paul45

Figured. But any private investor or otherwise non-vail-entity looking to drop $10-20M on Elk has gotta know they've got another $10-20 they need to spend on lifts and infrastructure. I just read the Schaefer family dropped $15M on improvements after they bought Catamount and that was for used fixed grips - just ones that aren't 70 years old (albeit, article didn't say if that $15m was all lifts or if there was snowmaking/lodge/etc... in there). So that's probably the minimum to make Elk's lifts reliable. Triple that if you think you're doing detachable. Elk actually had a couple rough weekends this year wrt lift lines. Some bad luck on weather (every other weekend being miserable really drove up the crowds on those interleaved good weekends) and then the weekend after President's day was BEAUTIFUL and not crowded..... until the Quad decided to smoke its hydraulics and was down for nearly a week. so... self-imposed "maintenance / 'Ole Joe is a stingy ole man" problems that time. Only a few weekends this season that were not-rainy AND cold enough it wasn't too slushy AND normal elk lines (i.e. none). Small investor with 1-2 other mountains. Make even a modest attempt at making the pricing competitive. Add an Indy Pass for bonus points. Make the lifts reliable. For 960 feet of vertical I could care less about detachable, they just need reliability. That would be the sweet spot for Elk. I'm not a tree guy, but if that's what it takes to get people out to make the competitive pricing reality, then great.

"Hope it's Vail"..... not sure if that was another April Fools joke, hahaha. Pros: Epic passes for 2/3rds the price of my Elk Passes this year. Cons: Literally everything else about Vail. No interest in spending my weekends standing in #epicliftlines

Was pretty sure that was a joke. But I'm big enough to admit it, I checked the vail press release page to be sure. Now I get the day late comment... riiiight. Confusing since it was 2 days late I guess 🙂

Not sure if you've heard anything new.... but I just heard ol' Joe just blew up a deal right before it closed. Dunno if that's the same deal you heard was done or a different one. I did hear earlier in the season they had 2 offers, so could have been a different one. Hopefully investors are a bit timid on that that route after Windham's so-far-fail. They lasted something like 3 weeks of the season with their "2 day minimum for non-club members"... quickly turning into a REAALLLY expensive private lift line and not much more.

How was it this past weekend? Was there the previous one... Still a few very decent trails then (probably the last few they blew on before it got warm). Ashame, seems like they had to close just because they didn't pile enough up to bulldoze in the run outs and lift lines anymore. Particularly unfortunate considering the weather this week and that it looks like this right now..

On a weekend with people falling off. Feel free to go to camelback on a weekend for their high speed and spend that 12 and then some in line for the lift 🙂

Also... https://www.midwestskiers.com/post/fixed-grip-highspeed-why-so-many-midwest-hills-go-fixed I posted that on a different thread earlier in the year. Very interesting read on the trade offs between fixed grip and detachable. BLUF: If no one falls and they never have to slow it, they're identical uphill capacity... That is driven by the time between chairs which was optimized sixty+ years ago at 6 seconds per chair and pretty much every lift on the plant, fixed and detachable, spaces their chairs at that. The two benefits of high speed are, fewer people falling and slowing or stopping it (which reduces uphill capacity) and in the very rare condition (even at elk, pretty much only weekdays and very slow weekends) that they aren't using all that capacity you can actually lap the mountain faster. But if they're filling every seat at elk (most weekends this year at least) you're not in that condition. Otherwise it's just a question of sitting on the lift vs. standing in the lift line. Detachables take half those people off the lift seats (because there's half as many chairs, because, math) and puts them in the lift line instead. Personally, I'm fine sitting on the chair instead of standing in line if it keeps the crowds away. Bottom line got lengthy .. But interesting read.

Ride time is 9 minutes no stops, 12 on average... 960ft of vertical excitement ain't that far. How slow do you ski!? ;-).

Pretty sure the appeal is the lackkk of crowds because of the slow lifts.

I don't think anyone on the East Coast's books look too good this year. Been a whole lotta electricity dollars melting down the hill and overtime pay to replenish it.

Not trying to propagate rumors, just checking if anyone's heard anything. Twice now on lifts this year I've had chair mates claim there's maybe soon to be change in ownership at Elk. First was just relaying a cryptic comment from a sales counter person. Second was from an older "been there forever" skier claiming more explicitly that they have two different offers on the table right now. Anyone have real info? Or just the perennial rumors that seem to happen every year?

I'm pretty sure it was 4-5" total. 2-3 overnight. Another 2-3 during the day Sunday. At least at the base elevation where I had a couple clean surfaces to see it on before the kids trashed it. Was enough that Delaware was friggin gorgeous in the morning before it got too skied over. They've been having maintenance issues nearly every weekend on either B or C. Seems like each time one gets fixed the other goes down. Opening weekend, news years weekend and again this weekend at least. Guess those 60 year old lifts have a lifespan, go figure.

Nearly 50 with overnight lows close to 40.... certainly well above average for late December at 1700 feet elevation. Edit: 20 degrees above December average. Engineer..I operate on data.

Looks looks for today only upper tunk and a couple of the spurs below it. But not quad side yet, just the cutover back to the lodge (Hiawatha). Hopefully they're just delaying grooming down by the quad until after Christmas so it lasts through the warm weather? Can't imagine they'd go into Christmas week without opening the quad side at all, right?? Either way.. Whatever they get to today looks like that's it until Thursday night... Insane spring temperatures until then after today.

Just two. Tioga and Susquehanna. Website said snow making was happening on Tunkhannock and the spurs onto lower tunk through Friday. But nothing open on the quad side all weekend, looked like they didn't quite finish to the bottom before it got too warm, was still grass down at the quad loading area. After that rain I'm sure it'll be a couple days just to get those two back to normal.... Hard to not lose a ton in a tropical fifty degrees downpour I'm sure.