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laseranimal wrote:Personally I think they're nuts to replace the Snowdon Quad until the village is closer to reality.

My reasoning is as follows: If you look at the way the village is currently conceived vs the current lift layout, you've got a major problem. You're going to have tons of people who are staying in the village attempting to use two already crowded lifts(Snowshed Quad and Ramshead Quad) to reach the upper mountain lifts. It'll be like back in the day at Steamboat when there were 45-60 minute waits at the gondi because that was the only "realistic" way out of the base area.

IMHO you're going to need a 3rd lift down in the Snowshed/Ramshead area that either goes to skye peak(horrible idea) or snowdon peak(better idea) But until you get an idea of how the village is actually going to lay out, building this new lift isn't a smart idea because its placement is going to be vital

Replacing the South Ridge, solves some of the problems created by the elimination of the Crossover and is a much better idea as if routed correctly could take some pressure off of a crowded skye peak.

I have a friend who has a place on the access road and has worked at the mountain as an instructor for many years. When Powdr first came in and was doing one of their dog and pony shows about the planned base village, she told me that they mentioned some sort of lift/people mover from the village into the K basin area. I have never heard or seen talk of this except this one moment in the summer of 2007. Was wondering if anyone else has heard about this and does this solve the upper mountain access issue?

irab82 wrote:

laseranimal wrote:Personally I think they're nuts to replace the Snowdon Quad until the village is closer to reality.

My reasoning is as follows: If you look at the way the village is currently conceived vs the current lift layout, you've got a major problem. You're going to have tons of people who are staying in the village attempting to use two already crowded lifts(Snowshed Quad and Ramshead Quad) to reach the upper mountain lifts. It'll be like back in the day at Steamboat when there were 45-60 minute waits at the gondi because that was the only "realistic" way out of the base area.

IMHO you're going to need a 3rd lift down in the Snowshed/Ramshead area that either goes to skye peak(horrible idea) or snowdon peak(better idea) But until you get an idea of how the village is actually going to lay out, building this new lift isn't a smart idea because its placement is going to be vital

Replacing the South Ridge, solves some of the problems created by the elimination of the Crossover and is a much better idea as if routed correctly could take some pressure off of a crowded skye peak.

I have a friend who has a place on the access road and has worked at the mountain as an instructor for many years. When Powdr first came in and was doing one of their dog and pony shows about the planned base village, she told me that they mentioned some sort of lift/people mover from the village into the K basin area. I have never heard or seen talk of this except this one moment in the summer of 2007. Was wondering if anyone else has heard about this and does this solve the upper mountain access issue?

What about all the Snowshed lifts? The snowbridge should allow access to 3 more lifts there... From the top of Snowshed you can get to all lifts except Bear/South Ridge.

Stormchaser wrote:
What about all the Snowshed lifts? The snowbridge should allow access to 3 more lifts there... From the top of Snowshed you can get to all lifts except Bear/South Ridge.

Nothing, except the fact that you'd be counting on all the beginners at Snowshed to manage to load the lift properly, the lift attendants to scan peoples passes quickly, and no mechanical failure ever to occur with the quad.(yes you could use the doubles but that could get ugly real fast)

I'm merely saying that if I was paying $$$$ for a spot in the village I'm sure as hell not going to want to wait in a 10-15 minute line just so I can get to the top of Snowshed so I can ski down to wait in another lift line or deal with the cluster!#!@ at Ramshead

laseranimal wrote:

Stormchaser wrote:
What about all the Snowshed lifts? The snowbridge should allow access to 3 more lifts there... From the top of Snowshed you can get to all lifts except Bear/South Ridge.

Nothing, except the fact that you'd be counting on all the beginners at Snowshed to manage to load the lift properly, the lift attendants to scan peoples passes quickly, and no mechanical failure ever to occur with the quad.(yes you could use the doubles but that could get ugly real fast)

I'm merely saying that if I was paying $$$$ for a spot in the village I'm sure as hell not going to want to wait in a 10-15 minute line just so I can get to the top of Snowshed so I can ski down to wait in another lift line or deal with the cluster!#!@ at Ramshead

I start every day at Snowshed (cus thats where the bus drops me), head home for lunch via Snowshed, and return again on the bus. I have yet to wait in a line at Snowshed this season. One time the quad wasnt running, so we pushed to Ramshead, but otherwise, its been skate right onto the lift. I'm only there at those 2 points of the day, so I cant speak for the day in its entirety, but I don't think its as bad as you might think. You've got the little one, so maybe you know more about skiing and crowding in that area than i do, but from 8-930 and 12-2 its pretty light on the weekends from what I've seen.

Stormchaser wrote:
I start every day at Snowshed (cus thats where the bus drops me), head home for lunch via Snowshed, and return again on the bus. I have yet to wait in a line at Snowshed this season. One time the quad wasnt running, so we pushed to Ramshead, but otherwise, its been skate right onto the lift. I'm only there at those 2 points of the day, so I cant speak for the day in its entirety, but I don't think its as bad as you might think. You've got the little one, so maybe you know more about skiing and crowding in that area than i do, but from 8-930 and 12-2 its pretty light on the weekends from what I've seen.

But imagine what it could be like with a bunch more units in that area + less parking spaces up by KBL I'm not saying you'd be sitting there from 45 minutes but I could see that area becoming very congested

laseranimal wrote:

Stormchaser wrote:
I start every day at Snowshed (cus thats where the bus drops me), head home for lunch via Snowshed, and return again on the bus. I have yet to wait in a line at Snowshed this season. One time the quad wasnt running, so we pushed to Ramshead, but otherwise, its been skate right onto the lift. I'm only there at those 2 points of the day, so I cant speak for the day in its entirety, but I don't think its as bad as you might think. You've got the little one, so maybe you know more about skiing and crowding in that area than i do, but from 8-930 and 12-2 its pretty light on the weekends from what I've seen.

But imagine what it could be like with a bunch more units in that area + less parking spaces up by KBL I'm not saying you'd be sitting there from 45 minutes but I could see that area becoming very congested

At current skier levels, its not much of an issue. With the new village and 1,000,000 skier visits I could see it being a problem. I'd envision Bear and Skyeship becoming more popular as well...

The drawings for the village show only one lift where the two Snowshed doubles are. The story I've been given is they will be replaced with a new lift that goes further up the Skye (but not all the way to the top. Who knows... No matter what you do, there will be crowds and CF's somewhere.

There's also a new lift, a little to the left of Snowshed when looking up at it, that not only serves the new stuff they're building over there but would allow people to lap 3/4 of Snowshed Slope, which should reduce crowding at the other lifts at Snowshed...

skiingsnow wrote:There's also a new lift, a little to the left of Snowshed when looking up at it, that not only serves the new stuff they're building over there but would allow people to lap 3/4 of Snowshed Slope, which should reduce crowding at the other lifts at Snowshed...

Boy I can't wait to do some laps on that one!

skiingsnow wrote:There's also a new lift, a little to the left of Snowshed when looking up at it, that not only serves the new stuff they're building over there but would allow people to lap 3/4 of Snowshed Slope, which should reduce crowding at the other lifts at Snowshed...

I give the "plans" SP Land published last year about as much creedence as I give to Highway Star's topo maps and aerial photos with thousands of lifts dropped in. Whatever they finally end up building when the economy and the real estate market recover likely won't look at all like that "plan". I still think E2M will simply give up and sell off house lots and middling-sized tracts of land to developers. You don't need fancy-ass permitting and approvals to put up single family homes so they can get their money out and run away from Vermont. The developers can then then fight their smaller scale battles to get permitting for projects on the medium-sized tracts of land.

I'm not sure if the SP Land/Powdr Killington model works WITHOUT the village as was currently designed out.

Any change in their model is going to require going back on many of their very publicly stated operational philosophies and I'm not sure that the Suits that dominate the place can put their hubris aside and admit that in some ways they've completely screwed the pooch.

To be brutally honest I've been to K twice since December, and both times I was completely floored by how thoroughly underwhelmed I was with the mountain.

I'm sure because I've been at Magic SO much more this year that I'm just not used to seeing people, but honestly what's absolutely FLOORED me is how unbelievably crappy the skiing surface is. Both times we've skied K and Magic back to back and where K's terrain is a combination of wind hammered ice and skied off manmade, at Magic the groomers are soft and edge-able and the natural terrain skis WAY better then anything at K. Again I'm sure its because K sees more traffic in day then Magic does in a month, but still its a jolt to the system skiing them back to back.

If I were in charge at Killington my first priority is to bring back some kind of vibe. Back when I was hyped on skiing Killington, it was all about how badass the mountain was. Long season, party town, in your face kind of attitude. In this economy Killington needs to advertise their size. The line from the marketing department should be "Why Fly?" We've got more acres then anyone on the East Coast and we're the same size as some places out West. Save your cash and take your week long ski trip at Killington!!

The next thing I'd do is double the size of the mountain ops crew, at least 1/2 of K's terrain needs to be tilled/groomed out every night to provide a better surface and I'd almost think about doing a mid-day pass on some of the higher traffic trails like bittersweet. I'd also think about making more "natural/ungroomed trails" so I could better focus my groomers/snowmakers. For example I don't think Needles Eye should see a groomer. Its a perfect bump slope and with the demise of the crossover the only way onto it is Panic button. Intermediates can take Great Eastern/Cruise Control or Bittersweet/High Road which should be immaculately groomed(and perhaps get a midday pass).

One of the parks on Dreammaker or Bearclaw has to go, with the new SPE theoretically giving you TONS of intermediate cruising terrain its absolutely moronic to have only Skyeburst open. As a olive branch to the park rats, open up the line underneath the SPE, cut a chicken out line through the woods to avoid the cliff and make it a natural park like the Stash. As it is now there's bumps on the thing because so many people are skiing it.

Every food item in the lodge needs to come down by $1 at the least, or the quality of the food needs to increase markedly. Its absolutely infuriating to me to spend $9 on a bowl of mass produced chili/soup, when at Magic I'm getting chili/soup made from scratch for $3. Same goes for the chicken tenders, for the same amount I'm paying $3-4 less at Magic. That adds up to a savings of $7-10 every time we eat, and I know for us big guys its easy to skip or brown bag, but when I'm with the minianimal I cringe every time we walk into the lodge. Its like Geoff said why should I drink at KBL when I can go down the access road and get the same beer $2 cheaper.

The kids programs have been They know what they need to do here

nice post. I hope it gets read in the Ivory Tower

laseranimal wrote:
One of the parks on Dreammaker or Bearclaw has to go, with the new SPE theoretically giving you TONS of intermediate cruising terrain its absolutely moronic to have only Skyeburst open.

There is no terrain park on Bear Claw, and they have removed Bear Claw from their list of terrain parks.

As a skier with small kids, I hope that the reconfiguration of trails for uninterrupted skiing top to bottom is a high prority. Killington has too many areas for potential accidents.

jedichoppers wrote:As a skier with small kids, I hope that the reconfiguration of trails for uninterrupted skiing top to bottom is a high prority. Killington has too many areas for potential accidents.

I hated the SS crossover when it was there, but now that its gone I do miss it. On weekends there is always a long line at the new lift, and they dont always have the SRT running, which has had me staying away from bear cause its such a pain in the ass to get across. They also need to figure out something to make it easier to get from the bottom of superstar over to the Gondola. Again without the SRT running there is no easy way