powderfreak

Oddly seems to be wet snow here at 1500ft at the moment. Wasn’t expecting flakes.

Yeah you get to basic supply and demand too as ski areas close over time. Continued demand and less places to do it means higher prices for all.

I got investigated at Gore when I was 16 by Warren County Sheriff’s office for skiing in the woods. I didn’t duck a rope but Patrol didn’t like skiing off-trail at that time. I got stopped in the base area at Gore and then met with a deputy. The only reason they didn’t charge me was a) apologize profusely for skiing powder in the trees and b) I never ducked a rope so they couldn’t pin me on that.

Ha, it’s really only clubs/bars and restaurants after 10pm. The sports leagues make sense as those have been huge sources of spread in VT. Hockey leagues, bowling leagues, etc. I think they need a more pointed/isolated closure of activities that lead to spread like that rather than a blanket stay at home order. Hopefully ski areas don’t get blamed or we are done too.

Yeah half joking but also there will be a lot of people who find an uncrowded lodge and mountain a better experience...but half the fun is walking into a crowded ski lodge on a Saturday morning and taking a deep breath to relax lol. I still think ski areas find it’s better to have volume in the end. Volume drives ancillary lines of business and is what will drive future interest in the sport. If retention rate is a certain percent of visitors, you want as many to visit as possible. But COVID man, these numbers need to start going down if we want to have a season. There are many in the industry across the northeast that are quite alarmed that we could be going back to March style numbers if we aren’t there already.

Depends on the mountain. But I can bet you every mountain has a limit in place right now, this is not the year for spur of the moment trips...plan ahead with the place you want to visit.

Yeah. Like a Bolton Valley only pass right now (with holiday blackouts too) would cost you $762. Thats not that different than an Epic or IKON pass for tons of resorts.

Yeah I mean that seemed to be the jive I got from people who posted about Keystone, CO opening last weekend. Usually it’s a mad house on opening weekend, but articles written about it gave the impression that many enjoyed that low-key empty experience to the total gong-show that it normally is (if you got a reservation for it). Like they’d rather wait 15 min for a wide open table and plenty of space in a lodge as opposed to the old first come first serve people crawling over others to get to their stuff experience. They also said the slopes were much more empty and felt safer than having thousands of folks bombing down. I think the ski industry might learn or change some things too from this... but the frugal skier usually loses in that case.

Oh they already have. Most of the independents have drastically raised their season pass price up here. And day ticket prices will go up to match the out of whack supply/demand. Very high demand, low capacity to country club level... gets you country club prices eventually. Cost savings wise though there’s less staff for sure to handle less guests. They’ll cut some costs as well, fridge amenities that lost money. Maybe you don’t make enough snow to last till June. You dust and run, vs building 15 foot depths.

I may be completely out to lunch and I’m not saying the ski areas won’t struggle financially... but I don’t think it’s because of traveler restrictions. The ski areas are planning to take maybe 50% or even less of their normal visitors just as a COVID precaution as it is. I bet it’ll be even less given lift capacity of only like parties riding together, capacity of lodges (say 1 person for every 200 square feet including staff), etc. I still think the public is thinking ski area business should be normal all else considered... but these places are planning, staffing, etc for only allowing less than 50% of normal visitations regardless of travel restrictions. Its sort of why I say without restrictions it’s a terrible experience (like this summer at times) where you go on vacation and can’t ski, can’t eat out, etc because of the broader capacity restrictions. And I think we’ll see that too. Frustrations among the public that they are being capped out of doing what they want. Things are being planned to operate at a very low number of visitors relative to normal. Just look at the Keystone images. They capped skier visits low to make a very controlled environment.

This is what lodges will look like. Very empty. With a line outside. These are from a travel writer who was at Keystone last weekend. This was the size of the crowd that Vail Resorts restricted via reservation system. Very, very controlled environment. Many people agreed even after COVID it should be like this, private country club style. This isn’t because the demand isn’t there, they curtailed supply drastically to allow for a very crowd free environment.

23F here... we hat and gloves again. SLK with 15F. Freezing fog with rime ice on trees too, winter.

23F outside, that’s more seasonable.

29F. Crisp outside with the dog.

These sunsets have been crazy. Its also crazy that if we wanted to watch the sunset in July we’d leave our house 4 hours later than today.

No mask on your face. You big disgrace. Spreading your germs all over the place. We will, we will, rock you.

Oh for sure I know what you were up to and it’s easy to see where he’s going too, ha. Its a hot topic right now but the act of creating an account for a third-party outfit like AMWX means you lose that freedom of speech to the admin of whatever platform you sign up for. Thats why these places have you check a box that states you agree to their policies. You don’t check that box “I agree” for nothing.

I’d bet 70% of us technically shouldn’t be on here during the work day anyway regardless of topic . Always use your phone and not the company network.

Free speech doesn’t mean you can use someone else’s platform to say whatever you want anyway. I’m not sure why that’s a difficult concept lol. Pretty sure the forum rules state no politics unless in OT and we all agree to that when creating an account.

It’s true. No one has changed their view nor will they. Its not a discussion, just people talking at each other and more join the conversation as they disagree with what’s said. Thats the internet now though.

I would almost argue the opposite in our experience up here. People don’t want to work the service jobs and can’t find staff because they are afraid of the number of people they will need to come in contact with. Lots of incentives starting to pop up for workers as places struggle to hire. Many are now taking less money or no money to stay home, lol.

This cracked me up... gotta laugh once in a while.

Hope all went well Ginxy. Best of luck on the other surgery.

Mansfield ripping off 5 straight record highs, all close to the 63F November record since 1954. Also of note is the large percentage of 2000+ years in the record max temps in general. The last 20 years dwarf the previous 46 years for warm records up there.

The fact that its so dark and yet so warm is super confusing lol. BTV destroyed its warmest 7-day period in November on record by 4 degrees. The mean temp over the last 7 days was 59F and the previous record holder was 55F. This is a week similar to September climate or Memorial Day Weekend. I have no doubt that Mansfield also crushed its previous 7-day warmth in November as 5 straight days were all within a few degrees of all-time November warmth. We’ve had some whopper warm records this year now in the bookend months of May and November.