wednesday 11/29 report

[skiadikt]

interesting day. the reported snow brought out the hordes. big crowd at the bubble at the bell. mtn reporting 7" from the "storm" was manna from heaven. with the mtn "lagging" on expansion, mother nature decided to take matters into her own hands ...

thought the skiing was very good though not as good as monday or as i heard, yesterday. got opening trax on upper flush but by the 2nd run the new snow was being inhaled by the swarms. the 11am open in the NR created a dangerous situation as everyone was on snowdon. scary at times. will call upper flush, full house & upper dipper lift liftline rotd. held up throughout the 9-12:30 session.

upper bunny & rime were good. mouse trap different depending on your line with skier's right the best. they dropped the run on upper chute and that was good. despite the new snowmaking lower chute sucked. clearly making wet snow and then grooming it. yuch. UEF skiable at best. disappointed in ridge run. skied well but w thin spots.

hand scanning at the bubble w rfid still down. gonna be a real cluster this weekend if they're still hand scanning. weekend's gonna be a cluster in any case w/o superstar open to the public. understand the whole thing about providing opportunities for aspiring racers but the public desperately needs that terrain on what's shaping to be a busy weekend. mtn has made their bed but w killington lagging in terrain and lifts, it's a terrible decision which reads as a money grab and FU to the public. for the record, waterville apparently is still doing it. SR was but is done.

[snoloco]

They claim to be all concerned about safety and trail congestion, but renting out Superstar when it would have represented at least 25% of available terrain leads me to call into question whether they really care all that much about it. The most effective way to deal with trail congestion is to open more terrain, and they're instead opening less. I wonder if the addition of a safety patrol, and aggressively pulling passes for poaching are more efforts to lower their insurance rates than anything.

[ski]

Great day out there . . They dropped the rope on Helter Skelter which had boot deep pow with knee deep drifts . . ROTD, tied with upper Flush

Agree the morning on Snowdon was a mob scene . .

And once again its FREE SKIING at the Bubble . . No pass of any kind needed . .

[MrsG]

Yea, no words

[skiadikt]

They claim to be all concerned about safety and trail congestion, but renting out Superstar when it would have represented at least 25% of available terrain leads me to call into question whether they really care all that much about it. The most effective way to deal with trail congestion is to open more terrain. It is possible that the addition of a safety patrol, and aggressively pulling passes for poaching are just efforts to lower their insurance rates.

can't speak for insurance rates. the speed patrol which i don't believe has been implemented yet, is a response to complaints over the last few years about more & more fast & reckless skiing. think that's more to make their customers feel safer. it's really hard to win a suit against a ski area unless there is real negligence. speaking of which, surprised and thought they were taking a chance today opening upper chute w/o the padding on the lift towers.

regarding supe, tried to be understanding and sympathetic to the whole racing thing. it is a wonderful, maybe once in a lifetime opportunity to ski a WC course. but w the current limited terrain (and yeah their trail count has been inflated by all the nat terrain they've opened and while ramshead will help), for this weekend, they need that lift and terrain to spread people out. maybe i'm wrong, but see it being very dangerous especially after seeing how crazy it got today.

[newpylong1]

I can see renting SS out for another week, but at least let the public on Skye Lark.

[skiadikt]

I can see renting SS out for another week, but at least let the public on Skye Lark.

not an additional week. think the racing ends on monday but then they need a couple days to recondition both trails for public skiing, hence the friday opening. on some level, this week makes sense because they're still taking down the venue and wouldn't want the public in there with equipment involved in the takedown.

they were racing on skye lark as well today.

[Skid Mark]

SS and SL will be rock hard with scattered death cookies for at least another month thanks to the WC, so don't get too excited when it opens to the public

[ski]

SS and SL will be rock hard with scattered death cookies

Kind of like Lower Chute today . .

[skiadikt]

SS and SL will be rock hard with scattered death cookies for at least another month thanks to the WC, so don't get too excited when it opens to the public

remember well. if you didn't hit it at the bell, was a death slide. don't believe they really fixed it until january. hopefully they do better this year ...

[rogman]

First day back since the two storms. Good day out there. I hit the rope drop on Upper Chute around 11am. Perfect timing. I think patrol waited a bit long on the open, perhaps allowing the poachers to ski it in a bit. Patroller warned us to watch out for rocks and the towers. Towers? WTF? Oh, no padding yet. Anyway, It was immediately tracked out. Overall, the naturals are still holding up well. Think I hit ‘em all.

Guns were lit on Highline about 1PM. Prior to that a solitary gun at the top to keep the water flowing. Hope they can make enough snow to open it before the warm up. Seems like a reasonable rollout change, particularly if the C4 isn’t ready to go. Caper and GN to Ramshead look ready. Any one know if the carpet will open? The 4 year old needs a brush up before hitting the big mountain. He is chomping at the bit.

Today was the first day of the season I didn’t leave the mountain because of overcrowding. Spent the afternoon shoveling the deck; yep, really was 12” with the back 5 much lighter and better than the base building front 7. A perfect combo.

[Big Bob]

Rogman, are all the compressor bays have compressors in them over at Bear?

[daytripper]

Instead of patrol warning you about the towers, why didn't they just go put up the padding?

[Captain Hafski]

Afternoon Report: Glad I missed the morning feeding frenzy. Much more glad that I skied it the day before, with the constant refresh coming down !!

ROTD: I'm thinking Ridge Run. Yeah, it's getting beat up already [welcome to K] but still way better than average. I figure it will be toast after today [Thursday] as I am looking at the App showing 10-20 minute wait at gondi. Upper Bunny, off-piste right was also contender for ROTD.

Other than that, nats on upper Snowdon were the best.

Really can't believe they haven't opened up more of the lower angle natural terrain [North Star, etc.]. I know from what I've heard from others that there's a lot of terrain [mostly canyon] that is very skiable right now.

Probably gonna head up to the Bush today [Thursday] to avoid the K crowds. This place has gotten insane.

Can't wait until the Ikon / Ya Hoo buses show up for the weekend.

[skiadikt]

Afternoon Report: Glad I missed the morning feeding frenzy. Much more glad that I skied it the day before, with the constant refresh coming down !!

ROTD: I'm thinking Ridge Run. Yeah, it's getting beat up already [welcome to K] but still way better than average. I figure it will be toast after today [Thursday] as I am looking at the App showing 10-20 minute wait at gondi. Upper Bunny, off-piste right was also contender for ROTD.

Other than that, nats on upper Snowdon were the best.

Really can't believe they haven't opened up more of the lower angle natural terrain [North Star, etc.]. I know from what I've heard from others that there's a lot of terrain [mostly canyon] that is very skiable right now.

Probably gonna head up to the Bush today [Thursday] to avoid the K crowds. This place has gotten insane.

Can't wait until the Ikon / Ya Hoo buses show up for the weekend.

NS and vagabond would be 2 candidates but unlikely with ongoing snowmaking on caper.