alex

How about paying full price but spending an hour in line? Sure, the whole mountain is open but you get to do 10 runs in a day. I don’t disagree that prices are outrageous. I also don’t claim to have any understanding of how to optimize pricing at a ski resort, so I make no pronouncements on the matter. Bretton Woods makes no mystery of the fact that it’s an expensive resort but they like to keep it that way to keep crowds down. We all know the shitshow that happened with the Epic Pass. It’s a balance.

I’ve gotta say, I skied today and it was awesome. Spring conditions with hero snow, great for carving. I’m ready for a change but gotta take what you’re given… and at least some resorts are making the best of it. The weather definitely kept people away so for the ones that did go, you have warm weather, good spring snow and no crowds. A better deal than you often see this time of the year IMO

Getting some Xmas sleet lol.

I was gonna out at 1 pm and the conditions were great, but crowds are low so that helps

LOL It'll be interesting to see how the ski resort adapt to "the new norm" - if this trend in fact continues. Snowmaking is a great tool but incredibly expensive, I imagine the smaller areas will struggle to stay alive if they have to consistently pay for snowmaking to be open. Not to mention the environmental concerns given the amounts of energy required for snowmaking. I wonder what the financials look like even for a place like Bretton Woods, which counts on a "high price to keep the crowds low" strategy. But I digress...

I posted in the other thread, I was really surprised by how good the conditions were today, just a few days after a historic storm. Only 5-6 top to bottom trails, but the quality of the snow was better than I've usually found at Stowe a day after a 1 ft storm (no offense, but I've always found Stowe gets frustratingly icy). Great grip, a good powdery coat on the top, and very little if any ice. Between snowmaking and the new groomers, I think we should count our blessing - technology is going a long way countering Mother Nature when it comes to skiing. Of course, for x-country, snowmobiling, etc, this just SUCKS.

On that note, just came in from doing a few runs as I picked up my kids from ski team, and the conditions were surprisingly good. Amazing how far snowmaking has come - I know JSpin may never talk to me again after saying this, but I'm at the point where I think generally speaking, on groomed terrain, I prefer the manmade stuff to natural. But to go from a historic flooding rain to soft fairly powdery snow in a few days is pretty incredible

The light snow tonight feels strangely exciting lol. Like life is returning back to normal after this ridiculous stretch

Yep. Oct 30, 2017

The NWS river gauge is ridiculous. Sometimes it updates every 15 min, sometimes every 2 hours. You’d think in 2023 they could figure that out https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph_to_xml.php?gage=betn3&output=tabular&time_zone=est

Yep

My front door camera

We flood. Just evacuated all my cabins (and my house). River just reached my driveway, and from the looks of it, it's got a way to go. Fingers crossed.

Fight fight fight

Hopefully we downslope here. Forecast for Ammonoosuc River is over 9.5ft, which is right around where access to my property is cut off and we start seeing water up to the houses. We’ve dodged lots of bullets lately, I feel like we are due. And of course, it’s the worst possible time since we are fully booked for weeks. Grrr. Wish I knew how not to stress over things I can’t control. Then again, that may apply to 99.9% of this forum

Having some fun time before it gets washed down the Ammonoosuc

Or a foot of water...

No worse than last year lol

Some fun driving today

Beautiful morning

The radar looks dry but it’s dumping. Weird

We didn’t flood

Fingers crossed I don’t float down the river. If we got 5” of rain here I’d be f-d. P&C says 1-2” rain and now has a switchover around 3 am, before it was saying noon so that would also help. The 5-12” forecast would be a nice way to get over the flood threat

In this situation I’m all for flaccid… we have renters so the anxiety is real lol

Our forecast for this storm has 2” of rain and 2” of snow. Seems equitable