No doubt that will be Bernie's next move. :lol:
-
Welcome to AlpineZone, the largest online community of skiers and snowboarders in the Northeast!
You may have to REGISTER before you can post. Registering is FREE, gets rid of the majority of advertisements, and lets you participate in giveaways and other AlpineZone events!
The "Sugarbush Thread"
- Thread starter thetrailboss
- Start date
No doubt that will be Bernie's next move. :lol:
Not Sure
Well-known member
" Feel the Bern Turns" I may have to reconsider my political views ......Hmmmmm?
Slight difference in what you get at the bird for the money.
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using AlpineZone mobile app
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using AlpineZone mobile app
mister moose
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2007
- Messages
- 1,097
- Points
- 48
New Hampshire primary slalom: Best time on a Nastar course gets all the delegates; Bernie should be a shoe in, he's lived in VT for decades. Close second is Biden, who was born in Scranton and went to law school in Syracuse. Forget Warren, she was born in Oklahoma and went to school in Texas. Dark horse: Yang, who went to high school at Exeter Academy in NH.
Last edited:
WWF-VT
Well-known member
Nothing related to the "rumor" in this thread if that's what you want to know.
Though several people I spoke with ahead of Win's (excellent) presentation were also anticipating validation of 'the rumor', and with many sound reasons to seek big money for future wish list upgrades, there was no bombshell news...just a thorough review of Sugarbush's current solid position amongst giants in the industry. Think snow!
Hawk
Well-known member
No he did not say anything about selling. He did say that he hoped to be the forerunner for the pond skimming for years to come. ;-)
Highlights:
- Spoke very broadly about the difficulties they are faced with. This includes battling with the Giants with price structure, insurance costs are up, not enough labor to fill positions, Tax in VT and how it is not very business friendly, etc. '
- He spoke about the fact that as an individual resort, they have very little negotiating power at the table when it comes to purchasing unlike the big companies.
- Spoke about the environment and their partnering with POW and 1% for the planet. They have upped the anti and are giving back 1% of all food and beverage.
- Spoke about the awards they have received for their commitment to the environment.
- They have a new Food and Beverage Manager from France that has lots of experience. Jerry Noonie retired this year. (I liked Jerry. He was a mountain biker and saw him all the time out on the trails.)
- Spoke about the $4M capital outlay this year. - New $500K winch cat. New gear box for Bravo. Put power underground for HG and Castlerock. New roofs and such.
- Spoke about the need to expand snow-making to recover better after adverse weather. (Obviously I liked that one). Unfortunately that will be a future item as the cash outlay will be huge to create new water reservoirs.
I may have forgot a few things. The overall presentation was good. He does a nice job. I could not help but think that all the discussion about the issues they are faced with was a little foreshadowing. Maybe not. Just a feeling.
Highlights:
- Spoke very broadly about the difficulties they are faced with. This includes battling with the Giants with price structure, insurance costs are up, not enough labor to fill positions, Tax in VT and how it is not very business friendly, etc. '
- He spoke about the fact that as an individual resort, they have very little negotiating power at the table when it comes to purchasing unlike the big companies.
- Spoke about the environment and their partnering with POW and 1% for the planet. They have upped the anti and are giving back 1% of all food and beverage.
- Spoke about the awards they have received for their commitment to the environment.
- They have a new Food and Beverage Manager from France that has lots of experience. Jerry Noonie retired this year. (I liked Jerry. He was a mountain biker and saw him all the time out on the trails.)
- Spoke about the $4M capital outlay this year. - New $500K winch cat. New gear box for Bravo. Put power underground for HG and Castlerock. New roofs and such.
- Spoke about the need to expand snow-making to recover better after adverse weather. (Obviously I liked that one). Unfortunately that will be a future item as the cash outlay will be huge to create new water reservoirs.
I may have forgot a few things. The overall presentation was good. He does a nice job. I could not help but think that all the discussion about the issues they are faced with was a little foreshadowing. Maybe not. Just a feeling.
Thx Hawk, good intel for those of us who could not make it up. I run a couple small businesses - and the pressure from regs and government ( but I repeat myself) couldn't be higher.
I understand SV's struggles from his perspective. On top of that you have the weather, economy, and the help factor.
Also, everyone is leaving a given company at some point - even the president.
We hope there's a few more years of course. Change is inevitable.
slatham
Well-known member
Re; the need for more water. Isn't the pond next to the Mad River enough, at least for Lincoln Peak? Have they run out of water before. IIRC it's 120 million gallons.
Yes, they have run out of water (just a few years ago) and had to wait for river levels to rise and refill it (it was a drought or borderline drought year). And IIRC, it is permitted to 63M gallons, but only dug to a depth that allows less than that (~25M gallons).
Hawk
Well-known member
The discussion was not about the total. He said that they do not use even close to the allowed total. it was about the GPM. I think he was saying that they want to go from 2000 GPM to 6000 GPM. In order to do that they would need to store more water close by or in another reservoir.
jimmywilson69
Well-known member
yeah that's a whole different ballgame there. tripling uphill pumping capacity would require significant infrastructure from storage, to pumps, to on hill pipe system.
slatham
Well-known member
Yes, I recall that now. It was a fairly rare combo though - drought, cold snap reducing runoff, and cold snap causing constant snowmaking.
That would explain the need for more on mountain storage. It would be cost prohibited to get that level of GPM from all the way down at the reservoir.
ss20
Well-known member
Tripling snowmaking pumping capacity is a bit excessive, imo. Yes, they should be able to blow on more than three trails at a time. But no one ever went to Sugarbush for their snowmaking ability.
For me Killington has always been the dividing line between places where you could rely on natural snow vs places that have to rely on snowmaking.
For me Killington has always been the dividing line between places where you could rely on natural snow vs places that have to rely on snowmaking.
Is it maybe that they want to increase the GPM by 2000 to get to 6000 GPM at LP? I looked back at our previous discussions in this thread and they were around 4K GPM at LP right now (meanwhile ME is about 2-2.5K GPM on their system). Tripling capacity would be an aggressive goal, but increasing it by 50% seems like a reasonable longer term goal.
Makes complete sense to want to store water closer though and then potentially use the existing pond just to refill the "upper pond". Not sure where you would put one though and it would definitely not be cheap to do.
Plan for the worst case scenario, hope for the best!
Yes, it was a pretty rare combo. Although I seem to recall another year (either right before or after that one) where I was talking with one of the snowmaking ops guys in December and he was saying they were concerned again about water flow from the river and came close to running out before river levels rose just in time to start refilling the pond so they didn't have to think about shutting down during a nice stretch of cold weather. If you want to increase pumping capacity, makes sense to want to have a bit of insurance with being able to store more water than currently possible.
Hawk
Well-known member
Excessive. Have you ever been at Sugarbush for the weeks after a rain or thaw event mid winter? It takes them a good long while to get things back in order. Only trails like Snow ball, Spring Fling or Steins are set up to get a good coating after rain. That process is also hindered because they have to break down hoses and guns one trail, drag them to the next trail and set it up. That is my opinion as well as the opinion of everybody I ski with. This whole discussion about upgrading their capacity was part of the greater discussion on Climate change. They realize that with the volatile weather patterns that are part of this new climate regime, they are going to need increased capacity to deal with it. Recovery from warming events to maintain the skier experience will be a big part of what will make them better in the future. They just have to figure out how to pay for that. That is the rub.
I'm not sure I've ever contemplated snowmaking being "excessive" at any ski Eastern ski area in terms of capacity as long as the amount they use that capacity allows the ski area to still be comfortable with their profit margins.
Excessive in terms of percentage of terrain covered? Sure. I think many areas do not leave enough terrain all natural. I'd rather more snowmaking resource spent on resurfacing terrain than trying to blanket almost everything. Sugarbush I think gets this mix right.
Yes it sucks when all natural needs to remain closed for days, weeks at a time during bad weather, but the payoff is worth it when mother nature delivers
Sent from my XT1635-01 using AlpineZone mobile app
Excessive in terms of percentage of terrain covered? Sure. I think many areas do not leave enough terrain all natural. I'd rather more snowmaking resource spent on resurfacing terrain than trying to blanket almost everything. Sugarbush I think gets this mix right.
Yes it sucks when all natural needs to remain closed for days, weeks at a time during bad weather, but the payoff is worth it when mother nature delivers
Sent from my XT1635-01 using AlpineZone mobile app
Similar threads
