The "Sugarbush Thread"

[WWF-VT]

I actually have the number of open trails and snow totals in a spreadsheet and graph on my home computer for both 2011/2012 and this season. Was interesting to see the similarities at many points in the season. I don't recall the specifics on Christmas, MLK, and Presidents though. I do think Presidents fell in the good skiing category that season, but not sure about the other 2. Was also interesting that SB had to close for several days after their opening day in 2011 due to warm weather. At least this year once they opened they were able to stay open.

And yes this year there is a huge difference in how "good" the season was between Sugarbush and points north vs K and points south. N VT at least got some snow and was able to get a decent amount of natural terrain open for some periods. S VT suffered with many natural trails never opening at all.

I would hope since SB is the one providing the comparison to the 79/80 snowfall record that they are comparing summit snowfall totals in both cases. The Mansfield snow stake would give a better indicator of how much snow stuck around, but not necessarily how much fell.

Sugarbush really pushed it this year with inflating the number of "open" trails that were often sheets of ice, rocks and dirt and not worth skiing. ( I get a kick out of how Wayback at Mt Ellen ways always open regardless of the fact that it is a connecting trail you couldn't get to because Exterminator was closed) Don't confuse quantity with quality as the vast majority of natural snow trails sucked this season.

 

[rocks860]

Sugarbush really pushed it this year with inflating the number of "open" trails that were often sheets of ice, rocks and dirt and not worth skiing. ( I get a kick out of how Wayback at Mt Ellen ways always open regardless of the fact that it is a connecting trail you couldn't get to because Exterminator was closed) Don't confuse quantity with quality as the vast majority of natural snow trails sucked this season.

I skied a couple trails at castlerock in January and was surprised at how good they were. Better than many times I've skied them before

 

[cdskier]

I get a kick out of how Wayback at Mt Ellen ways always open regardless of the fact that it is a connecting trail you couldn't get to because Exterminator was closed

That bothered me a lot about seeing Wayback still open even when Ext was closed...then I finally looked back at a map and think I figured out why they listed it as "open" (partially open would have been more accurate). On the map it appears that Wayback technically extends across Lower Elbow all the way back to the Glen House. I think that's highly questionable to mark it that way though as you'd probably never ski straight from Ext over to the Glen House...you'd have to essentially be going back uphill to do that.

My general comment about "good" in relation to this season was very relative to NVT vs SVT. I agree there were many trails that were highly questionable this year at some times when they were open. That said there were also many times I thought a lot of the natural snow trails skied very well. I had some great runs at Castlerock when I hiked over. Also had some very good runs on Lower FIS, Semi-Tough, and Walts and even a few good runs on Domino, Moonshine and Twist.

 

[rocks860]

Ah yeah I forgot about lower FIS. That skied great when I was there in January

 

[WWF-VT]

My general comment about "good" in relation to this season was very relative to NVT vs SVT. I agree there were many trails that were highly questionable this year at some times when they were open. That said there were also many times I thought a lot of the natural snow trails skied very well. I had some great runs at Castlerock when I hiked over. Also had some very good runs on Lower FIS, Semi-Tough, and Walts and even a few good runs on Domino, Moonshine and Twist.

I skied most of those trails and the days when they were worth skiing was very limited compared to past years.

 

[HowieT2]

IMHO-this season is in its own league as the worst. '11-'12 wasnt nearly this bad. It may have ended earlier, but there was at least some decent skiing along the way. This season just never got started.

 

[HowieT2]

IMHO-this season is in its own league as the worst. '11-'12 wasnt nearly this bad. It may have ended earlier, but there was at least some decent skiing along the way. This season just never got started.

just checked my youtube archive. attached is a video from skiing slidebrook with about 8" fresh on 2/24 and that was followed by like 18-24" on 2/26. that season was leaps and bounds better than this.

https://youtu.be/5PhwGVfjlic

 

[HowieT2]

I skied most of those trails and the days when they were worth skiing was very limited compared to past years.

agreed

 

[cdskier]

I skied most of those trails and the days when they were worth skiing was very limited compared to past years.

Absolutely agree. Like I said, it is all relative. Compared to SVT, I'll take what we had at SB. I was (and still am) hoping we really don't get anymore snow (unless it yields a substantial powder day) just so we can officially set the record on lowest snowfall total for SB.

 

[cdskier]

just checked my youtube archive. attached is a video from skiing slidebrook with about 8" fresh on 2/24 and that was followed by like 18-24" on 2/26. that season was leaps and bounds better than this.

https://youtu.be/5PhwGVfjlic

A big problem for me in 2011-2012 was I picked all the wrong weekends to ski SB. I just checked my gps app on my iPhone and I wasn't at SB the dates above. I learned a lot that year about not trying to plan ahead on when to go. Ever since that year I've planned to go up to SB almost every weekend and it has worked out much better where I've now caught plenty of times where forecasts were wrong or we ended up getting "surprise" snow that you just had to be there for to catch.

 

[deadheadskier]

Really? They often stay open until May. I'm still hoping for as much snow as possible in Northern New England. Don't really care about records.

 

[rocks860]

just checked my youtube archive. attached is a video from skiing slidebrook with about 8" fresh on 2/24 and that was followed by like 18-24" on 2/26. that season was leaps and bounds better than this.

https://youtu.be/5PhwGVfjlic

I went up the week starting on st Patrick's day that year and I remember that it snowed a ton the week or two before I was there and then was 60 degrees that whole week, miserable

 

[cdskier]

Really? They often stay open until May. I'm still hoping for as much snow as possible in Northern New England. Don't really care about records.

Anything short of an enormous dump will have pretty much no bearing on how long they are open. Being open until May hinges on how long the man-made snow that they built up on Stein's lasts.

Edit: If you were inferring that you'd simply like more snow so more trails reopen not so that they stay open longer, it would need a substantial amount of snow on the bottom part of the mountain to accomplish that. Most areas of the mountain are shut down for the season and wouldn't reopen no matter how much snow falls. Maybe they would open hiking to CR, but I don't even see them running that lift at this point. I don't think they'd reopen the Gate House/North Lynx areas either.

 

[mikec142]

Regarding SB customer service, two years ago on President's Day weekend, I hired an instructor for our family of four for the morning. Not only was he not a good technical instructor, he really had trouble reading my wife and kids and it made for an expensive, bad day. I'm one who typically chalks those things up to "you take the bad with the good", but my wife suggested that I say something to the people at the ski school. I ended up speaking to Russ Kauff (who I think is the ski school director). When I told Russ about our morning he was appalled and promised to make it right. That afternoon, my kids got lessons (on the house) from not one, but two very cool and fun instructors who work with the ski team there. It turned what would have been an expensive, bad day into a really great day. It should be noted, that Russ never tried to rationalize our bad experience or explain it away. He immediately said, "give me ten minutes to see what I can do to make things right for you" and then he proceeded to come through in a big way. He's clearly a guy who gets that little things go a long way to creating long lasting customer relationships. We've been back many times since and bring friends too.

 

[deadheadskier]

Anything short of an enormous dump will have pretty much no bearing on how long they are open. Being open until May hinges on how long the man-made snow that they built up on Stein's lasts.

Edit: If you were inferring that you'd simply like more snow so more trails reopen not so that they stay open longer, it would need a substantial amount of snow on the bottom part of the mountain to accomplish that. Most areas of the mountain are shut down for the season and wouldn't reopen no matter how much snow falls. Maybe they would open hiking to CR, but I don't even see them running that lift at this point. I don't think they'd reopen the Gate House/North Lynx areas either.

I'm inferring I want as much snow as possible until the ski areas close. Even if it's down to just Steins (or Lynx in the case of where I ski) Id want it to snow.

Not about reopening terrain, it's about having what's open ski great. There are such things as late April powder days; sometimes big ones.

 

[cdskier]

Not about reopening terrain, it's about having what's open ski great. There are such things as late April powder days

Case in point, April 24th last year


That said though, I also do enjoy having some real "spring" skiing with warm, sunny days in April. Those can also be "great" without any new snow falling. Last year (and maybe even the last 2 years) we didn't really get much of that true spring skiing experience that I remember. Even just looking quickly back through my pictures I see a ton of pictures in April with many people still wearing winter jackets.

 

[deadheadskier]

I enjoy that too, but if we had a traditional warm ski in shorts spring, it would all end quickly. I don't want insult added to injury by having an abrupt ending.

 

[cdskier]

Does anyone know about Stein's Challenge? Is this basically a watered down version of the Wildcat Vertical Challenge, except not for charity? Does the registration fee include a lift ticket?

Good questions. Was the Wildcat Vertical Challenge on a bump run? In theory Stein's will (or should) be bumped up by then unless they plan on grooming right before the event. When they first announced the event I took it to be a spring bump endurance type of race. There's a 4 hour time limit and it is just ski as many runs in that time as you can on Stein's with various prizes being awarded. With an approximately 8 minute ride on the Valley House chair, I'd say 5 runs per hour is probably about the max. At 5 runs per hour you're looking at just under 25K vertical in 4 hours.

It will be interesting to see how this event plays out this weekend. I don't think conditions will be ideal for the way the event was envisioned. You're either going to have a groomed Stein's that won't bump up much with temps around 30 on Saturday or you'll have some very firm smaller bumps if they don't groom it. This past weekend Stein's wasn't even open (looked pretty firm from the lift so I'm guessing that was the reason...but the bumps also didn't look deep at all yet)

 

[smac75]

It will be interesting to see how this event plays out this weekend. I don't think conditions will be ideal for the way the event was envisioned. You're either going to have a groomed Stein's that won't bump up much with temps around 30 on Saturday or you'll have some very firm smaller bumps if they don't groom it. This past weekend Stein's wasn't even open (looked pretty firm from the lift so I'm guessing that was the reason...but the bumps also didn't look deep at all yet)

They rescheduled it to next weekend. Guessing to give it time to soften.

 

[cdskier]

They rescheduled it to next weekend. Guessing to give it time to soften.

Makes sense. That must have been a very recent decision. When I looked at the snow report this morning the event was still listed on the featured events section for the 9th. I see they also dropped the registration fee to $20. Wonder if they are giving refunds to people already registered. No idea how many people actually had signed up. Hope there weren't too many people that planned specifically for this event that aren't SB regulars that now could have scheduling conflicts.