EdBacon
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Posts posted by EdBacon
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3 hours ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:
@toastman they are allowing uphill skiing on Nile mile
Wow! My favorite kind of skiing is the kind where you go uphill! Thanks CBK.
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Heard Blue sent a snowmaking crew over to CBK.
Thinking about it... why would you want to ride a lift that keeps failing inspection anyway?
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BC invested heavily into snowmaking in the decade after the Doe/BC transition. They basically have one monolithic purpose-built system for the mountain, not the patchwork system most mountains end up with. They've always done a good job with snowmaking especially relative to their location.
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The Knob is fun. Road up is dangerous when it snows because it's an upside down resort on top of a 3200 ft mountain. The lodge is where the old missile defense shield radar base was. That's why its upside down, when the military closed the radar base they repurposed it to a ski area, but the road and facilities were all at the top. Snowmaking is marginal. It's an old system that's in need of a lot of maintenance and upgrades. Really shines when there's a lot of natural snowfall. Sometimes it can get that owing to elevation and catching the same weather pattern WV resorts benefit from.
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CBK doesn't want to operate the ski area anymore. They're focused on their waterparks. That leaves Blue and Shawnee. Blue is ridiculously crowded now and Shawnee is, well Shawnee. It's nice for what it is but it's small and doesn't even have the small geographic advantage of being on top of the plateau. Plus it's in an awkward location. It's the same drive to Montage as it is to Shawnee for me coming from Montgomery County.
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Wildcat had a lot of pre-existing issues with their snowmaking system pre-Vail. This is hardly the first time they've struggled. However, Vail really doesn't seem to understand any of the east coast mountains they bought and have failed to make the necessary investments to get Wildcat back up to a state of good repair.
At least management seems to be giving some more leeway to operations at JF this year. Challenge was allowed to go ungroomed to bump up which is nice. They have everything open except Floyd's which I expect to open any day now. Full opening by mid-January isn't bad and puts them about even with pre-Vail opening schedules. And that's with a reduced snowmaking regime and less snow guns.
But then all of that is really just relearning what the old operations staff already knew. Vail came in, gutted the place, got years of complaints and now falling revenue and visitor counts, so they're kicking back some operations to the staff with any experience on local operations. It's like every dumbass corporate job you ever had where your MB business casual boss reinvents your job then gives up and eventually lets you do things the way you already knew they were supposed to be done. Like, it's a waste of time. Thanks for nothing, Vail. I hope their stock price is buried. They've ruined a bunch of good local ski hills. I would suggest the entire Poconos ski experience has been degraded by them. Multiple competitor hills have jumped on the suck bandwagon to try and squeeze blood from the stone that is Poconos skiing and now we've got multiple underinvested hills with aloof leadership looking at spreadsheets and planning their slide deck to talk MB buzzwords like an AI chatbot at their next business retreat in Palm Springs.
What a load of crap. I hate Vail.
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Grick Pick
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I heard they're going to pump water over it from the indoor water parking lot.
It's their new Ice Slide water park attraction parking lot. You have to pay to park though. Then pay to get in, then pay to use the slide then pay to let them let you leave the water park. Then you have to pay to let them let you out of the parking lot.
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I once took a picture of the sign at the top of Cliffhamper that says "EXPERS ONLY" I sent it to my wife.
She says you do not go down there it is dangerous but I am a really good snowboarder and I went down anyway.
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3 hours ago, saltyant said:
Pocono Raceway was rad this season. There were some NASCAR races and maybe some other events. It's called the Tricky Triangle for a reason. It is one of the premier tourist destination in the Poke In Hoes
What this thing?
Is that harder than a double black diamond Cliffhanger I hear is teh steepest in the Eastest-
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Just drop the act and turn the whole mountain into water slides already. We know you want to, CBK.
Ain't foolin nobody.
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Hey wow would be a good time to use one of those fixed grip lifts they're letting rot.
You know some people collect those things and some old mountains still keep them running and would love to have them.
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Do they still sell pierogi in the lodge?
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2 hours ago, JFskiDan said:
so many moons ago, i was told by an ex snowmaker at BB, that there was no operational compressor there. So BB is all fan guns, and i still think thats true to this day. Thats why there should be a huge surplus of old snowmaking equipment at Frost. i remember seeing pictures on FB. Now, it may have been a lot to me, but i dont make snow. I just looked at Frosts trail count, and it is weak. like What you said, its just a little over 50%. And thats kind of sad. They had a big cold spell, but its apparent they go at a pace that is akin to a snail. Personally i dont think opening Frost first has any bearing on their slow snowmaking. Vails business model is 180 degrees what Peaks was. im still surprised they operate both of them.
I counted a total of 7 tripod guns on T-bolt. That was it. I didn't look over on the beginner side though, there might be more sitting over there.
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On 12/27/2024 at 5:59 PM, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:
Assholes. It’s comical how bad camelback is. They might not even be fourth best in PA anymore but they’re still a major resort so show them respect. Plus an Egyptian theme is neat.
I broke my little finger running into a French tourist at the bottom of the Nile Mile High ski trail at Camelback. I won't be back unless they make improvements.
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1 hour ago, RidgeRacer said:
JF and BB had were both lined with fan guns (all trails) that cranked out serious snow I wanna say around 2010ish. But (if I remember correctly) When peak resorts made the purchase of hunter, Mt snow and some other places in NE.. Peak shipped a good chunk of the fan guns up north (I'm fairly certain hunter got the majority of them). I think they still have some...idk (it's been a minute) but they had to revert to the old school portables again after that on a good chunk of terrain. That particular purchase didn't help JFBB from snowmaking perspective.
BB still kept a larger number of the better guns relative to the amount of terrain they had to cover. Probably because of the park.
JF only has the fan guns on a few trails. Challenge, the lower headwall of Rivershot... there's some around the beginner area too.
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2 hours ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:
Is big Boulder 100%? Even bear creek has over 20 runs open.
It's not but its more open as a % than JF.
The only portable guns left at JF are the little tripod mounted guns. Didn't see any of the portable fan guns.
They are going VERY slowly with snowmaking. They had dragged the tripod guns over to T-bolt so I guess we can expect that sometime in early-mid January.
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Huge whales on Rivershot. Looks like they want that open by New Years. Not sure how the next week of rain and warm temps is going to impact things though. JF is only about 50% open.
Was just thinking about this today, but Vail has a serious handicap operating JF as the main hill in the snowmaking dept. The old management made the snowmaking investments at Big Boulder, not JF. Most trails at JF do not have permanent snowmaking systems installed and require dragging portable guns into place. But they don't have enough portable guns to cover the whole mountain at once, so that means making snow on one or two trails at a time, opening those, then moving to the next trail. But when the weather turns it means you either delay more trail openings and resurface already open terrain, or you let conditions deteriorate and push for trail count. BB didn't have a problem with this since they installed more snowmaking capacity to build the terrain parks 10-20 years ago. So either Vail spends to put in a modern snowmaking system at JF or they keep playing catch up while under-utilizing the snowmaking system at BB.
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They diverted all the snowmaking water to the waterpark probably.
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Paved parking lot?
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1 hour ago, saltyant said:
I heard a rumor that the fixed grip won't pass inspection. This rumor was on the Facebook.
Marc Antony has had the chairs removed for years. It doesn't run and would need a bunch of repairs at this point. Cleo probably never runs anymore. Bailey might still run every now and then since it has access to the main base area which Cleo doesn't.
At some point they need a minimum of two new lifts: a replacement for the Stevenson and another high speed 6 or 4 where the Bailey is sited.
Then they need to address all the mid-mountain lifts which are also in a bad state. Glen, Raceway and that lift over by Birches all need to be replaced sooner than later. They are vintage 70s machines and CBK isn't the type of people who care for classic machines which is ironic since they have so many of them.-
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CBK only has two lifts. They don't want their fixed grips anymore. Try running a place the size of CBK with two lifts this is what you get.
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Round-the-clock snowmaking should start Thursday night.
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The Arrow IIIs are almost the same units as the Silverliner IVs. Different pantograph. Different seating arrangement because the doors are different. Can't remember. Either the Arrow of the Silverliner has the provision for the center door and the other doesn't. Both manufactured by GE in the 1970s.
1/15/25 - Why can't we have nice things...
in Bear Creek
Posted · Edited by EdBacon
BC has the second lowest average natural snowfall total in the state (21 inches) ahead of only Spring Mountain (11 inches). That's averaged over the last ten seasons.
Fun fact.