Anyone going to be at the EAST NSAA Show?
Phat Cat?
Tom400CFI wrote:Mount Snow!
Tom400CFI wrote:Well...it's different. But not in the ways that you're talking about (so much). Yeah, there is more rain, freeze/thaw...but we had that where I was out west too. What I see that is the biggest problem is:
1. Attracting good ops due to low pay and lack of "panache"
2. Slopes getting slaughtered on BIG weekend days. Out west, we'd do 6k on a big day, and 3k on week days. Here, we do 11K+ on 500 acres. I don't care what you do to the snow surface at night...it's going to get creamed during a day like that.
I've experimented w/a renovator, and a lot of rebuilding, but the fact is, when you put 10k+ people down a hand full of runs...you're going to get ICE, where ever you are. That's my take away, so far.
BTW: I've been wanting to tell you that I'm impressed by your write up in the last issue of SAM. Nice piece!
Canadianbombar wrote:Hey Patrick....congrats on the story! When the heck did you get time to write one? lol Can it be viewed online?
Having worked both coasts...I always felt the east was easier myself. In my experience..in the west...you're always getting either way too much snow or not enough. I've been in situations where snow was so slim in the west that I'm nosing into the woods to back drag it out to try and cover a run because they don't have snowmaking. I've been in situations where it would snow 2 feet...almost every day....for weeks on end...making things so soft you would be fighting to climb a green run and be scared to death of 3/4 cat wide cat tracks breaking away on you..sending you down a steep pitch or cliff sideways....and there's actually places you have to be really concerned about avalanches. The east? Always bulletproof. Never dug coffins or tobogganed over here once. No snow? No problem.....turn on a gun. I think it's been a fairly slow snow year out there so you haven't really experienced what the west can throw at you yet....and/or you have fairly mild terrain at that resort. On the flip side....I had pretty tame terrain at the eastern resorts I worked at and some knarlier stuff out west. I think the terrain we actually worked on may well factor heavily into both our opinions at this point.
Return to General Snowcat Discussion
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 7 guests