole at the golf course. Yes, it could be better but I'm happy it is a lot better than it was.
From my view I'm "content" with the current system, but at the same time like Hawk says it'd be nice to be able to run guns on 2 or 3 T2B loops simultaneously like some of our competitors can. My only argument is that if you want to do that, you have to increase water capacity up the mountain. To do that, you have to take a serious look at the pond capacity. If there are no plans to increase water pumping capacity, then your current pond size is "acceptable".
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