Will snowmaking shut down early this season?

[ColdRain&Snow]

Stratton usually discloses snowmaking on trails, looks like they’re banking on new snow, even though it’ll be plenty cold.

“eyes and minds”

 

[slatham]

Snowmaking not done at Bromley, which has made a dramatic shift toward transparency this season. From web site:
And social media.

Greetings all! So the biggest question I’ve gotten over the last week or so from y’all has been, “are we going to be making any more snow?” To which I replied with, “we’ll have to see, temperatures aren’t really cooperating.” To put some things into perspective, it’s been almost 20 days since we’ve had an effective window to make snow. It’s been that kind of winter here at Bromley. However, it looks like things are starting to finally shift back into a winter pattern! Most weather models that we’ve been looking at are showing accumulations between 10-16 inches from Wednesday (02/22) evening to Friday (02/25) morning. Almost more importantly though, some serious artic air is coming in behind the storm. For the first time all season, our Snowmaking Team and Mother Nature will be working hand-in-hand over the next week.

I am officially communicating to y’all that our General Manager Bill Cairns alongside Mountain Ops Manager Rick Goddard and Snowmaking Manager Matt Folts have produced a plan to make snow to push our season into April. Our temperatures once this storm system rolls through are looking to be down well below zero degrees (Friday night). This will enable us to maximize our water-to-air ratio resulting in more water on the hill faster, and more efficiently (which equals cheaper). We will fire up on the morning of Friday, Feb. 25th and shut down Tuesday, February 28th. Here is the drafted plan for where we are going to resurface to extend our season and snow quality through March. *Highly likely to change a little bit depending on actual temperatures and winds.

• Start firing up the system Friday Morning
• Prioritize these trails:
• Summit
• Upper Twister
• Corkscrew
• Upper Thruway
• Lower Twister
• Upper East Meadow
• Lower East Meadow
• Learning Zone (Magic Carpet Area)
• Base Area

Our goal is to stack up the piles as large as skiably possible. That way we can farm the snow and hopefully comfortably make our way into April. If you see us out there make sure to say hi! We love doing our job and are excited to fire up our Snowmaking System for all of you!

-Oliver S.

 

[ColdRain&Snow]

Looks like Stratton is still committed to snowmaking after this storm

 

[Edd]

Looks like Stratton is still committed to snowmaking after this storm


View attachment 56925

Impressive.

 

[ColdRain&Snow]

Impressive.

I’m coming back here for that Vermont Open snowboard racing, second weekend of March.

They must want to make their last push for that.

 

[Newpylong]

Killington has roughly 6 trails under the guns today. All 3 air plants online.

 

[drjeff]

I think more places that folks are expecting will fire up Friday/Saturday

 

[Kingslug20]

No one is talking about this storm ???
Man this winter fucked everyone up...

 

[parahelia]

I’ve been at Sunday River since Saturday and they‘ve been making snow in all the windows they’ve had. They’ve been concentrating on resurfacing major trails - eg White Heat, Right Stuff, Rogue Angel, lower American Express, Obsession, and Sunday Punch. Makes sense given vacation week.

With snow on the way hopefully that’ll get the last few things open (looking at you, Shockwave…)

 

[zyk]

No one is talking about this storm ???
Man this winter fucked everyone up...

I'm western edge of the Catskills easy 6 maybe 8 and dumping...

 

[ThatGuy]

Hasn’t started yet in Waterbury…
But once it does should be heavy

 

[snoseek]

Cannon has been making aggressively. They are playing catchup. Enire front 5 lit up today. I don't think Bypass is gonna happen this year.

 

[drjeff]

Mount Snow has announced that they're planning on firing their system up this weekend.

Will be curious to see if they run on the same trails they did last weekend (they made a bunch of snow on them and the base depths on their core late season trails, sure seem like they're at, or even a bit more than they historically get them too) or fire up on other trails on say the Northface and over a Carinthia that didn't get gun time last weekend (just the main face and Sunbrook got gun time last weekend)

 

[icecoast1]

Impressive.

If a pump house is down and half of sunbowl isn't open yet, it's not that impressive

 

[icecoast1]

Mount Snow has announced that they're planning on firing their system up this weekend.

Will be curious to see if they run on the same trails they did last weekend (they made a bunch of snow on them and the base depths on their core late season trails, sure seem like they're at, or even a bit more than they historically get them too) or fire up on other trails on say the Northface and over a Carinthia that didn't get gun time last weekend (just the main face and Sunbrook got gun time last weekend)

You'd think they'd want to hit carinthia hard if they're trying to stay open late. Given they're already at an advantage with the amount of snow that's there with terrain park features. Kind of boring terrain for the most part though when all the features are gone. It's too bad they don't bury some stuff on the northface and download people off the Bluebird if need be

 

[drjeff]

You'd think they'd want to hit carinthia hard if they're trying to stay open late. Given they're already at an advantage with the amount of snow that's there with terrain park features. Kind of boring terrain for the most part though when all the features are gone. It's too bad they don't bury some stuff on the northface and download people off the Bluebird if need be

Over at Carinthia, there's a ton of snow already on Nitro and Gulch (Nitro was rebuilt last week to about as big as I have ever seen it, so I doubt they'd make snow on a trail they just spent multiple days pushing snow around on to build). Gulch and Fools Gold haven't had a recent rebuild so they might get some gun time, and Inferno is just a trail, so it would be easy to add some snow there.

Northface has some typical depths for this time of year. Would be nice if they top coated Ripcord to get that in play and set up for some Spring bump skiing in the coming weeks. Will be curious to see what the plan is

 

[Newpylong]

North Face would obviously require spinning two lifts, not ideal.

 

[icecoast1]

North Face would obviously require spinning two lifts, not ideal.

Not ideal for the bean counters in Colorado but a better skiing experience. Nitro and gulch if that's where all the snow is and will be the ones staying open, aren't exactly very interesting without features. Might as well just close and focus on keeping okemo open longer

 

[Newpylong]

Those bean counters added up a bunch of beans to put those two new lifts in. Burning cash running two lifts for a dwindling head count is not a wise use of resources IMHO if it can be done with one. In general, when it comes to spring skiing most folks are just content to be skiing and worry less about the terrain.

 

[Kingslug20]

Steins at SB is still sitting there with huge whales on it.