<blockquote class=“Quote” rel=“Bondman”> Its one thing to have “the most powerfull in New England” and its another thing to use it properly! A two inch skim coat after an “ice event” does not make for a good surface after 10am on a Saturday. Saturday 3/2 the surface was horrible. Much better at Stratton. Or maybe it was because Stratton is that much further north and so therefore got less ice? Either way, the twenty minutes is worth it
rickbolger We dissagree on your assesment of “about every other place” . Stratton, Bromley Magic and Okemo are not as crowded as Mt. snow. More importantly, not as many lifts. Therefore trails are not as crowded. I totally understand the money thing but don’t kid yourself, they’re not all the same.
It could be that Mt. Snow brings in alot more buses than anyone else. </blockquote>
Respectfully disagree with the 2″ skim coat resurfacing comment. When they’ve resurfaced, basically since January 1st on, since the snowmaking system had basically every snowmaking trail covered and open by the, the trails that they did resurface received 24-36+ hour runs with significant whales made.
From the perspective of someone who’s skied Mount Snow most every weekend for the last 15+ years, the amount of manmade snow they’ve put down this year is as much, if not more any anytime since the 80’s when they didn’t really care too much about the costs of snowmaking and/or understand much better just how much snow they need to get to mid April and their target closing date. Many SJ’ers with a passion for old brochures probably remember those days as one of the pics in the Mount Snow brochures back then was of a dug down to the ground “depth cut” showing something like a 15 foot base.
Flat out today, the system that Mount Snow has can make more snow, faster, over a greater amount of terrain at once, than most any, if not everyone in the East, to the point where nowadays they can can adequate base depths on most every snowmaking trail on the mountain to get them to seasons end as long as mother nature isn’t a total antagonist by Early January, so they don’t need to run the system as much into January and beyond as other resorts, simply because they have the snow depths to be able to manage most recovery efforts with a little time. The reality for many reasons is thye don’t need to blow say 6 to 10 feet of base on every snowmaking trail so that they can then close down in mid April with every snowmaking trail still buried. That just doesn’t make financial sense.
The bigger issue that Mount Snow has now, is the crowd volume, especially on the weekends these days, where what this year is a “normal” Saturday crowd anecdotally to me feels like what used to be a “Saturday of a holiday weekend crowd” and a Holiday weekend crowd feels to me like it’s approaching all time busiest day status. Add in that the crowds seem to be showing up earlier (9AM is the new 10AM) arrival time for many, and that in addition to more folks with Peak passes they’re still a significant number of “paper tickets” in the lift lines, and you’ve got more downhill traffic taking it’s toll on the trails sooner in the day and in larger numbers than ever it seems.
Not quite sure how to “fix” that, nor would a change in their snowmaking/recovery strategy make much of a difference in preserving snow conditons on the hill longer, especially given how mother nature many weeks in a row mid season this year seemed to like to give the mountain a inch plus of rain on Wed/Thursday and then freeze it up on Friday many weeks in a row
