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The 2014-2015 Ski Season Thread


Skivt2

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Yeah but for SR is that a continuous drop on one run? Or from the highest point to the lowest? Sugarbush is mount Ellen so it's top to bottom in one run, which Is what matters IMHO

You can do SR's vertical on one run but it's definitely not like sugarbush. You have to start on top of Oz and end up at the bottom of Whitecap which means you'd have to take cruisers a good chunk of the trip.

The true verticals as SR are more in the 1200-1500 foot range which is solid but not jaw dropping. But you have a bunch of selections for those rather than just 1 or 2 lifts so for me that really is nice.

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It's more about the terrain than just the vertical.  

KT22 at Squaw Valley is 1800'

Any sane good skier would take that over Killington's 2500' Skyeship gondola.

Extreme example, but you get the point.

 

Having a big vertical but requiring multiple lifts kind of ruins it.  Would have been cool to have been able to ride the old Sugarbush or Sugarloaf gondolas.

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Vertical


1	Killington	Vermont	3050		
2	Sugarloaf	Maine	2820	
3	Sugarbush	Vermont	2650	
4	Smugglers' Vermont	2610		
5	Stowe	Vermont	        2360		
6	Sunday River	Maine	2340	8

 

Smuggs is really more like 2000 ft. if you ski the Madonna side. They count down to the village which is not the real base you ski to there.

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I used to be all about the vertical back in the day, but as I've gotten older and now ski with the kids my preferences have changed. I skied Bretton Woods earlier this year after a 4" fluff bomb and had the best day of the season. Bretton Woods was always a bit of a sleeper to me, but their woods are incredible. It proved to me you you don't necessarily need huge vertical at 30 deg pitch for great skiing.

 

The top of Dixville Peak is 3481 feet, so they'll be able to claim 1700' of vertical http://www.geocaching.com/mark/datasheet.aspx?PID=PF0921which is pretty respectable. But you don't need all that vertical to get some speed. Last weekend for $hits and giggles I raced my brother down Campton Mtn (315' vertical) and beat him to the bottom. 

post-1709-0-83186800-1425130548_thumb.jp

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I used to be all about the vertical back in the day, but as I've gotten older and now ski with the kids my preferences have changed. I skied Bretton Woods earlier this year after a 4" fluff bomb and had the best day of the season. Bretton Woods was always a bit of a sleeper to me, but their woods are incredible. It proved to me you you don't necessarily need huge vertical at 30 deg pitch for great skiing.

 

The top of Dixville Peak is 3481 feet, so they'll be able to claim 1700' of vertical http://www.geocaching.com/mark/datasheet.aspx?PID=PF0921which is pretty respectable. But you don't need all that vertical to get some speed. Last weekend for $hits and giggles I raced my brother down Campton Mtn (315' vertical) and beat him to the bottom. 

 

 

I went to Bretton Woods last April to take advantage of their $29 lift tickets...and there was still snow everywhere in early April...2 feet deep in woods.

 

I was surprised at how much glade skiing they had. I wasn't expecting it based on their repuatation of being a boring mountain. I had a good time there.

 

It's true that they don't have those really strong steeps that last over 700-800 feet of vertical and the glades themselves weren't very steep, but there was plenty of glade terrain...a very large area to navigate and pick your own way.

 

 

Of course, the views at Bretton Woods might be impossible to beat....maybe Wildcat can compete.

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Nice pics

 

Thank you! I ended up skiing 26,300 vertical feet in total according to Alpine Replay with 14 runs and that was 24.7 miles of skiing. Max speed: 46 mph. It was a great day to be sure, my one little issue was some trails definitely became a bit icy at the end of the day as some powder blew off and of course traffic but that is how it goes usually. Overall conditions were great.

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Vertical
 
 
1          Killington          Vermont            3050                
2          Sugarloaf          Maine   2820    
3          Sugarbush        Vermont            2650    
4          Smugglers' Vermont      2610                
5          Stowe   Vermont                    2360                    
6          Sunday River    Maine   2340     8

 

 

You can do SR's vertical on one run but it's definitely not like sugarbush. You have to start on top of Oz and end up at the bottom of Whitecap which means you'd have to take cruisers a good chunk of the trip.

 

The true verticals as SR are more in the 1200-1500 foot range which is solid but not jaw dropping. But you have a bunch of selections for those rather than just 1 or 2 lifts so for me that really is nice.

 

Yeah, Will is right on the real vertical though with respect to Sugarbush and Sunday River; you can get the actual values that remove run outs, vertical that isn't skiable in one run, etc. at MountainVertical.com.  Actually, Sunday River does come in a bit better than expected at 1,758' of vertical, but it's still notably behind those Northern Vermont resorts and Sugarloaf.  It does edge in just ahead of Killington though.

 

If you order that list based on the True-Up Vertical at http://mountainvertical.com/best-skiing-in-new-england.php, you can see where the resorts actually fall:

 

1. Sugarbush: 2,552'

2. Sugarloaf: 2,410'

3. Stowe: 2,132'

4. Smuggler’s Notch: 2,088'

5. Sunday River: 1,758'

6. Killington: 1,645'

 

I think that site does a decent job of trying to quantify how the resorts actually ski in a practical vertical sense, unfortunately they haven't quite managed yet to get the practical in-bounds acreage numbers for how they ski; they're still reporting numbers in the hundreds of acres, when the in-bounds acreage at most of these larger resorts is in the thousands of acres.  Even the smaller resorts like Mad River Glen and Bolton Valley are only 200-300 acres shy of the 1,000-acre mark.  I've calculated the actual in-bounds acreage numbers for some of the resorts around here using Google Earth, and you can see that they are well beyond what that site has:

 

Stowe: 2,577 acres

Smuggler’s Notch: 2,193 acres

Jay Peak: 1,916 acres

Mad River Glen: 800 acres

Bolton Valley: 705 acres

 

I haven't done the calculations for Sugarbush or Killington, but based on feel and look on maps, Sugarbush would probably be a bit ahead of Stowe and Killington should be way up there.  Sugarbush does report their "4,000-acre plus" number, but that includes some out of bounds area in the Slide Brook so it's not a perfect comparison for the list above.  If the Slide Brook are is a bit over 1,000 acres though as the Sugarbush Wikipedia article indicates, then that could have the in-bounds approaching the 3,000-acre mark and a bit ahead of Stowe as expected.  I haven’t really looked at Sugarloaf or Sunday River to see where they would fall.

 

Unfortunately the old, small-acreage numbers are sort of a vestige of back when the ski areas didn’t have boundary to boundary policies and people weren't allowed to ski off trail, but that's not really practical for the experience that most advanced skiers are getting nowadays.  The MountainVertical.com site sort of needs to do a "True-Up Acreage" the way they do the True-Up Vertical if they want to best report the actual/practical ski experience at the resorts.

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I don't see how MRG isn't on that real vert list given that the single is 2k' and drops continuously the whole way. You can ski the liftline top to bottom and there is certainly no long runout to be found in there. Perhaps I am missing something...

 

It's there, with a True-Up Vertical value of 1,992', which is just about what one would expect.

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I don't see how MRG isn't on that real vert list given that the single is 2k' and drops continuously the whole way. You can ski the liftline top to bottom and there is certainly no long runout to be found in there. Perhaps I am missing something...

 

It is on the list if you click the link... 1,992 feet.

 

Edit: Ha, J.Spin just beat me by a few seconds.

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When he is 60+?

 

Probably not that long.

 

Tho he's pretty hardcore, so maybe not, lol.

 

 

For most though, you enjoy cruisers more as you age. I'm not that old being in my early 30s, but I definitely do fewer diamonds and double damonds than I used to...and I can ski just about any terrain. But I find I stop enjoying them after about 5 or 6 runs of them in a day. I'm sure that number will dwindle to about 3 in the next 10-15 years. :lol:

 

 

 

One thing I do like personally is a lot of variety and choices...one reason I do love SR and KMart. Don't get me wrong, I love the little 1 and 2 chair resorts, but I can probably only do those for a day and then I'd need a change.

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Probably not that long.

Tho he's pretty hardcore, so maybe not, lol.

For most though, you enjoy cruisers more as you age. I'm not that old being in my early 30s, but I definitely do fewer diamonds and double damonds than I used to...and I can ski just about any terrain. But I find I stop enjoying them after about 5 or 6 runs of them in a day. I'm sure that number will dwindle to about 3 in the next 10-15 years. :lol:

One thing I do like personally is a lot of variety and choices...one reason I do love SR and KMart. Don't get me wrong, I love the little 1 and 2 chair resorts, but I can probably only do those for a day and then I'd need a change.

Ya , i just joking w Ginx lol

Most here could technically ski circles around me. I like blues and i like to bomb down them, and if conditions are fast/"hard packed" give me a green even and just want to fly. I need to get that ski app on my phone, to see if i am even going that fast anyway.

Doing mid nite madness at crotched tonight and prob again monday with nobody there and a couple fresh inches for about 25$

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The "True up vertical" is the key , not the numbers some mtns fudge to seem more majestic

 

Well to be fair, no one is fudging numbers for vertical.  They do it out west, they do it in Europe, etc... its just taking the top lift elevation and the lowest lift base elevation, and finding the difference. 

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Probably not that long.

 

Tho he's pretty hardcore, so maybe not, lol.

 

 

For most though, you enjoy cruisers more as you age. I'm not that old being in my early 30s, but I definitely do fewer diamonds and double damonds than I used to...and I can ski just about any terrain. But I find I stop enjoying them after about 5 or 6 runs of them in a day. I'm sure that number will dwindle to about 3 in the next 10-15 years. :lol:

 

I ski a lot of cruisers too for work...checking grooming, depths, making sure stuff is all buttoned up tight.  But my favorite stuff will always be au natural when the conditions are good.  I've always been obsessed with skiing powder (thus my handle on here these boards for the past 10+ years) though, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, haha.

 

However, there is something to be said for a perfectly manicured groomed run with packed powder conditions under sunny skies...like the stuff you can get a lot in late Feb and March when the base depths are deep and the snow is chalky.  Or groomers where that first 1-2" of the snow surface has softened under the March sun and it skies like butter.  Ripping down that stuff is a heck of a lot of fun.

 

Personally I just love this time of year... definitely my favorite time of the ski season.  Even at 17F today in the base area, under full sunshine and no wind, it actually feels like downright warm out. 

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I ski a lot of cruisers too for work...checking grooming, depths, making sure stuff is all buttoned up tight.  But my favorite stuff will always be au natural when the conditions are good.  I've always been obsessed with skiing powder (thus my handle on here these boards for the past 10+ years) though, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, haha.

 

However, there is something to be said for a perfectly manicured groomed run with packed powder conditions under sunny skies...like the stuff you can get a lot in late Feb and March when the base depths are deep and the snow is chalky.  Or groomers where that first 1-2" of the snow surface has softened under the March sun and it skies like butter.  Ripping down that stuff is a heck of a lot of fun.

 

Personally I just love this time of year... definitely my favorite time of the ski season.  Even at 17F today in the base area, under full sunshine and no wind, it actually feels like downright warm out. 

 

I am definitely one who loves the groomers which is why I like the day after it snows better than when the storm is ongoing many times. I usually love blue cruisers but also venture onto a diamond here and there (Nosedive at Stowe is a blast and offers great views as well).

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