Icecoast

I do. I had a pass there this year and going with indy next year. the park has terrible flow, is too spread out, and the horizon trail ruins vernon by cutting across every trail on that peak. That map is from the 90's. It was Intrawest's plan for the place. The current owners (who also operate big snow) dont plan on really doing much other than lift/snowmaking upgrades. The triple on vernon is where they are going to put the six pack and keep the cab for mountain top weddings and mountain biking. There are two abandoned trails on vernon that they are going to re-open when the lift is added. One cuts through the condos from granite, the other cuts from the garden state trail to skiers left of the waterpark under the triple. The abandoned trail on granite was called pipeline. It was truly steep, but when the condos went in it was cut in half, and you would have a sharp 90 degree turn at the bottom onto another abandoned trail called granite view, which wrapped around granite, kind of like a mellower belt parkway at hunter. I marked the known abandoned trails in red.

The cab wasn’t supposed to be the only lift on Vernon. It was supposed to be used to access a mountain top development that was never built, and another high speed chairlift was supposed to go in. The master plan shows all the development that never happened. Many new trails were supposed to fill in the gaps. There are also a ton of abandoned trails as well. the new (current) owners are committed to installing a 6 pack on Vernon soon. I think the snowmaking upgrade they made on Vernon this year was a step towards it.

I had to sell my union chargers when i got my splitpig...the disks arent big enough to fit splits with the channel. I was bummed because they were really solid bindings, not just for split bindings. I always wanted to hit prospect...thats the area you drive past heading towards Mt Snow from NY?

sounds like fun. They should move that patrol building and the beginner area and let main street and burma flow to the valley.

https://www.tetongravity.com/forums/showthread.php/179267-Mid-Atlantic-Rollcall/page37 According to this thread the sale went through and it was an out of state group from DC (possibly the BC owners?)

They got all of that planned out but still wont fix the intersection at the bottom of main street.

I really enjoyed catamount, Berkshire East, and even little Bosquet. What the Schaefers have done to those places is impressive. But I still cannot get down with how they clear cut both catamount and bosquet and never replanted. Its like the Anti-Elk.

I guess I meant some sort of pass that would work. There’s no way there wasn’t something that could be done.

So it seems like they know it should work…wouldn’t any competent employee get a manager to just get you a day pass? I went to a resort a few years back and reloaded my rfid card online. It didn’t work when I got there and couldn’t get the sale to show on their end. I showed them my email receipt and they just gave me a day pass.

I asked for the tea, waiting on response.

The timberline trail used to be a bit longer with a bunch of twists and turns in it, but then they just made it a boring flat trail.

I was there one day, I think back in like 07 or 08 in early December. They had the usual Main Street vista and chute areas open and were making snow on lazy all morning. They pushed out the piles, groomed, and had lazy open by the afternoon. Those piles sat for zero minutes after the guns went off.

I’ve also noticed that when it’s cold and the weather cooperates, the snow quality at bear was always much better than blue. JFBB used to be similar. I’ve heard that not using snow max as an additive can cause the product to be wetter and denser (aside from just air/water ratio). Also, the quicker a pile is pushed out and groomed the crappier the snow. If the piles are allowed to drain for a bit its a drier product when groomed.

They do. The two north peaks (Vernon and Granite) were one ski area and south and bear peaks were another. When it combined into Vernon valley/great gorge a connector lift and trail was installed. There’s a lodge at each area so you can chose were to park. It’s not that big an issue, if you get tired of lapping south and bear peak, you have one long lift ride to get back to granite and Vernon. It’s not lift meant to lap, its there so you dont have to get in your car and drive to the other base. When intrawest bought the area and turned it into mountain creek, there was a massive master plan. The open lift was supposed to be for mountain biking and to get people to a mountain top development/resort center built around the lakes up top. There was always supposed to be a second high speed lift but it never happened. The actual master plan made the place massive. See attached for that. The missing bottom trail that looks to cut across the condos is still there but needs to be reopened. They have stated this is in works with the condo association for when the triple is replaced with the six pack. I assume one other route down to that area will open too. The missing trails in the top left were abandoned because they kinda sucked and you had to traverse to get to them. The trails on the center peak were abandoned because because the longer trail that wraps around was really flat, and the steep pipeline trail had issues with their being an actual pipeline underneath it, and that right at the bottom of the steepest part it turned 90 degrees and was quite an issue for the Jersey Jerry. The pipeline trail used to go full top top bottom before the condos went in. Basically, intrawest wanted to make the place stratton south, started a bunch of small things but never finished. Then the few owners between them and the ownership group now kinda let the place go. New owners are on it and are addressing things bit by bit.

It’s a slow day at work and i just read through this thread. Im a current season pass holder at mountain creek. I have ridden there in the past and their super cheat 270 dollar season pass was cheap enough that I completely forgot that it sucks. The good: Their snowmaking investments have paid off big time. Conditions have been fantastic. The allow for uphill and open an hour early for season pass holders on weekends and holidays. The bad: The steep stuff is the last to open, despite only having 3 trails i would consider steep. 2 of them are on the main peak and have a green trail cutting each route down in half. Despite them claiming a new six pack is coming to replace the triple lift, we are still stuck riding that stupid gondola. The triple serves as backup on weekends. And there’s one narrow trail down to the triple so it’s always a clusterf*ck getting to it. They have removed more than one trail. Attached is a screenshot of the trails removed. The removal of those trails absolutely ruins any flow of the mountain. They claim they are bringing 2 back on Vernon when the six pack goes in. Marked in red on the attached photo are the removed trails. Will I be back? This season, yes for uphill and some early weekends, but I’ve already broken even on my pass and will most likely do some midweek days at the ‘Tage for 40 bucks, and go ikon or ‘tage next season unless this elk mountain rumored sale happens.