Kelly’s Blog: South Bowl and Plummet to name a few
Cold temps are back for the week and I just came back from a snow plan meeting and thought you would like an update. The name of the game is SNOWMAKING! And we have a full week planned out.
South Bowl: 1st on the list – probably will take 3 days to make the amount of snow we want. Should be sweeeeet for next wknd.
Snow Dance and River Run: Start up Tuesday night to refresh and expand skier’s right a bit.
Top of Mineshaft: We’ll blast a few fans at the top so we can build our freestyle team a jump to practice on.
Milky Way and Bear Trap: We will also start the week off on Beartrap as we were not able to make as much snow as we wanted to, last week. More snow = better moguls.
The Gulch: We will be in the Gulch all day on Tuesday to refresh for the upcoming competitions on Thursday through Sunday.
Plummet: By Wednesday night we should be making lots of snow on Plummet! Who will get first tracks???
Prospector: As we finish up on the Gulch, guns will fire up on Prospector and The Farm.
Exhibition and Ego Alley: By the end of the week snowmaking will move to Exhibition and Ego Alley for a little fattening and refreshing.
Superpipe: The pipe is starting to take shape and the guys are working very hard to have it built for next weekend, the 26th.
Jiblet: Our new small park on Cooper’s Junction will be refreshed during the week with more snow features and fun little jibs for folks who are just starting out.
Long John and other favorites: Our snowmaking crew is great at lighting up guns on some of most popular trails whenever water allows so expect to see some refreshing here and there. Of course, I am pretty excited about some of the natural flurries and squalls that are in the forecast and a little somethin’ – somethin’ that is taking shape for Friday!
Inferno: For those of you who skied Inferno this weekend you may have noticed massive amounts of snow. Guess what? There still isn’t enough for an XL park. So we will be making more snow on Inferno and then it will be built into a park next week. If you love this trail without features, you’re in luck – you get it for one more weekend.
Surprises: Let’s just say that we can’t show you our full hand and hope to have the time to get after a few more things.
With low temps our snowmakers will be putting out powder and going through a lot of water. Thanks for the cold temps Mother Nature. I don’t want to be greedy but a snowstorm or two would be the icing on the cake!
Great cam shot taken earlier this year – snowmaking and flurries combine for a superb day on the slopes.
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Mount Snow did a great job recovering from last weeks melt and this past holiday weekend conditions were quite good…especially with as many skiers as you had. Glad you to see plummet on the list as north face needs more terrain. Fallen timbers closed for racing on Saturday of a holiday weekend…really? that’s all i ll say on that as you guys delivered good snow on the rest of the mountain. Thanks for a good weekend!
Weekend skiing has been great the past few weeks.
While I am very positive and supportive of almost everything you guys have been doing the past few years, I would like to question the wisdom of closing Fallen Timbers for race training on the Saturday morning of a holiday weekend. It’s bad enough that Ego Alley is closed so often for training but Timbers is one of only 3 usually groomed runs on North Face. Also, grooming Plummet once in a while would be fun!
Minor criticism at worst
Keep up the good work
T-Bone and Matt – I hear you and it is very hard for me to close a trail like Fallen Timbers on a weekend. However, our kids sign up for a full season of race training and sometimes we have to let them get on steeper terrain so they are prepared when they travel. We only allowed them to close from 8 – 10:30 am on Sat and 1 – 3 pm on Sunday on Timbers. This way early birds had Timbers on Sunday and those who sleep in had it on Sat. We try to be as fair as possible. But I hear you and will make sure to double check of our trail closure approvals.
I did not have a problem with Timbers being closed until 10:30 that day. I skied Chute multiple times on that Sat morning. It was nice and groomed and not very crowded. Most people don’t seem to come out until about 10:30 even on a holiday. Got to give the racers some room — at least Mt Snow did not host races over MLK weekend like Stratton did when I went there on Monday and had a main trail closed all day.
Kelly, Great feature last night on Boston Channel 5 Chronicle about Mount Snow and the whole Deerfield Valley! First up. please give us a heads up on things like this when you can. We just happened to catch it. We would have loved to have told our friends and family it was going to be on. Second, when did they film that? I was looking for myself in the background then realized I would have noticed the cameras.
I did notice cameras filming the Adaptive Team a few weeks ago and overheard it was for a feature on the Today Show. I do not normally watch that. Any idea when that may air. or did I miss it?
Jim
Pretty sure that was a repeat from last year. If the show finished with Anthony Everett make some lame turns down Canyon, it was for sure.
Mike – you are correct.
hi . it’s been a great season ,the family is having a ball. We have been unable to find the “snow show ” on duncan cable . Is it still being broadcast ???
Rich, Outside TV is no longer at Mount Snow, and the Snow Show went along with it, unfortunately.
Snowmaking update Wed, 1/23: Too cold to make snow? Well, kind of. Here’s what’s going on. Since Monday we have had to cut down on electric usage each night starting at 5pm due to the highest electric use peaks in years. Basically, our electric provider mandates a curtail-able power use time period and we have to shut down all snowmaking, lifts (any excess electric) to hit these reduction periods. Because snowmaking is not as easy as pushing a button to turn on and off, this has put a tremendous strain on our ability to make snow. It takes hours to start up and the same to take the system down. If you combine that with below zero temps, the entire process is threatened by pipes freezing. Just like in your own home, when the water stops flowing, the pipe freeze. We have decided to stop making snow tonight, in time for the curtailed electric period, and not start up until Friday morning. We are pretty confident that on Friday, the power company will no longer curtail power usage. We are disappointed but cannot risk freezing or blowing out the system. Snowmaking on South Bowl will resume on Friday and snowmaking on Plummet will start shortly thereafter. We have already made a lot of snow this week and look forward to jumping back on it on Friday.
First water. Now electricity upgrades needed? You guys really need to get going on West Lake.
It’s not that we need electricity upgrades, Jason. We are limited by GMP (as are some other Vermont ski areas), and we need to power down from time to time to conserve.
I thought VT had an excess of power due to Yankee- and was exporting it to neighboring states… Is this a transmission problem or a production problem?
I’d guess production the last few days, as with the cold, GMP was likely under a larger than usual demand and there comes a time when potentially taxing the system to its breaking point over making snow vs. heating someone’s home, one needs to realize that as much as we all love massive snowmaking displays, warm houses are a bit more important!
I know that there’s an oil fired power generation plant about 3 miles from my office in CT that has 3 generators. Most of the time the cooling towers just have steam coming from 1 of the 3 towers. These last few days, all 3 have been running, which only happens in peak demand times. I’m guessing that GMP was experiencing similiar power demands these last few days
I really like the new iPhone App. Really nicely done. Cant wait to try out the vert tracking feature
How’s the snowplan for the week progressing?
Looking at the snow report, it says 0/80 for snowmaking – Did you guys run on Plummet last night?
Will Plummet be open by Saturday ??
Bob – we will try to have Plummet for Saturday but it will all depend how much snow we can put down as soon as we fire back up on Friday.
Kudos to Kelly and the entire Mt Snow team. We had the pleasure of skiing all three days last weekend and were very impressed by the recovery from the warm weather and rain. Plenty of great skiing! Despite the big crowds, it is also worth complimenting the lodge crews for keeping everything clean. Obviously it is a (much appreciated) priority, as demonstrated by the fact Kelly was personally bussing tables (including ours!). Thanks all!
Is Plummet the last trail with snowmaking capability to not get the gun treatment this year so far, or are there others? Looking forward to skiing one of my favorite trails (Plummet) soon and glad to see snowmaking back online after the short hiatus!
Pretty sure that the only other trail that gets some snow made on it that hasn’t seen any gun time this year in the lower part of Ledge (the “old” Standard trail) from Link on down – pretty much the trail you see through the trees to skiers/riders right as you’re headed down the upper 1/2 of Canyon
Yes, Plummet is the only snowmaking trail that we have not made it to. One of the reasons is that when snowmaking was installed on Plummet, it was installed on skiers right. Why? I have been told that pipe on this side would allow for blow over to Jaws. NW winds prevail but Southern winds are ideal for Plummet. And as we have all experienced, southern winds usually mean a warm front is approaching, which is not ideal for snowmaking. Not an excuse but just wanted you to understand some of the challenges our snowmakers face.
I have heard that the wind has to be “just right” for productive snowmaking on Plummet. Thanks for the detailed explanation, Kelly, and thanks to both of you for the quick response. Now all we need is a little more natural and we should be at 100% in no time!
Three words: More wind turbines!
For thursday and friday the snow report said that south bowl was open. it also showed a green check mark on the various monitors around the grand summit but the trail was roped off both days. whats up?
Thanks James for catching the South bowl snafu. The bottom section of South Bowl was open. So on the grid we use, 20% of the trail was marked as open (needed so we can calculate accurate acres open.) Unless a trail is open from the top it should not appear as open. We’ll try to be more thorough in the future.
Just wanted to chime in a bit about power and curtailable time periods. Jeff S is correct, the max demand on the entire ISO New England grid has reached a peak, our utility has customers like us with special contracts that allow us to use a lot of power when available and sometimes asks us to curtail. Not since I began working here in 2006 have I ever seen a back to back curtailable period. This week we ended up with 4 days where we basically had to shut down snowmaking completely from 5:00 to 9:00 PM. This puts a strain on the system and the guys in weather that freezes above ground lines quickly if water is not moving fast enough. We are doing our best to get the terrain open as quickly as possible.
What happened to showing the trails with moguls vs. those just not groomed? Would be helpful to all lookong for a particular conditions. I suspect that with the reduced grooming at MS, many have moguls.
Charlie – pls let me know which snow report you use so we can get it updated with moguls. the ones I checked denote moguls. And I am not sure why you say that we have a reduced grooming plan. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Im interested to know what trails everyone thinks should be groomed, but apparently arent. Ive seen Kelly field this question a number of times this year and I’m not sure where its coming from. I’m quite curious about it in fact. It seems to me they groom pretty much every major trail on the mountain on the main face, they maintain all the parks over in Carinthia on a daily basis, Thanks Walt is always groomed as are the access trails from the summit into Sunbrook. I’m honestly curious what people think should be groomed that isnt.
Just an FYI, we do have moguls on our snow report, and after I read this comment, i ran down to the snow reporter’s office to make sure they had “moguls” checked on the form, and they didn’t. They made the change and the mogul icons showed right away.
Bob- It isn’t what particular trails aren’t groomed it is the overall percentage of trails that are groomed. It is natural to compare Mt.Snow to Stratton so how do they manage to groom between 90 and 100 percent of their trails on a daily basis.
I get ya Diane. But a couple things. Comparing Mount Snow to Stratton is not natural in my opinion. Stratton is a beginner hill compared to Mt Snow. It has zero challenging terrain, glades aside. Also, it seems most people who comment on the grooming thing ski nothing but groomed runs. Well, there are alot of us out there that get bored of that real fast. The reason I ski Mount Snow in large part is the variety of terrain and larger selection of advanced/expert terrain.
You are right, Stratton and Okemo darn near sterilize the entire mountain every night. And they are catering to that intermediate/mildly advanced skier. If thats your thing, thats great, but the people who want this “groom every trail” thing arent the only ones who use the Mountain.
Mount Snow should be proud that it has such a diverse selection of terrain, and in my opinion they should advertise it and contrast it with the Stratton/Okemo way of doing things. If it weren’t for Mount Snow Id have to drive all the way to Killington.
Just look at the snow report. They groom well more than 1/2 the mountain every night. That has to be close to every major snow making trail on the Mountain. For example … today 41 out of 59 open trails were groomed. The natural trails cant be groomed right now, so, what are we really talking about grooming?
I say good job Mount Snow, i think you have it just about right!