powderfreak

I truly think Facebook is the reason why so many people think this country is a complete dumpster fire. If you spend a lot of time on FB you quickly lose any hope for humanity. It used to be for photos of your kids, or sharing stuff with family and cool things.... but it's changed into one giant cess pool of "people speaking their mind" as they call it. It's all the sudden cool to be confrontational and very opinionated on there in the last year or two. Instagram is what FB used to be... pictures of cool stuff and sharing pics of your kids, things you do, etc. It's like a breath of fresh air after scrolling through FB.

I'm jealous and might be up there for some day tickets, ha. I think you are right about a once in a lifetime season there. The border closed is going to make it feel like a private ski area most days, IMO. That's taking 50% of their normal visitors and literally stopping them. That's no state quarantine rule or anything, that's an international border, you aren't getting through LOL. The most snow in the East coupled with 50% less customers. That opportunity won't come around very often.

Don't generalize it that far. It's the same as it has been all summer, it seems like it's Facebook and the Killington area. I've had several people mention the same Killington FB group that Jen references as being extremely toxic. Killington is also the most visited ski resort in the entire Northeast, so maybe there is some friction there given the scale of things in that area, who knows.

Hahaha, Killington must be like that lawless zone in Portland, everyone fending for themselves. We have been inundated by tourist traffic for 4 weekends in a row and despite it being an annoyance from a traffic standpoint (3-way stops at an intersection are NOT that difficult) I haven't heard of any issues. I think the biggest issue was just that due to COVID restrictions of businesses, restaurants, and the ski area doing reduced capacity that the town could not satisfy the number of tourists. People expecting to be able to go out to dinner on vacation, couldn't find reservations, couldn't ride the Gondola or Toll Road, couldn't do the things they normally expected to do. Going forward, managing expectations will be interesting for people with COVID hangover or those who are just completely done with it has definitely started to be seen in the travelers this fall. They truly expect everything to be running 100% capacity and like it would be any other year. So things like not being able to eat out ("I didn't go on vacation to be forced to get take out Chinese food in my hotel room!"), maybe longer wait times or unavailability of their favorite activities are also frustrating, etc. "Why are you turning me away? You only have three small lots full and I see a ton of parking open and my family came to ride the Gondola." "This is the capacity level we feel comfortable operating at." "Why aren't you running at 100%? We are here to give you money, you should take it." I do think it's going to be interesting as much of the operating capacity of say restaurants and activities is geared to a much, much smaller number of visitors (built around the frame work that the quarantines will significantly limit travel), but we are seeing the normal full boat of travelers on the weekends anyway. So there are a surplus of visitors who can't get service or experiences like they expect. Like many seemed to have an expectation rooted in a pre-COVID world, but everything they want to do is operating in a COVID world still, causing this disconnect.

I have to find my photos from October 2006 at Killington. Hurricane Wilma and another nor'easter hit back to back I think? There were two snow events that dropped like 30" across a wide swatch of the Greens (we skied the trees off Starr at Stowe that October), but Killington was the only one open and I was sent there to take photos and do a write up for a publication company. After the 30" of snow, Killington had the K1 Gondola running and the Glades Triple... but they dropped the ropes on literally everything that you could get to off the top of the K1.... including over by Superstar and that pod. The entire Canyon area was open, Snowden, etc. Two lifts and if you could get to a trail from there they let you have it. It was incredible. I have photos of being one of the first skiers out to Superstar and hitting that with only natural snow in October was awesome. They did end up closing some of it at the end of the day because it got beaten up too much. Overall though, it was carte blanche on whatever you wanted to hit. Memorable day for sure.

Found a very sharp high elevation snow line today, with a surprising difference even between 3,500ft and 4,000ft. Up on the ridge at 4,000ft it was more like a healthy 3-4" while it was just a coating to 1" at 3,500ft. I did see traces of snow on the ground on the leaves as low as 2,600ft though, so it was melting while I was up there. Reported 1" in to the NWS for the Stake as it was melted out around the base of the stake, but there was a couple inches in the vicinity... so called it 1" just to get something into the record books that there was measurable snow up there today.

Yeah gonna need that sketch. Can even find where I live along the river between town and mountain, ha.

Damn bear is back. Raided the trash again after a nice 4 week hiatus and took a dump right under our bedroom window lol. Probably just strolling around outside the wall while we sleep.

Yeah just dress the kids at home if it’s under 20 minutes or so. It is another world of cold/wind in the northern mountains at least to me.

In Maryland climate? LOL. J/k, sort of. Just wait till you are booting your family up in a parking lot at Wildcat/Bretton Woods on a winter morning next to Alex’s thermometer that just hit -25F, ha. Or while the wind threatens to rip your car door off and your kid just went rolling through the base like a tumbleweed. It’s going to be a big deal in the cold, windy northern mountains. It can be really, really unpleasant to try and get ready in the lot.

That’s why you want to sell season passes, lol. Day tickets people expect something that day... season pass holders just go home without complaining.

Yeah for sure, I could see it changing through the season. It was just shocking how many people seemed oblivious to COVID this weekend... wondering why only prepackaged food was available, why they can’t go inside lodges, why the lift line is so long because its live together ride together. To your point I think people might come and realize IT IS a different experience. They weren’t lying when they said you boot up at your car in the cold. You aren’t taking the family and bags into the lodge, that entire base lodge now has a max occupancy of 75 people including staff with counters at the door. You go in to piss and then go back outside. I think you are on the right train of thought with huge initial demand, until people realize it’s truly about skiing and skiing only. You aren’t getting a beer with your buddies in the lodge. Your not sitting for 4 hours with your kids in a day lodge... if they aren’t into skiing that day you go home.

Honestly most of the smaller tier places are likewise worried that they won’t be able to meet the demand. There will be a lot of overflow from the big resorts where people can’t get tickets for or are at capacity. The industry is concerned it’s going to do flat numbers at a very reduced capacity, thus leading to total chaos as demand far out-paces COVID supply. And even smaller mountains are going to drastically cut back on day ticket sales. Places have stopped selling seasons passes in some cases and stopped all sales all together. Many smaller areas jacket up their rates too, to try and combat the demand. If the last few weekends are any indication, people are so far over COVID it isn’t even funny. These ski areas are going to get full visitation at 50% possible occupancy lol. It’s going to be a sh*tshow. A LOT of people are going skiing to very limited services and lift capacities. I mean this past weekend was filled with “We are no longer allowing people in, we have reached a level of customers we are comfortable with for a global pandemic.” Is met with “What pandemic? That was April. F*ck your comfort level my family wants to ride your gondola.” Lol.

Way up. Epic is substantially up but they added the Peak resorts this year so hard to compare year over year. Most ski areas are way up on passes, people are afraid that’s the only way they can ski as many of the larger operations have said they won’t do day tickets or it’ll be severely restricted day tickets. Many people got discounts/credits on passes from last year’s early closing too, along with assurances/pass insurance this season... there was a ton of incentive to buy a pass this year for consumers and they took it.

There’s no way to know if someone quarantined or not. How could anyone prove you didn’t sit locked in your house for two weeks before your weekend in VT? Because you can do the quarantine before you visit, so there’s literally zero way to prove anything. Obviously it’s unlikely but unprovable. Given the massive volume of fall foliage tourists from all over the United States this past weekend, it’s a moot point. The Vermont Ski Area Association is basically going with the assumption that people are responsible and follow the state guidance but beyond that it here’s nothing anyone will do. A recent article in the local Stowe paper here quoted the General Manager of Smugglers Notch as saying that the only few people this summer that were asked to leave that resort, were people who openly admitted to not following the quarantine, mocked it, and signed the state’s form anyway. The gist was basically don’t be stupid and advertise that you didn’t follow the guidance as then you sort of force the hand.

All tax dollars will go towards funding a cloud seeding program to increase snowfall. We will also give every household their own industrial snow gun to create however much snow they need to live their lives happily. Those living in wide/broad warmer valleys will get snow guns that perform better in warmer temperatures. The type of snow gun you receive from the state government will depend on the elevation of your property.

Damn! Beats my 74 miles, lol. That’s incredible with the foreground stuff. Looks like MWN should be the next town over.

C’mon now, you’d much rather have spent your money on politicians instead of buying a sweet spot (is that an estate?) in the mountains, let’s be real. Someone could’ve put your Randolph money to good use with a run of TV commercials for your local state senate seat.

That Maine race must be spending money for the advertisements. Even here, I don't see or hear any campaigns from the VT or NH races... but every political ad is regarding a race in Maine. Mostly Collins v Gideon.

Yeah aesthetically I still love the Great 48 concept, but functionally for Mountain Ops and how the mountain is skied/opened/closed/groomed/snowmaking it makes sense to break it up into segments instead of 2,000+ vertical feet, 1-2 mile long trails with a lot of variability that ski like different segments anyway (I will say it's rare to ski a trail fully from top-to-bottom too, it's more hopping from segment to segment). Grooming often can be only certain parts of trails too, so you get a bunch of partially groomed runs. Snowmaking is easier to communicate even to staff when its broken up into segments too. But the "Stowe Great 48" is now classic ski memorabilia... maps, posters, t-shirts, etc. I love that stuff.

It’s so widely used that it makes sense to try and get some tax dollars out of it. Just to clarify (I know what you meant though), recreational marijuana has been legal since 2018... but this new bill is to permit recreational sales (starting in 2022).

Just pretend to be leaf peeping. They barely know what state they are in, and it seems they all just got their drivers licenses before coming, not a COVID test . Three-way stop signs are very tricky to navigate.

Ha, none taken. I actually did that, literally. Stowe used to have the “Great 48” and it was only 48 trails, top-to-bottom. One of the very first tasks I had when I started in 2008 was to change the trail map to more accurately represent the mountain in terms of open terrain, and increase our trail count for marketing (Bolton Valley had like 60 trails I think? Stowe was the smallest mountain in Vermont per trail count with only 48, lol). Aside from marketing, a big issue was if you ski here, you’d know we really had “48 partially open trails.” There'd be times when literally almost every trail was “partially open” which confused the hell out of people...because only in mid-season snowpack with good conditions would many of the trails be fully open top-to-bottom. Now Ski Patrol had them internally sort of hacked up into different trails anyway in their lingo, because you have to when describing stuff over the radio (like they already named things upper/lower etc). An injured skier would call and the nearest trail sign says Lord and I have a broken leg. Well that’s a couple miles and 2,000 vertical feet of possibilities. Now they say the nearest sign says “Lower Lord” so patrol can quickly know where they are. So I worked with the Patrol director and others to break up the trails into how the mountain skied, what our normal closures are, access points to trails, etc. So now Starr and Lower Starr can be marked on the report as open, and Upper Starr (steep rocky headwall) can be marked as closed. I do think that’s better for communicating rather than saying “Starr is partially open.” Sometimes only Lower Starr is open from Shiftrs Shot, too. So you’d see Starr is partially open before 2008 on the report but have no idea what “part” was actually open. Marketing got a great trail count boost and it’s much more functional for figuring out what’s actually open and serves as easier to communicate with ski patrol and the public.

Isn’t that the storm you guys are talking about? Or is there another?

That would drive me insane. That can’t be good for appliances/electronics and everything else to shut down/off quickly and then come right back on... several times.