yardsale;c-46397 wrotenewpylong;c-46378 wroteI take it they never finished Upper Ex?
Correct. they bought some time with the natural and it skied pretty well as did tramline. But it already looks thin between Lodge and Ego barn.
Pretty sure that the days of the lighting up the guns on that section of Ex between basically High Traverse and the top of the pitch above where Ex meets up with Link are done, as it seems like with the snowmaking equipment in their current arsenal, when the did light those couple hundred yards of Ex up, that the amount of plastering from the guns that the GSE would take, wasn't worth the benefit of putting some extra cover on that often quick to melt out due to its Easterly and Southerly exposures, plus the tricky sidehill to keep the snow on.
Just my 2 cents, combined with a past conversation with various mtn folks about why they didn't make snow on that section so that Ex and Lodge would be in play and they could run either the Bluebird or the GSE when they were making snow on either that part of Ex or the adjacent section of Lodge and not end up plastering guests on a lift during operating hours or the chairs themselves during non operating hours. Kind of like on the Northface if at all possible they only run Outpost when they're making snow on freefall and only run Challenger when they're making snow on Chute.
If you've ever had the "pleasure" of having the bases of your skis/board blasted by a gun in close proximity to an operating lift, and then surprisingly find out that your skis/board with the fresh, wet,frozen to your bases man-made basically stick to the unloading ramp as you try to get off the chair, then you can relate to why they don't want to have active snowmaking on trails with operating lifts over them, that run relatively low to the ground and hence in the plume of snow coming out of the running gun!!
