5.7 Million Capital Expenditures for 2018

[madhatter]

That's the premise at least. I've never really ridden flow trails, my DH experience back in the day was when 8" travel bikes had recently come out and people were pouring into the discipline. It was cool but people dropped out after a couple years due to the cost and constantly getting jacked up on the rough trails. I've ridden Killington's traditional trails. I'm leery of this expansion of the sport, flow trails are easy to ride, but they encourage high speeds with marginal skills, which can result in catastrophic crashes if the rider leaves the trail or hits a tree.

It seems to be going pretty well so far, but it's eventually going to develop some sort of ceiling and drop in participation as people come to understand the real risks of it. I know people that recently went from XC riding to bike park with less than expert level skills and got jacked up in a bad way.

I've seen a similar thing happen with rollerblading. I've been skating on and off since the late 80's, it blew up in the early 90's for a little while. The image is of having fun on bike paths with babes in spandex. It's great if you're young, genuinely athletic, and risk tolerant. The reality is skinned knees, ass rash, broken wrists, and head injuries. That's why it's now a niche sport and the general public doesn't participate in it. I don't ski with a helmet, but I rollerblade with one, if that tells you anything.

3

Today’s bikes are a far cry from what you rode way back when. They are way more stable and easy to ride on rough terrain. I agree that I don’t expect pure downhill to grow too rapidly but the reason is people aren’t buying purpose built downhill bikes. Unless you live near a resort, it’s tough to justify the expense. But free ride is growing and will continue to grow. We will be seeing more bikes that can be ridden up the mountain and haul the mail back down. There are a lot of these bikes at K and the bikes are getting better and better.
And you not wearing a helmet skiing only tells us you’re a fool.

Don't believe the "Bikes are better now! They make it safe! Trust us!!!" meme. A good, well set up DH race bike from 2002 is better on DH trails than the average 5" trail bike or 6" enduro bike. Sure, bikes are somewhat better. But the biggest safety issue is that the average trail bike isn't running super soft DH compound tires (42a ST, Maxxgrip, etc), which make a huge difference.

What people are doing at Killington is not Freeride. It's called "Bike Park" riding.

maybe better than a low end 5 or 6...tires are key and circa 2000 tires were also a far cry from todays rubber...and those pencil thin stiction forks sucked...I remember my uzzi slx w the "big" 130 single crown bomber was supposedly the schnizz, but that damn fork always flexed and "stuck" right when ya needed it to not do that the most...it was way better than the chromoly fork I had on my GT corrado the first time I rode K though...

then my buddy got a gemini w a Monster T on it...man we were all so envious....He brought that same bike up to K 5-5 yrs ago and I was like wow I was once so impressed w that bike...a single crown lyrik is a far superior fork than that T ever was......

I'm talking about anything with a 160mm Pike and matching travel in the back. It's NOT better than a GOOD 15 year old DH bike on DH trails.

I know this because I HAVE a modern well set up enduro bike.

I dunno, the fork dia, the advances in damping technology both front and rear and the far superior wheels and tires of today combined w the significantly lighter and more agile package that is the modern enduro bike and its hard to draw the same conclusion...I will agree that some guys could ride rigid like it was a full suspension so no doubt many found an 02 era DH bike more than adequate...modern bikes are just so plush and bulletproof...

anyway the video you posted in the other thread was pretty cool...

You should check out the flow trails at K with your "modern well set up enduro bike" next season... I think you'll like it...I'll even give ya a free lift ticket...

[ME2VTSkier]

anyone bitching about summer improvements is clueless...the summer program has brought thousands of patrons to a previous summer ghost town...

The only issue that I have, is the Mountain Bike Improvements at Snowshed. Improvements at Snowshed started the increase in summer visits. What happens to them when they decide to build houses with the new village?

We will let you know in 2130.....

FIFY!

[Stormchaser]

I think Sergio has risen to take the crown as the biggest tool on Kzone!!!

Sergio=hiwaystar=snoloco?

[brownman]

Mention Killington to nearly anyone and mountain biking will rarely be the first subject that comes up.
While Whistler's effort supported the long elusive desire for year round profitable activity, it's primarily a SKI AREA.
To that end, investment in ski infrastructure is critical, especially given the overall condition of the Ski Resort.

Until total MTB day visits exceed ski visits, try watering your pole plant

[rogman]

So, Killington can blatantly lie about what their "capital expenditures" are valued at, but they are accurately reporting their World Cup visits.....?

Since Highway Star's ill-informed vitriol has completely mislead people, figured I'd try and do an honest accounting of the numbers based on what's actually in the press release. Numbers are from the document itself, however for some improvements they don't indicate their cost, but using reasonable estimates the numbers add up:

infrastructure.JPG (38.89 KiB) Viewed 454 times

Snow making at Killington dominates, at 1.7 million. This includes some new snowmaking pipe (I assume along Highline, but there may be other locations I haven't seen yet. This number includes 163 low energy towers. Even ignoring the "other" items listed, that works out to about $10,000 a tower, thus I don't think it includes what Efficiency Vermont is kicking in. They are smart to be taking advantage of this opportunity.

Pico improvements include enlarging the snowmaking ponds. Along with replacing pipes, valves upgraded, and pump houses augmented. That's good stuff, definitely need that. Number seems about right.

3 Groomers at $0.965 million, i.e. about $330,000 each. That strikes me as cheap, but I declined the grooming/tiller option on my last truck, so my knowledge is a bit weak. They are described as park groomers; so my take is they are small. It didn't sound like leases. Also, they may have traded in some older groomers thus the pricing.

Lifts: that $665,000 is scattered across a number of lifts, K1, SS, Sunrise, and Snowdon Triple. I'm not sure what KMS is contributing to the Snowdon Triple rebuild, but if I doubt it includes the new haul rope or lift line tower heads. Seems more like a refurb to keep it going a while.

As for the rest, I don't know, but it doesn't seem out of whack. What they are doing with solar is impressive. 3 million kilowatts is not small; that's about $600,000 in electricity per year at consumer rates, I'm not sure what a commercial user like Killingon is charged. Regardless, solar will cut costs, and the payback on is pretty quick. It is the type of investment that Cumming goes for, so I'm not surprised they've invested substantially in this area. No numbers, but $800,000 to $900,000 wouldn't surprise me. Infrastructure improvements: a few trucks, a tuning machine doesn't sound like much, but it can easily add up to a couple hundred thousand.

Bottom line: I don't think Killington has fudged the numbers, nor do I think that Mike (or Robert Megnin) are the type of people that would deliberately mislead on something like this.

[snoloco]

Just to clarify I'm not a HS clone. I think he's a full on troll and disagree with him on most things. I'm posting more on here this season because I'll be skiing K more often than I did in the past since my home mountain joined Max Pass and I got the add on.

[Woodsrider]

Just because HS is too scared to ride doesn’t make everyone a pussy. Killington used to be too gnary for the masses. They now offer what the public wants.

[Highway Star]

Snow making at Killington dominates, at 1.7 million. This includes some new snowmaking pipe (I assume along Highline, but there may be other locations I haven't seen yet. This number includes 163 low energy towers. Even ignoring the "other" items listed, that works out to about $10,000 a tower, thus I don't think it includes what Efficiency Vermont is kicking in. They are smart to be taking advantage of this opportunity.

Nice distortion. Or just plain lies. "Efficiency Vermont" is the state of VT using tax dollars to pay for, if I recall correctly, around 80% of the cost of snowguns. Killington then uses weasel words in the press release to claim $1.7M in improvements, but the amount of money they actually spent is far less.

Killington Resort will make major investments to its state-of-the-art snowmaking capabilities, highlighted by a partnership with Efficiency Vermont to add 163 new low energy tower snow guns. This significant increase in low energy tower guns, along with a number of other critical system improvements, not only push’s the resort closer to a sustainable operation, but allows Killington to open ski terrain much more quickly and efficiently. Best-in-class snowmaking is a key reason Killington is able to host the Audi FIS Ski World Cup in November. In total, Killington Resort will earmark $1.7 million in snowmaking improvements and upgrades for 2018.

[yiddle on da fiddle]

good god....youre still as dumb as a rock.... EV...does NOT sell snowmaking guns...they consult on energy and conservation in the field. Seriously...did your folks actually have any kids that LIVED?

[Kpdemello]

Don't believe the "Bikes are better now! They make it safe! Trust us!!!" meme. A good, well set up DH race bike from 2002 is better on DH trails than the average 5" trail bike or 6" enduro bike. Sure, bikes are somewhat better. But the biggest safety issue is that the average trail bike isn't running super soft DH compound tires (42a ST, Maxxgrip, etc), which make a huge difference.

Modern enduro and all mountain bikes are perfectly fine for the newer Killington flow trails. It's only when you get to the black and double black tech trails that enduro bikes start to get sketchy, and even then a skilled rider can handle it.

Modern enduro bikes are very similar to 10 year old DH bikes. It's not about the tires, although most enduro bikes now come with DH specific tires (e.g. mine came with Maxxis Minion DHFs). It's about frame geometry - newer enduro bikes have slack head tube angles and wider wheelbases like DH bikes. That's what makes them safer and more capable. And FYI the Pike is not really an enduro fork and it's kind of crap for DH. The lyric is Rockshox enduro specific fork, and most enduro bikes will spec it.

In any event I've taken numerous people to Killington and they've ridden all the flow trails just fine on their enduro/all mountain bikes. Killington's DH ridership seems to have grown tremendously since they've invested in it and built trails appropriate for intermediate and beginner riders. I see it as a positive for the community and the mountain, and if you came up at all during the summer you had to notice that it was far busier than it has ever been during the summer season.

[Highway Star]

good god....youre still as dumb as a rock.... EV...does NOT sell snowmaking guns...they consult on energy and conservation in the field. Seriously...did your folks actually have any kids that LIVED?

Seriously, you're a f*** moron. EV collects about $50M in taxes a year on electric consumption and spends it on projects to help businesses save energy. That includes buying millions of dollars of snowguns for resorts.

This latest investment of snow guns is valued at over $2 million,

This is about taking advantage of an opportunity presented to them. They bought snowguns "valued at over $2 million", doesn't say they spent two million. While it will improve their arsenal, I don't believe it is intended as any sort of game changer nor do I believe it will affect their trail rollout. However, they seem to tweak that every year anyway.

Statewide, Efficiency Vermont’s Great Snow Gun Roundup supports the purchase of approximately 2,300 new low energy snow guns for the upcoming season. In return the participating resorts will donate 1,800 older model snow guns to scrap, with proceeds donated to Ski Vermont’s Learn to Turn program.

Not sure how scrapping snowguns ends up with "proceeds", but I'll let that one go... My guess is this was put together by the power companies, to reduce power demand. There are similar programs in MA (though AFAIK not ski resort related). I think Killington did well to get 17% of the total available. Figuring they were going up against Mt Snow, Stratton, Okemo, Sugarbush, Stowe (all making big snow making pushes) as well as a host of smaller resorts. (I'm not leaving out Jay, I just don't think they are as committed to snow making as the more southern resorts).

[Highway Star]

Don't believe the "Bikes are better now! They make it safe! Trust us!!!" meme. A good, well set up DH race bike from 2002 is better on DH trails than the average 5" trail bike or 6" enduro bike. Sure, bikes are somewhat better. But the biggest safety issue is that the average trail bike isn't running super soft DH compound tires (42a ST, Maxxgrip, etc), which make a huge difference.

Modern enduro and all mountain bikes are perfectly fine for the newer Killington flow trails. It's only when you get to the black and double black tech trails that enduro bikes start to get sketchy, and even then a skilled rider can handle it.

Modern enduro bikes are very similar to 10 year old DH bikes. It's not about the tires, although most enduro bikes now come with DH specific tires (e.g. mine came with Maxxis Minion DHFs). It's about frame geometry - newer enduro bikes have slack head tube angles and wider wheelbases like DH bikes. That's what makes them safer and more capable. And FYI the Pike is not really an enduro fork and it's kind of crap for DH. The lyric is Rockshox enduro specific fork, and most enduro bikes will spec it.

In any event I've taken numerous people to Killington and they've ridden all the flow trails just fine on their enduro/all mountain bikes. Killington's DH ridership seems to have grown tremendously since they've invested in it and built trails appropriate for intermediate and beginner riders. I see it as a positive for the community and the mountain, and if you came up at all during the summer you had to notice that it was far busier than it has ever been during the summer season.

If you say so. Lol.

[snoloco]

As far as I'm concerned if Efficiency Vermont offers you a large sum of money for new snowguns you TAKE IT. Not sure why Highway Star thinks this is a bad thing.

[rogman]

Pretty good article here on how Efficiency Vermont works with respect to the Snow Gun exchange:
http://digital.vpr.net/post/snow-gun-ex ... ons#stream

Here's the key part with respect to how the program works:

Funding for the program comes from the surcharge utility customers in the state pay to support Efficiency Vermont. While some may balk at having to subsidize snowmaking upgrades for private ski resorts, Jim Merriam said the energy savings will benefit everyone, since we all share the same power grid. “So, at any point in time that we can bring down the overall system load, everyone benefits because we don’t need to build infrastructure either in the form of generating new electricity or more electricity or we don’t have to upgrade the equipment that’s there,” he said.

As to what happens to all those obsolete snow guns, Merriam says they’ll be collected and scrapped by Casella Waste Management and the proceeds donated to the Vermont Ski Areas Association’s Learn to Ski and Ride programs.

Back in 2014 (when the article was written) the resorts had to turn in 4 older less efficient snow guns for every 5 new ones they purchase. The rebates per snow gun vary from varied from $500 up to $4,000. It might all be different now; or not.

Now the precise sentence used in the recent press release is: "In total, Killington Resort will earmark $1.7 million in snowmaking improvements and upgrades for 2018.". Normally the phrase used would be "earmark $ for" not "earmark $ in", but ignoring that bit of grammatical sloppiness, generally that usage means funds are designated for a particular purpose. It does not mean that Killington and Efficiency Vermont are spending $1.7 million together. It's just Killington, and its not about the "value" of what's purchased. I'll further point out that this language is far less murky about that issue than the language they used back in 2014 (as I pointed out at the time, see HS quote). This is phrased differently and is pretty unequivocal.

Now the reason that "for" versus "in" phrasing matters is that generally someone comes along and word smiths these documents. So it is possible that the sentence started out as "In total, Killington Resort will make $1.7 million in snowmaking improvements...", and they said, "change 'make' to 'earmark', it sounds better", perhaps not realizing that in this context it actually changes the meaning. If it was originally "make" then the 1.7 million could refer to the total value (as Highway Star suggests), not what was actually spent by Killington. However, in the end, does it really matter? They are putting in 163 new towers, focus on that!

[Bubba]

Pretty good article here on how Efficiency Vermont works with respect to the Snow Gun exchange:
http://digital.vpr.net/post/snow-gun-ex ... ons#stream

Here's the key part with respect to how the program works:

Funding for the program comes from the surcharge utility customers in the state pay to support Efficiency Vermont. While some may balk at having to subsidize snowmaking upgrades for private ski resorts, Jim Merriam said the energy savings will benefit everyone, since we all share the same power grid. “So, at any point in time that we can bring down the overall system load, everyone benefits because we don’t need to build infrastructure either in the form of generating new electricity or more electricity or we don’t have to upgrade the equipment that’s there,” he said.

As to what happens to all those obsolete snow guns, Merriam says they’ll be collected and scrapped by Casella Waste Management and the proceeds donated to the Vermont Ski Areas Association’s Learn to Ski and Ride programs.

Back in 2014 (when the article was written) the resorts had to turn in 4 older less efficient snow guns for every 5 new ones they purchase. The rebates per snow gun vary from varied from $500 up to $4,000. It might all be different now; or not.

Now the precise sentence used in the recent press release is: "In total, Killington Resort will earmark $1.7 million in snowmaking improvements and upgrades for 2018.". Normally the phrase used would be "earmark $ for" not "earmark $ in", but ignoring that bit of grammatical sloppiness, generally that usage means funds are designated for a particular purpose. It does not mean that Killington and Efficiency Vermont are spending $1.7 million together. It's just Killington, and its not about the "value" of what's purchased. I'll further point out that this language is far less murky about that issue than the language they used back in 2014 (as I pointed out at the time, see HS quote). This is phrased differently and is pretty unequivocal.

Now the reason that "for" versus "in" phrasing matters is that generally someone comes along and word smiths these documents. So it is possible that the sentence started out as "In total, Killington Resort will make $1.7 million in snowmaking improvements...", and they said, "change 'make' to 'earmark', it sounds better", perhaps not realizing that in this context it actually changes the meaning. If it was originally "make" then the 1.7 million could refer to the total value (as Highway Star suggests), not what was actually spent by Killington. However, in the end, does it really matter? They are putting in 163 new towers, focus on that!

Highway Star's head just exploded.