powderfreak

Light white rain here at 750ft. Not going to be much QPF at all though here.

If it’s not broken, don’t try to fix it.

Gah no way … be like sleeping in Norway on a trip I took there in June years back. People BBQing at like midnight and get up to piss at 3-4am to full daylight. Weird way to live, ha.

I do like it this time of year. Goes with that spring vibe. Lots of late afternoon skiing and chilling up top before late ski back to the parking lot. In the end it’s still the same amount of daylight.

I mean you just pivot by an hour. If you used to wake up at 5am, now you get up at 6am. Society could adapt pretty easily as long as everything shifts.

No more 8am chairlift openings if it happens. Ski day probably would have to be 9-5 instead of the classic 8-4. I love the late light in summer… don’t really care in the winter, I’d keep it how it is.

One way or another it’s going to be dark… either morning commute or evening commute. I go to work in the dark and get home in the dark most of the winter, not sure it matters to me, ha.

@MRVexpatthat is the holy grail right there of a ski trip! Nice. I caught a 24” day at Alta with my father about 15 years ago while I was in college and it remains my best ski memory to date. The vibe of an Alta storm day and then the resultant bluebird powder day afterward is unbeatable.

Heavy heavy wax!

It does and it’s a mentally challenging thing for many including me. Did I like how it was when AIG sold $2000 passes and very expensive day tickets? Yes but everyone in town complained that they couldn’t afford to ski at their local ski area. Now it’s busy but so many new people to the sport and Stowe… like this week it must be a vacation week down south as the Florida, Georgia, Carolina crowd is here. And they are stoked. It’s hard to hate it when you see the kids from Florida just infatuated with snow… I get it kids! Ha. Now if I was getting on a plane to ski I’d go west but that’s another issue haha. The biggest issue is trying to balance people who wouldn’t ski otherwise with a decrease in experience for long time skiers. I don’t want to be selfish and think Mansfield is mine and exclusive to me… everyone should experience it. But there’s a trade off too. I also ran Stowe social media during AIG years and I know people forget how hated AIG was as well, ha. It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns though most locals have convinced themselves it was. When the US Govt bailed out AIG in like 2008…. Yikes. I don’t think I’ll ever see hate directed towards a ski area like that again. The Vail stuff is peanuts to tax payers bailing out a company that owns a ski area on public land that charges the highest prices in the East lol. Arson and bomb threats, people defecating on the office steps. I still keep that stuff in perspective.

On another note, snow is sticky now. Hate when powder warms up the first few times. Needs to cycle to granular for corn but fresh storm snow getting mid March sun and 30-40F becomes glue.

MTN Leadership. The brand took a beating and they know they need to change it. The snowmaking issues were largely if not all staffing issues. I think most of the problems were staffing issues to be honest, we had them at Stowe too. The vaccine mandate didn’t help at all either. That more acutely hit Operations staff than any other department. Snowmaking just isn’t safe if you are running low team numbers out there… need full crews because if something goes sideways it happens fast. Need control room staff, staff on hill, etc. It’s very labor intensive and those needs just could not be met sometimes. It wouldn’t surprise me if they pivot off the super cheap pass a bit. I’m sure the volume over yield model may be shaken a bit but who knows. The labor force thing is mind blowing country wide right now. I know Vail was giving options of $3,000 bonuses and free housing if you would move from a ski area closed for the season in March to one’s operating till late April or May. For transient season labor that’s an appealing option.

I've heard grumblings that they want to pivot but being as large a ship as they are, it takes time. They got into it deep in most mountains this winter in the East. I still think the institutional knowledge retained at the non-Peak Resorts ski areas allowed for a better season (ala Stowe, Okemo, even Sunapee). Yesterday though was big news in the ski industry and the labor market is just getting weird. The VR company minimum wage is going to $20/hr ahead if next winter as the first pivot point. VR was first to announce $15/hr last winter and Alterra answered with the same... and locally I know Smuggs did match that in most jobs, but the independents won't be able to match $20 IMO. Businesses in town are going nuts right now too... going to need to keep pace with a very limited labor pool. When I started in the industry back in 2007, as weird as it is $20/hr was like pretty decent mid/upper management wage even (with OT and bonuses you'd get $50k to manage)... and starting was $7/hr. Wages stagnated and even two years ago an entry level liftie or parking attendant was doing $10/hr. Now it'll be $20/hr. Many of us keep reaping the benefits of the upward wage rise as they need to keep wage separation from higher levels and starting wages, so we all keep winning when starting wages go from $12 to $15 and then $20 in three winters. For the same job responsibilities somehow many are getting anywhere from 15-25% more at manager level and lower down its going to be near 40% more money in just two winters. From Stuart Winchester (great guy who writes well about the ski industry)... "It’s getting weird out there. My first inkling that ski season might go sideways was a series of cross-country autumn drives in pursuit of my secondary passion, college football. In the windows and scrub-grass highway partitions of every gas station and Burger King, the signs. Help wanted. $17 an hour. Sometimes more. Empty lobbies. Drive-thru only. Lines impossible, as though an asteroid were inbound and everyone was snagging a Burrito Supreme en route to their woodland bunkers. Caterwauling into the midst of this weirdest labor market in memory came Vail’s 99-cent Epic Pass, available next to gumball machines nationwide. Three years ago, this strategy may have driven season-pass prices nationwide into the basement, as flummoxed competitors tried to hold market share and appease hey-what-about-us passholders. But as we all know, three years ago may as well have been 50. Covid upended our world, and took the low-wage worker with it. Across Vail’s empire, from Stevens Pass to Park City to Paoli Peaks to Alpine Valley to Crotched to Attitash, not enough people showed up to blow snow, run the lifts, manage the parking lots, or groom the hillsides. “And we would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids-who-saw-the-opportunity-to-stand-in-the-cold-for-$11.25-an-hour-and-said-nah-I’ll-just-go-work-at-the-gas-station-for-like-double-that-Brah-but-thanks.” By the time Vail instituted a $2-an-hour bonus in mid-January, it was too late to save the season across Vail’s Midwestern portfolio, where most of its properties had slashed hours and operating days, or in New Hampshire, where traffic, mechanical, and staffing woes rumbled in like aftershocks all winter long. Vail’s mistake was not in discounting Epic Passes, which drove the little white cards into the bootbags of 20 percent of America’s skiers, but failing to meet the moment in the strangest labor market since World War II. Yesterday, Vail CEO Kirsten Lynch laid out an aggressive plan that reorients the company away from its McDonald’s-in-the-mountains reliance on low-wage labor and into a career-track organization invested in its employees’ welfare on and off the mountain. Here are the highlights: $20-an-hour minimum wage for all North American resort employees for the 2022-23 season, $21 for Patrol (including unionized Patrol), maintenance technicians, and certified commercial vehicle drivers A commitment to “aggressively pursue building new affordable housing on land we own” A career-track program that creates a Yellow Brick Road from, say, bumping chairs to management positions and more An enormous expansion of the human resources team to decrease reliance on Vail’s hated HR app A flexible work policy that allows corporate employees to live and work in any community where Vail Resorts operates This ambitious plan, launched alongside Vail’s second-quarter earnings release and (presumably) just ahead of its 2022-23 Epic Pass unveiling, lands in a complicated world, for Vail and lift-served skiing, yes, but also for America as a whole. Mountain-town housing is in air-raid-siren crisis. Inflation is rising. Skiing can’t decide if it wants to be the most or least exclusive sport in America. Covid is still circling. American workers are more assertive than they have been in decades. In the midst of these complications, Vail still posted positive business results yesterday: net income, skier visits, and total lift revenue all increased over the previous two seasons. Still, it was clear that Vail could not weather another season in which its narrative was overwhelmed by debacles like the meltdown at Stevens Pass. “We think a critical question is will Vail defend its moves and tweak its business model, or consider a more substantial pivot to balance pressures in its communities and protect the luxury experience?” Bank of America research analyst Shaun Kelley wrote last week. There are a lot of ways Vail could have pivoted: pull Epic Pass prices back skyward, tweak the pass suite to better manage skier traffic, better define mountain capacity, invest in labor, or some combination of the above. As usual, Vail dropped a plan that was more comprehensive and ambitious than most of us could have imagined. Initial reception has been strong. “…this [plan] sends a meaningful message that Vail is serious about improving its company and the on-mountain experience for its guests,” Kelley wrote this morning. The Epic Liftlines Instagram account, which had racked up 48,500 followers on themes of worker’s rights and overcrowding, announced that it was going into hibernation in a post captioned “WORKERS WIN!”

Yeah wasn't expecting this for some reason... 1-2" down at the hill depending on elevation. Models have some sneaky QPF the next 48 hours.

Sub-freezing but that March sun just smokes it. That time of year when 2.5" can look like that after some sunshine.

Powder Palooza today.

You found the side of the Whites that probably rained and then frozen with an inch of glop in between. The interesting thing with anafrontal or frontal waves like that is the entire event is NW wind in the lowest 8,000ft in this one. Backside of the cold front and had strong inversion/veering around 6-8k feet. Here’s the VAD from BTV yesterday during synoptic snow showing the flow behind the cold front. That flow is kind of blocked which is why the west slopes locally and I bet Alex did a little better daytime yesterday than your hood… but last night it unblocked itself when upper winds also went NW and CAA took place. Froude numbers were 1.0-1.5 which is crest and Lee side favored… and your snowfall went off (similar thing happened at the ski area here). Basically the upslope could drift more eastward. Couple that with -15C to -18C at 850mb with those perfect snow growth temps situated right in the sweet spot for orographic snow from 3,000-8,000ft elevation and it just dumped dendrites. When the snow growth is that good, even in high winds it doesn’t seem to shatter the flakes. They make it to the surface as great fluff. Can turn an extra 0.25” QPF into 6-10” fast. Fun event!

That was at 3000ft but to be honest there wasn’t a ton of elevation difference. Last night both spots got 7-8”. Given high winds I bet there’s a general 15-19” spread depending on site specifics.

Mansfield Stake depth increased 19" in this storm. 41" to 60"

Oh my god it’s so deeeep out there. 17” storm total is the official number for the hill. Cliff House drift from Lift Maintenance…

Last night dumped another 7-8" up at 1,500ft. Totals around 15-16". There's a lot of snow out there.

The timing of this one was great… snow starting in the morning, cranking all day, leading to a snowy evening vibe. There’s something about evening snow after a whole day event. Caps off a great day. Moisture is decreasing and upslope is rotting out while drifting downwind. Should end soon.

What a scene this evening. There it is! Winter storm conditions.

Let’s see some pics! Cell phones make it too easy. More posters need to show snaps. Stoke it up.

Evening dog walk along Rec Path! 18z Euro has a little critter that bites on Tuesday/night. Streaking through NNE.