obienick;c-57982 wroteThey have been hosting the World Cup 7 years now (one of then cancelled with COVID). They’ve definitely put money into fire power on Superstar. It is my understanding the issue with Killington snowmaking is the feeds from the pumps. If that’s true, and they’ve been seeking out multi-year deals … why hasn’t any feeds been updated?
Their competitors are upgrading pumping and feeds allowing faster terrain openings and faster recoveries. Few years back Okemo was one of the kings of fall but Mt Snow heavily invested in pumping and distribution of their water with their new water source and Mt Snow has better snowmaking these days. Look over to Sunday River and see how much they have open already.
The only thing I can think of is Killington has decided its more financially worth while to pursue the King of Spring rather than first to T2B.
Also what actually is their pumping capacity? They long claimed 12,000 gpm. A press release from fall 2020 said they’ve upgraded pumping to 10,000 gpm. Les Otten claims 7,500 gpm in comparison section of the The Balsams prospectus.
I think the reality is that with many in the East now being able to pump something either side of 10k gallons a minute, which seems ball park for where Killington is at, and those other areas often having an aresenal of various types of snowmaking equipement that is more low E than Killington tends to have on many of their trails, that is letting the others run more guns since the air advantage that K has often can be minimalized with the lower e equipemt now in all but the sketchiest of wet bulbs conditions. How much water one can pump at most places these days is the limiting factor for snowmaking where as not that long ago it was how much air do you have availble for your system
Heck, I am not sure if it's more promo than than realtity, and I know that they were running some fan guns down at the base of Supertstar to get the product down for the World Cup, but the US Ski Team, who has HKD as their official snowmaking partner, dropped a clip on their social media feeds this afternoon that gave the inference that most of the guns lining superstar were HKD's, which if so, would be different than in years past, and they sure seemed like they were bale to make plenty of product in fairly quick time. Maybe this sponsorship bit as well as a bit of the changing of the guard due to retirement in the K snowmaking department, as well as some likely realized energy savings, may see K making more of an investment in new lower e guns than they have in the past, even if it means more work from their snowcats as their is less throw from the low e products typically. Time will tell
