powderfreak

It’s almost like they color coded the ski areas there. Funny how they preserve their snow base depths like that. Depth of 8” yesterday evening, depth of 8” this evening in one of the pink areas. Not ideal by any means but seen it before, will see it again.

Deflection Danny stepping on the gas pedal as Projection Paul rides shotgun. “I’m not disappointed or upset, but I really feel for this guy over here. He must be devastated.”

Yeah don’t think they keep records of that, ha. I’m sure it’s happened. It’s no Dec 2015 or Dec 2006. Today is 32-33F rain. The rain events have been cold for the most part, the Stake has been 8-10” or like 2 weeks now. Doesn’t really take a hit but doesn’t gain either.

lol… “ignore model B and follow model A.” ”Model B has same solution as model A.” ”Ignore both and go with model C.”

Ah is it that easy to get to that side? It’s been a while for me up there.

I want to go to Sugarloaf the most of any other NE ski area. The mountain size, vertical, weather, etc is all intriguing to me. Aesthetically pleasing mountain to me. For Jay, if I was in charge of any capital improvement projects I would 100% be heavily in on high-speed Quad at Bonnie. I’ve skied there a few times but if that lift was fast and could get to a point where you could drop off the other side (Everglades or something like that?) to the Flyer area… that changes how the hill skis. I get the reasoning for fixed grip lifts but Jay doesn’t see enough traffic IMO for a high speed to really change anything but make for a better experience for those on the hill. I’m a big fan of quick laps for the many NE ski days when things aren’t off-the-charts good. Riding slow lifts to ski fast down groomers is a sure ticket to boredom. Slow lifts to deep powder is ok, but let’s be real, there are a lot of NE ski days where it’s scratchy and the day is better not spent on a slow ride for mediocre skiing.

Yeah that’s a rough one. Same as GFS.

Some may say I know something about that…

Time to start shoveling GGEM snow it looks like.

A few thoughts on the local market... memories and current: 1) I need to get to Smuggs on a lift serviced day. I've skinned there out-of-season but haven't gotten the full feel of a "ski day" there. I don't think it's ever really "clicked" for me at Smuggs, but skinning a run here or there is no where close to actually seeing the lift serviced terrain. Enough people I highly respect love the terrain that I trust it's awesome. 2) Sugarbush has a soft spot to me as my dad and I used to take a trip up from Albany, NY when I was growing up, spend a night at some cheap lodge in the Killington to Warren zone (just a room to sleep in) and then we'd hit Sugarbush for a day before driving home that evening. Me usually passed out in the passenger seat as a kid after skiing a "big mountain", and my dad listening to Pink Floyd. Sugarbush had a much different vibe, terrain, environment, weather, than Killington did (which was our northernmost day trip location). It felt like N.VT. Which is why I think when forecasting I think of Sugarbush on northward as a different climate zone. In college, my roommate and I got somewhere between 5th and 10th chair on Castlerock after two feet in December 2003. We were tracks 3 and 4 on Middle Earth. Top to bottom, sun poking through, knee deep dense nor'easter snow with no bottom (only sinking in a foot or so of the 2 feet of snow). I don't remember most of my 1,000+ ski days but I remember that one single run. 3) Jay Peak gets the most snow. Sometimes I think the actual snow report is on the optimistic side, but on average my weather knowledge and Green Mtn climo visualization puts Jay as the highest snowfall average. The base areas are also high up. It snows, it's a different world parking at 1500-2,000ft in N.VT... and going up from there. The glades are high-end. They really developed that during the 1990s and a family trip up there sealed the deal for me back then. We stayed in a condo up there, ate at the Belfry, and it was very deep winter from a kid from ALB. Driving up there, it was grass with snow showers in Montgomery... and pounding snow at the Jay Peak base area with 8-10" when we arrived. I remember my mom was very flustered, ha. The weather of heavy snow and high wind was stressful for whatever reason; I found it intoxicating. These experiences guided me later in life, ha. 4) Stowe's FourRunner Quad is the lift that I would ride for the rest of my life if I could only ride one life. Yes, I'm a Mansfield homer, but I have yet to find one lift that accesses that variety of terrain, that 2,100 vertical foot drop, and that snowfall/snowpack combo in the East. It is the flagship lift. Ride time of 7 minutes, it goes straight up. There's a brief runout at the bottom below Crossover, but it is a fast lift with a direct liftline to some amazingly sustained pitch and terrain. Add in the fact that it rises up the steep Mansfield E/NE slope that retains snowpack as good as any aspect in the Green Mtns (there's a reason the Mansfield stake holds depth for so long, and better than anywhere else), it accesses the best sustained terrain, on the most reliable natural snowpack, in the fastest time. The Mansfield Gondola is solid, with the same vertical and some of the best side-country in the East (into the Notch), but it does not offer the variety and options of the Quad. The Gondola side snow preservation is not as good as the Quad side. The FourRunner Quad is the crown jewel. 5) The MRG Single is up there with the FourRunner Quad, and is in the same category of awesomeness among people who argue fixed grip vs. high-speed. One brings a skier to some McSkiing trails of snowmaking mixed with classic New England sustained steeps, and another accesses classic New England terrain sustained top-to-bottom. The snowmaking off one of those lifts makes the ski season much longer than the other, but when the natural snow is in, the two lifts are probably the ones I'd choose to ride over everything else. Both of those lifts (Stowe FourRunner and MRG Single) are the premiere lifts in the East IMO. They are different but yet occupy a similar place in East Coast ski lore... maybe because the Mansfield Single chair used to be *the lift* along with the MRG Single. There is no extended run out, no boring spots from top to bottom, nothing but sustained pitch for 2,000+ vertical feet on both of those lifts. One just moves much faster than the other, uphill capacity changes the downhill experience too.

Pattern change? From “no chance” to “chance”? Baby steps?

If Sugarbush had a top-to-bottom lift at North and South, they probably win. I’ve always thought it would change the whole experience. It might always be on wind hold though… but man the vertical available on one single lift ride would be sweet.

So I did hear a rumor their snowmaking pond temp is really high or was as of a week or two ago. Because they had to refill it late and it was so warm in Oct/Nov, the pond temp was still in the 50s when it should be 30s now. Not sure but that would jive with what you said. My snowmaking vendor source said it was requiring more compressed air to make snow than normal because if the water temp. It has to drop fast though and that might’ve only been for a week or two.

This is where the forum struggles as a whole, we just went through it in November. Pattern change means the pattern changes from one thing to another. But it doesn’t mean snow. November went from all-time record warmth and heights to two weeks of below normal. Big change but some struggled with it because a snow event didn’t happen. Its obvious we are entering another pattern with stormy, deeper lows, big moisture chances and lows somewhere along the east coast instead of a parade of lows through the Lakes.

Cool depiction of an OE band on the 6z GFS on the E/NE flow.

Signing in for duty on that GFS run.

That’s awesome. Steamboat was the first place I went out west too. Just the western vibe, ski town, aspen trees mixed with big tall evergreens plastered with snow. It felt so different than the east. The wide expanse of everything out there, so much different than our tighter rolling hills in the east. Great story about your trip, that’s amazing to go out west with friends in HS, ha.

If you’re talking about Wildcat, they also had some serious power transmission issues. Unreliable service and remote line work two winters ago. Then last year was the short staffed (COVID vaccine mandate did not attract staff up there in the Berlin/Gorham area). There’s always a reason for a deviation for historical output, and sometimes those issues are amplified by nature not cooperating. Like if you blow out one of your four snowmaking compressors, water intake is down, or have some system handicap arise without an immediate fix… if there’s good natural snowfall and cold, the issue can be hidden and it goes unnoticed. But when the weather is crap, those things get amplified in a hurry and people start wondering what’s up.

Something seems up at Sugarbush. It doesn’t make sense to be honest given where they are historically compared to regional competitors. One run each, off the two open lifts that might be 1,000 verts? And I’ve seen posts saying the two routes that are open are thin. The weather hasn’t been ideal but it seems a very slow expansion. Not riding Bravo yet seems off. Yesterday in the rain, the Gate House Quad route. Everyone is trying their hardest, and I hope whatever they are up against gets better. Stuff happens behind the scenes that can amplify a poor weather streak.

Looping the 850mb temps, that’s a classic strong block look lol. Today is the coldest day of that 16-day run lol. Shades of a block. Maine just warm throughout… warmer than DC.

“You guys that wanted Stein and nice sunny weather all summer asked for this”…

Yeah the ski areas on weekends and holidays have been busy gong shows since I was a kid. I mean my family would go to Okemo and I remember not being able to find places to sit and put your boots on it’s so busy. Early 1990s style skiing, ha. Killington crazy town, even Gore on holidays or weekends felt bustling busy, people parking down the access road and riding their shuttle. The thing is I don’t remember the complaining about it that we do now. Maybe I was a kid and didn’t care and my parents were swearing behind our backs? Social media has also become a vehicle for complaints of all type of societal stuff. But not finding a seat in a lodge to get booted up, or parking in a snowbank and waiting in a healthy liftline, that’s my memory of skiing growing up and I loved it, ha. Now that’s a social outrage. I have fond memories of those things, getting bussed from a far corner of the lot at Bromley… my mom making two trips (god bless her) on the shuttle to bring all the gear while I stay with my younger sisters. Now people seem to say if they have kids they need to park right next to a lodge and if they can’t it’s not worth it. The stuff my mom used to do for us blows my mind now. Then we’d be so stoked to go ski crushed ice cubes and circa 1991 snowmaking/grooming after a rain event.

Yeah I may be off there and biased due to high number of skinning around these parts up here. Even still I think there’s an exodus off riding chairlifts of the core segment. Out west especially.

It’s true too. November 2018 set the record for snow depth and snowfall in the NNE mtns. It was the only November to hit 40” at the Mansfield stake. All glades skiable and open before Dec 1st. The range of options is high this time of year. Expectations can run from bare ground to full-on winter party.

The winter season officially starts December 21st for a reason. Summer starts June 21st. Climo lags behind solar. We can hate it, but there is a reason why that is a thing.