Wildcat Mountain 2016-2017 season thread

[yeggous]

Today they were blasting full bore TTB on lower Catapult. They were turning guns off when I left at 2, so I assume it's got enough to get groomed out after it cures. Alley Cat was open with whales, which was fun.

All of the groomed terrain was absolutely exceptional this morning as you described. Total hero cordoroy with no concern for ice. Nothing got all that skied off by the time I left. Even natural terrain skied really well in most spots that had some traffic to break up crust. Upper Wildcat, Lift Lion, Feline and Catenary were all fun. Off map out in T Brook area is plenty filled in and good to go.

Almost had to file a complaint for no Tomcat chair today when the lift lines peaked at 4 minutes. It was a struggle.

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Word from the hill is no Tomcat this year unless Quad is down. They can't afford the staff.


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[deadheadskier]

Seems reasonable. My comment was obviously sarcasm. From the sounds of it, the only day they have maybe needed all four chairs is the XMAS week storm day and with that only to start the day.

 

[gregnye]

Remember when someone said that they should make snow on Lift Lion to provide a more consistently-open route down the top half of the mountain?? Turns out they are going to do Black Cat (Basically Lift Lion)!!! From their Website today:

[FONT=&quot]"Snowmaking has wrapped up on Lower Catapult and we could see ropes drop on it today with ungroomed snowmaking piles on it after patrol checks it out. Bobcat will be open today with snowmaking on skiers left. Because the Wildcat snowmaking team has been killing it this year, we gave them a 'snowmakers choice' trail to cover and they chose Black Cat! This hasn't been done for a few seasons and we are always pumped when it happens!!"[/FONT]

 

[deadheadskier]

Awesome! Now we're talking!

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[snoseek]

Whoa that's freaking awesome!!!!!

 

[eatskisleep]

Remember when someone said that they should make snow on Lift Lion to provide a more consistently-open route down the top half of the mountain?? Turns out they are going to do Black Cat (Basically Lift Lion)!!! From their Website today:

"Snowmaking has wrapped up on Lower Catapult and we could see ropes drop on it today with ungroomed snowmaking piles on it after patrol checks it out. Bobcat will be open today with snowmaking on skiers left. Because the Wildcat snowmaking team has been killing it this year, we gave them a 'snowmakers choice' trail to cover and they chose Black Cat! This hasn't been done for a few seasons and we are always pumped when it happens!!"

This would be great for late season bumps. Top to bottom Gondi or lift line would be awesome.

 

[Newpylong]

Maybe not the past 2 years but they always used to do the Black Cat section what they really need to do is Lift Lion from the top.

 

[deadheadskier]

Wonder if Lift Lion is a pipe issue? FWIW it's been skiing fine on natural for about a month. Thin cover areas, but fun.

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[deadheadskier]

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[snoseek]

I'm itching to get back on the hill the next couple days now!

 

[Smellytele]

The natural bump runs were really fun today.They groomed out alley cat for today and it was death marbles. Lower catapult hard huge whales waiting to be pushed out. It was really unskiable as the whales were way too firm. The woods were interesting with a lot of crust but they looked great. Groomers were in great shape.

 

[gregnye]

Look's like they are snowmaking on Star Line too!!!! Now if only they did Top Cat. I'd actually prefer Top cat to lift lion because there are more rocks to cover.

 

[deadheadskier]

Great day at Wildcat today. They cranked out a crap load of snow this week. Not just Black Cat and Starr Line, but significant piles on Middle Lynx on down and Middle Wildcat down through Bobcat. Really impressed overall with the amount of man-made and natural cover.

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[Jully]

Exciting to see them making this kind of effort now!!

 

[deadheadskier]

Yes. They've taken advantage of great temps the past couple weeks. Attitash too. I expect Attitash will expand a good amount more trails, but Cat is likely done with terrain expansion according to a conversation I had with a snowmaker. Just refreshing a bit here and there and build up the Lynx base for spring.

Mother Nature gets back on track after this little hiccup and there should be plentiful terrain between both areas moving forward.

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[snoseek]

Yep I'm all done complaining about snowmaking. These guys are killing it up there this week! some absurd piles of snow over at Attitash as well.

 

[MadMadWorld]

That's a great pic of the shaft. Looks like you grabbed it by the balls DHS!

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[Jully]

Anyone ever get a more official explanation for the odd shut down of snowmaking? Electricity? Overtime somehow? Their effort is great now obviously but the absense seemed pretty prolonged.

 

[deadheadskier]

Well, they had a pipe issue on Cheetah after getting set up there and that's not going to be fixed until summer, so no snowmaking there.

Other than that I really think it was just a decision to wait until it got really cold to go full bore and not wanting to waste efforts on stuff that will melt during the typical holiday thaw. Both mountains have been going like gang busters the past couple weeks

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[frapcap]

Wow! Its looking damn good there!
Really impressed that they made snow on Star Line. How did it ski?

In regards to snow making at Attitash- I was riding the lift at Wildcat with an Ops guy from Attitash who was very frustrated at them. He said some piece of snow making infrastructure failed (the name escapes me) and they took forever and 5 days to decide to fix it the right way instead of adding a band-aid. Not sure how true that is, but he seemed pretty passionate about the subject.