$20M for Whiteface and Gore + $8M for Belle

http://www.whiteface.com/side-trax/whiteface-mountain-upgrades

Note there is no mention of the stupid zip lines and Mt coasters that nobody wanted except for one guy in Albany
Those will never get thru permitting and all mention of them has stopped.  Protect the ADK the liberal lawyers that attacked Tupper came out against the zip lines and coaster.  The Gov is not going to go against his liberal fund raising base so proof all mention of them is gone. Too bad Protect didn't go after the Gondi at Belleryre.

There was absolutely positively zero need for mountain coasters or zip lines at WF when Lake Placid already has the best off hill activities in the east.  Glad that they won't be getting built.  More money for snowmaking.

The Belleayre gondola had already been approved as part of the Highmount expandsion.  It is going to be open in December as they have been saying.  Stop complaining about it because it's not going to change a thing.  Maybe try skiing Belleayre after it opens and then decide whether it helps or not.

The other thing I hope doesn't go through is the lift from Kids Kampus to midstation which will just make the most crowded trail on the mountain (Boreen) even more crowded.

snoloco wrote

The Belleayre gondola had already been approved as part of the Highmount expandsion.  It is going to be open in December as they have been saying.  Stop complaining about it because it's not going to change a thing.  Maybe try skiing Belleayre after it opens and then decide whether it helps or not.

The other thing I hope doesn't go through is the lift from Kids Kampus to midstation which will just make the most crowded trail on the mountain (Boreen) even more crowded.

I think Z is talking more as a taxpayer than an ADK skier.

That lift would be great, especially as a bubble.  You could have events at mid-station in the summer and more modest mountain biking trails for novices, not to mention what it would do in the winter.  More novice skiers would likely use that new lift instead of taking the gondola or Face Lift as their first run.....ever.

Orda is not lake placid.  They need to make money for the entity.  With all the people that come to town there is not much going on at the mountain to attract their dollars during the summer.  I don't think the zip line is worth the expense they will go to battling the environmentalist for approval.  A mountain coaster I believe is another story.  If the new lift was built to the mid-station it would make a perfect place for the start.  They would then have a captive audience at mid station to sell shit to.  They could expand mountain biking with some flow trail and it would open up a whole new revenue source.

I'm 110% for a lift out of Kids kampus to around mid.  They could use the budget for the zip line and coaster to pay for it.

We just don't need no coaster.  It wold clog up the terrain on the lower Mt since it does get removed in the summer.  

Just looked at google earth to see where that lift would need to go.  

My concousion is that it can't and won't be built at all.

The only place to start it would be near the Magic Carpet.  The alignment to reach mid would be too far to looker's left and it would need to go up and over the ridge that the Wilmington Trail is on the other side of.  Putting a lift there would require excessive blasting and would also put it directly in a wind tunnel resulting in the all too familiar Whiteface wind holds.  Length would be about 4260 feet and vertical about 715 feet.  For a beginner lift, that length requires it being high speed, and that will increase costs more.  There's also no room to put a detachable terminal at mid and it would make that area even more congested than it already is.

The Facelift is no worse than this thing would be for novice skiers since the problem spot is the Boreen Headwall and not anything above or below it.  Same goes for mountain biking.  The Facelift could do the same thing just fine.  Replacing the Kids Kampus lift with a new fixed grip quad would be much more beneficial.

Z wrote

I'm 110% for a lift out of Kids kampus to around mid.  They could use the budget for the zip line and coaster to pay for it.

We just don't need no coaster.  It wold clog up the terrain on the lower Mt since it does get removed in the summer.

No, the budget from the zip line and coaster should be used for snowmaking upgrades and to cut the remaining Lookout trail.

Mountain coasters are not removed in any season and often operate year round.  It was supposed to be at Van Hovenburg but still was not needed.

But the facelift could be engineered with a drop off near mid.  

D.B. Cooper wrote

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That lift would be great, especially as a bubble.  You could have events at mid-station in the summer and more modest mountain biking trails for novices

Agree with this. Would be great for MTB because holy shit, those upper mountain trails are gnarly.

More novice skiers would likely use that new lift instead of taking the gondola or Face Lift as their first run.....ever.

Disagree with this. First, it would be all the way over at the Kids Kampus (an area that most novices - who aren't kids - don't know about). Second, a Gondola is a magnet for people at any mountain. People love riding in gondolas, even if they are completely incapable of skiing down from it (which  describes lots of people who ride the Whiteface gondola).

Sno, people aren't "complaining" about the Belleayre gondola to nowhere. What they are doing is challenging and discussing the wisdom of wasting millions of a precious one time investment in Belleayre on the gondola while  essential investments in infrastructure i.e. snowmaking go unattended. The State ignored it's own UMP which specified snowmaking as a priority for Belleayre. Incidentally, the gondola isn't being installed to support the Highmount acquisition which will probably never happen until major issues are resolved - this may be a ten year timeline. Highmount came late to the party as an afterthought to assist the mega-resort developer and to overcome merging a private resort with a State owned ski center. The original concept for a gondola came about when the mega resort developer wanted a luxury ski lodge for his clients. The State agreed in principle to build the $30 million Discovery Lodge which will probably be the largest ski lodge in the East. To justify the ski lodge, the lower mountain has to be connected to the upper mountain, hence the gondola. Now the mega developer is asserting it may be a decade or more before the mega-resort comes into existence and there is no evidence the State has the funds to build the new Discovery Lodge. So why rush the gondola? Bad decision making and unwise use of tax payer funds needs to be critically evaluated and challenged. That's not "complaining" as you assert. In terms of LP and Whiteface, why is the State even contemplating funding zip lines and mountain coasters? Shouldn't these be privately funded and operated even if on State property (lease or usage fees to be paid to the State). These are risky investments for private investors not tax payers and they will be operated far more efficiently in private hands. Oddly enough, Belleayre would be better served financially by a privately operated mountain coaster than by a money losing under utilized gondola to nowhere.

Call it what you want, but it looks like you and Z and going to complain about this to no end.  Try skiing Belleayre when the gondola is open and see what you think about it.  I'd prefer any skiing related upgrades over anything that's not related to skiing.

The other big difference is that Belleayre can open all their lifts by Christmas and Whiteface can't.  IMO, WF should be doing only snowmaking upgrades until they can and especially not putting in a pointless lift that will make existing bottlenecks even worse.  Who in their right mind would want to dump even more people onto Boreen?

I'm just here to remind you Sno that with planning things on government lands there is a ton of behind the scenes stuff that the public is unaware of. Sometimes some actions of a proposal can move forward years before other improvements can be made. This sort of "dysfunctional" timing of events looks ridiculous (and it is in a lot of ways) to the observing outsider but unfortunately it's the way the game gets played. You can thank the eco nuts for a lot of the problems associated with making improvements on public lands.

snoloco wrote

Try skiing Belleayre when the gondola is open and see what you think about it.  

That's effectively the government (agency) saying, "Trust me.  We'll develop the evidence over time."

Sno, Belleayre can barely get half its slopes open by Christmas. In some lean years, coverage is quite less. The west side which will be serviced by the gondola suffers from a profound lack of snow making capacity and is usually the last part of the mountain to see coverage. It's not even clear if the run out trail to the gondola will have snowmaking this year and the skier tunnel is sure to cause an unwelcome bottleneck. Hunter on the other hand can accomplish nearly complete coverage of its primary terrain in short order even if snowmaking conditions are less than optimal. Belleayre, even with optimal conditions, struggles to cover a handful of trails at any one time due to lack of capacity. The comparison is no contest in favor of Hunter. The difference in commitment to and investment in snowmaking between the two mountains is striking and defining. Skiers want snow coverage not gimmicks. The chances are Belleayre will not see a major infusion of capital again for some time. State funding is intermittent, erratic, inconsistent and mostly political. ORDA is due for major scrutiny. Actual financial losses are much larger than reported as ORDA does not comply with GAAP accounting standards. Belleayre shot its load on frivolity and dug (or is digging) itself into a deeper financial hole. Even if the gondola proves a genuine attribute to the skier experience, it is a poor and untimely employment of very scarce capital for a mountain that may not see another handout from Albany for many years to come.  Just my opinion.

Moresnow wrote

Sno, Belleayre can barely get half its slopes open by Christmas. In some lean years, coverage is quite less. The west side which will be serviced by the gondola suffers from a profound lack of snow making capacity and is usually the last part of the mountain to see coverage. It's not even clear if the run out trail to the gondola will have snowmaking this year and the skier tunnel is sure to cause an unwelcome bottleneck. Hunter on the other hand can accomplish nearly complete coverage of its primary terrain in short order even if snowmaking conditions are less than optimal. Belleayre, even with optimal conditions, struggles to cover a handful of trails at any one time due to lack of capacity. The comparison is no contest in favor of Hunter. The difference in commitment to and investment in snowmaking between the two mountains is striking and defining. Skiers want snow coverage not gimmicks. The chances are Belleayre will not see a major infusion of capital again for some time. State funding is intermittent, erratic, inconsistent and mostly political. ORDA is due for major scrutiny. Actual financial losses are much larger than reported as ORDA does not comply with GAAP accounting standards. Belleayre shot its load on frivolity and dug (or is digging) itself into a deeper financial hole. Even if the gondola proves a genuine attribute to the skier experience, it is a poor and untimely employment of very scarce capital for a mountain that may not see another handout from Albany for many years to come.  Just my opinion.

GAAP only applies to publicly traded companies. When ORDA starts selling shares and is publicly traded, then you can talk about GAAP.

Moresnow, I was a Hunter passholder for 3 years and skied there many times the two seasons prior on the I Ski NY Gold Pass.  I switched to Whiteface when I went to college last season and my dad switched to Belleayre so he could meet me at Gore and Whiteface and we could ski the same mountain when I was at home.  Because I had experienced the best in the industry with snowmaking for 5 years, I am one of the hardest people to please on that front.

I was actually satisfied with Belleayre's snowmaking.  It's not nearly as good as Hunter, but they made it work with what they had and pretty effectively spread out the Christmas/New Years crowds.  All lifts were open (except when the Superchief crapped out) and there were good options off all of them.

I was also generally pleased with Whiteface's snowmaking, except for Lookout not being open nearly as much as it should be.  

I asked Aaron Kellet about it, and found out that the reason Whiteface has difficulty getting Lookout Mountain open in a timely manner is due to an odd quirk in the snowmaking system.  Turns out it has nothing to do with Wilmington taking a lot of snow to cover, or lots of low level skiers getting on it, or personal bias.  All fake news.

There are two booster pump stations that serve the highest elevation terrain.  One at the top of Victoria serves all of the terrain above it on both Little Whiteface and The Summit.  The other is at the bottom of Hoyt's and serves Hoyt's, Lookout Below, and Wilmington Trail above Lookout Below.

There isn't sufficient pressure below for them to both be active at once.  To light up even a single gun off the Lookout pumphouse, they can't be making snow anywhere off the Victoria pumphouse.

Wilmington already requires just about all the pumping capacity to cover due to it's length.  However, Hoyt's and LBO don't.  However, covering both of those requires shutting down almost everything else just like Wilmington, and it takes about 2 and a half weeks  to 3 weeks to cover all 3.  To make any snow on Lookout, they have to committ 100% to only working on Lookout and know they won't be needing anything on the other side for a while.  Basically this constraint makes any snowmaking up there risky, so it doesn't get done until they know the other side will be good for a few weeks.

Well, there are plans to fix this as early as 17-18.  If it's not as risky to make snow on Lookout, it should get done earlier.  In my opinion, Wilmington should opened after Lower Skyward and Wilderness, but before Upper Northway, Mac, Parkway, or Thruway and Hoyt's should immediately follow Wilmington.  LBO can wait.  Since they could still resurface a couple areas while blowing Wilmington and many areas while blowing Hoyt's, it will not be a risky undertaking.

The story illustrates a point that I have made more than once in the past. Rarely is it management incompetence that is preventing a mountain from being run the way you think it should be run.

Well, management at any ski area can make bad decisions from time to time, but its important to get the full story before jumping to conclusions.

This info explains some decisions I questioned last season.  I wasn't sure why they made snow on Upper Northway, Lower Thruway, and Lower Mac before Lookout.  Lower Skyward should open before Lookout IMO.  They had some resurfacing needs on that side, so they couldn't go to Lookout, so they had decided to open those trails in the mean time.  Also, with the upgrades they'd have been able to cover Hoyt's, LBO, Upper Mac, and Parkway better than they did.  They could've stayed on Hoyt's for another few days and blown Upper Mac and LBO at the same time to cover them better.

Is Whiteface the only mountain in the northeast with two 4000+ foot summits?  I think it is.

Unqualified "audited" and "reviewed" financial statements are typically prepared in conformity with GAAP standards whether issued for public or private entities. Not sure what standard applies to governmental agencies such as ORDA. Are there any CPA's out there familiar with governmental accounting? A simple compiled profit and loss statement, balance sheet and sources and uses of funds statement would go a long way toward shedding light on ORDA's financial condition. The ORDA website refers to a CPA prepared audit of some type but no actual financial numbers are disclosed (or at least I don't recall seeing any). I realize ORDA provides an important and valuable public service and does necessarily need to be profitable. My inquiry is not meant to be critical, just curious as to how our tax dollars are spent and accounted for.