Comments on: Kelly’s Blog: Quality Trumps Quantity

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 20:11:21 +0000

Fair enough Kelly! You folks really have it going now. See you on Thursday.

By: kelly

kelly — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:02:07 +0000

River Run for 2 reasons. It offers you a short cut to the North Face from the top of the Canyon Express. It also works well when we are making snow in that area, system-wise. And we head to Chute tonight.

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 01:30:02 +0000

Thanks for the info Kelly. Here’s a question we are curious about. Why River run? That is mostly an access trail it seems to me. Why not skip river run and make snow on say Chute instead? Just curious about it is all.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:15:41 +0000

Thanks for the thorough response Kelly – much appreciated.

By: kelly

kelly — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:02:02 +0000

Since temps dropped on Tuesday, Mount Snow has been making snow at full capacity. That is generally maxed at how many gallons per minute you can pull from your water sources. So, our competitors could be making more snow if they can pull more water…..and some can.
We started by resurfacing all existing trails and they are skiing very well – great recovery. Now we have moved on to expansion and as mentioned in the daily snow report we are making snow on Freefall and River Run (North Face.) The plan is to add the North Face this weekend. We are finishing up Lodge/Exhibition and plan to have that for the weekend also. We are also making snow on Cooper’s Jct and hope to add that trail and the Tumbleweed lift this weekend (Sundance Base Lodge will not be open this weekend.) We are also working on the tubing hill every time we have spare water as we prepare for the holiday and want to offer families multiple options. Over at Carinthia our plan is to build out Nitro and the Gulch to their full sizes by Christmas and Grommet will continue to get a little snowmaking here and there. Also at Carinthia we will make snow on Inferno and it will NOT have any features – we are just starting the process and it will be a ski trail for the holidays.

Now that we have resurfaced existing terrain we are in expansion mode. Sleepy Bear, normally it takes about a foot of snow to get our natural trails open.

Jonathan – I think most of what you are seeing is perception. I watch the competition very closely and ski it also. My limited experience is that some resorts may have a little more acreage but our snow surfaces have been at the top of the list. And remember that Mount Snow counts its trails very differently than our northern neighbors. At Mount Snow a trail is a trail. If you start at the top of a trail, for the most part you end on that trail too. We don’t have upper, mid and lower and count it as 3 trails. So when I am looking at other ski areas and their trail count, I usually cut it in half to get an apples to apples comparison to Mount Snow. As I mentioned above, we can only fire up as many guns as we can supply water to. So….it is impossible at Mount Snow to have every single gun making snow simoutaneously. Finally, this is not a budget issue. The number one priority in our company right now is making snow – period. As of 11 am on Thursday, we have taken down most of our lower mountain snowmaking as the temps are on the rise. They will go back on line when the temps dip. And come on mother nature – send us some white love this week!!

By: sleepy bear

sleepy bear — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:28:25 +0000

Curious to get an answer to Jonathan’s question. Put another way, if Mt Snow focuses on making on the 4 open trails truly awesome, and we get 10 inches naturally, are we still left with 4 trails because 10 inch natural isnt enough to open bare trails? versus going skinny on, say 5-10 more, and ending up with 20 open trails in a week?

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 21:26:49 +0000

Agreed, nothing beats the real thing. And perhaps “every single snowgun” is wishful thinking due to power, air pressure, and water constraints. The point is that all of Southern VT is subject to similar weather constraints, yet Killington, Okemo, and Stratton have opened 34, 26, and 35 trails to date, respectively, and looking at their live webcams, there is was a whole lot more snowmaking activity happening (across multiple trails both open and closed) right now. I’d like to know from management if the perceived low capacity snowmaking effort is strategic, a budget issue, a chemistry / physics issue, an incorrect observation etc.?

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 20:42:07 +0000

Luckily, there is a LOT of snow in the forecast for the next 2 weeks. Yeah!

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:58:03 +0000

Dude, they are making snow on Freefall right now. Im no snowmaking expert thats for sure but I HIGHLY doubt they can turn on all the guns at once. The temps look good going forward and i’m sure they will have a few new trails open by the holiday week.

Show some patience. Without any significant snowfall between now and then you are probably only looking at 2 or 3 more new trails by then anyway. You dont get 75% of the mountain open with snowmaking its simple as that.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:58:59 +0000

Question for Kelly (or anyone else on staff) from a season pass holder: The holiday crowd is 12 days away from showing up en mass, and mother nature has finally cooperated by giving us snowmaking friendly conditions – WHY ISN’T EVERY SINGLE SNOWGUN TURNED ON RIGHT NOW? I’m aware that the currently open terrain needs to be resurfaced, but improving the trail and lift count should be a priority before the busiest week of the year, correct?