Gore Conditions (2018 - 2019)

Kleetus wrote

Let me be clear, I love skiing Gore. Now that it is my home mountain though, it is painful early season when there are cold snowmaking windows to see how little snow is being made in comparison to other areas and how slow terrain expansion progresses. Granted Gore does not have the snowmaking firepower of Killington or now Mt. Snow with their new system, it still is painful when there is a week of cold temps to blow 24/7 and snow is only made on one or two trails and that trail doesn't have deep enough cover to last a warm up without patching up later..

This was my feeling. I love Gore, but they get half the natural snow that Killington does and they make maybe 5% of the manmade snow that Killington does (that's a guess, but Kleetus is exactly right when he talks about Gore's "one or two trails" snowmaking strategy). They just can't compete when they run their business like that. They're relying on natural snow, which is good when it's good, but bad when it's not good (and I have a hunch that it's gonna get "not good" more frequently in the future).

Kleetus wrote

I will say over many lift conversations through the past few years since I have made Gore my home mountain, that most have thought the main issue with the lack/ineffectiveness of snowmaking at Gore has been due to the inability to retain or hire good employees. Whether or not that is the truth I do not know, but that is the perception most people seem to have based on my lift surveys. Also the questionable decisions on which trails Gore chooses to blow on (such as Hudson last year and then never opening it) make people wonder.

I think that the employee issue is that there are certain people in management that are in unions & they will not lose their jobs no matter what. And they aren't super psyched to leave the job because they aren't going to find they pay and benefits at other mountains that they have at Gore & Whiteface (the Ski School director job is talked about as a Holy Grail among ski instructors: $60k a year with a pension and real health insurance? Nobody else is getting that kind of cushy job ski instructing in the east).

The problem is that the people who are hired under those nicely compensated higher-ups aren't treated very well, aren't paid very well, and are looked at as disposable (in my experience). Which is fine, I guess, but they're not going to attract a ton of good employees with the work situation they've created.

I guess you gotta look at incentives. If you're the guy in the supervisory position, you aren't getting fired, so your incentive is to try to keep everything in the black so that you might be considered for a promotional opportunity (maybe you can one day run ORDA). So you're gonna skrimp & save & try to low-ball all your new hires with shit pay & lousy benefits, you're gonna shut down lifts mid-week, you're only gonna snowmake on a limited amount of trails. You don't really care about the skiing experience, you just need to offer a skiing experience. You feel like you're gonna get the visits you usually get, and if you can just increase revenue from those people (by raising beer prices or whatever), and lower expenses to the bare minimum (by skimping out on your bar renovation or whatever), then you've got your profitability. Who cares if your bar renovation is so poorly done that you have to do another renovation 4 years later? You could be head of ORDA by then! Who cares if employees are disgruntled and angry? Just hire new ones if they leave (even import them from South America like Killington, Sugarbush, & mountains out west do). Who cares if you don't have a ton of terrain open? Just blame it on the weather, or a blown compressor, or whatever. There's still some terrain, so the people getting paid the good money are doing enough to keep their jobs.  Who cares if Killington or Okemo or Mount Snow or Bromley is kicking your ass? Just say that Vermont has a "mystique" or some shit to hide the fact that those other places just run their marketing, programs, & operations better than you.

At a certain point, Gore would benefit from a house cleaning among people who have been in certain jobs for so many years. I thought that the house cleaning at Whiteface would do some good, but I'm not sure that there was enough cleaning. At both places, it'd be nice if the incentive structure was flipped so that the career people in charge would value good conditions, friendly employees, and giving back to the local community (the things that ORDA should be focused on) over profitability, cost-savings, & the bottom line.

I don't know the answers, but what Gore has been doing lately doesn't seem to be working. Too bad, too, because it really would be a convenient place to work and ski.

Amazing to see all Clifton Park/Saratoga/Queensbury/Lake George crowd lose faith in Gore over the past few years and start to take the extra drive to Killington & Pico & Sugarbush just to ski good conditions and have fun skiing experiences among people who are happy to be working at a place.

Drove by on RT 8 this morning about 10am.  No snow cloud visible from there. Please tell me they were blowing the snot outta the hill in the optimal weather conditions and no wind

MC2 5678F589 wrote

Kleetus wrote

Let me be clear, I love skiing Gore. Now that it is my home mountain though, it is painful early season when there are cold snowmaking windows to see how little snow is being made in comparison to other areas and how slow terrain expansion progresses. Granted Gore does not have the snowmaking firepower of Killington or now Mt. Snow with their new system, it still is painful when there is a week of cold temps to blow 24/7 and snow is only made on one or two trails and that trail doesn't have deep enough cover to last a warm up without patching up later..

This was my feeling. I love Gore, but they get half the natural snow that Killington does and they make maybe 5% of the manmade snow that Killington does (that's a guess, but Kleetus is exactly right when he talks about Gore's "one or two trails" snowmaking strategy). They just can't compete when they run their business like that. They're relying on natural snow, which is good when it's good, but bad when it's not good (and I have a hunch that it's gonna get "not good" more frequently in the future).

Kleetus wrote

I will say over many lift conversations through the past few years since I have made Gore my home mountain, that most have thought the main issue with the lack/ineffectiveness of snowmaking at Gore has been due to the inability to retain or hire good employees. Whether or not that is the truth I do not know, but that is the perception most people seem to have based on my lift surveys. Also the questionable decisions on which trails Gore chooses to blow on (such as Hudson last year and then never opening it) make people wonder.

I think that the employee issue is that there are certain people in management that are in unions & they will not lose their jobs no matter what. And they aren't super psyched to leave the job because they aren't going to find they pay and benefits at other mountains that they have at Gore & Whiteface (the Ski School director job is talked about as a Holy Grail among ski instructors: $60k a year with a pension and real health insurance? Nobody else is getting that kind of cushy job ski instructing in the east).

The problem is that the people who are hired under those nicely compensated higher-ups aren't treated very well, aren't paid very well, and are looked at as disposable (in my experience). Which is fine, I guess, but they're not going to attract a ton of good employees with the work situation they've created.

I guess you gotta look at incentives. If you're the guy in the supervisory position, you aren't getting fired, so your incentive is to try to keep everything in the black so that you might be considered for a promotional opportunity (maybe you can one day run ORDA). So you're gonna skrimp & save & try to low-ball all your new hires with shit pay & lousy benefits, you're gonna shut down lifts mid-week, you're only gonna snowmake on a limited amount of trails. You don't really care about the skiing experience, you just need to offer a skiing experience. You feel like you're gonna get the visits you usually get, and if you can just increase revenue from those people (by raising beer prices or whatever), and lower expenses to the bare minimum (by skimping out on your bar renovation or whatever), then you've got your profitability. Who cares if your bar renovation is so poorly done that you have to do another renovation 4 years later? You could be head of ORDA by then! Who cares if employees are disgruntled and angry? Just hire new ones if they leave (even import them from South America like Killington, Sugarbush, & mountains out west do). Who cares if you don't have a ton of terrain open? Just blame it on the weather, or a blown compressor, or whatever. There's still some terrain, so the people getting paid the good money are doing enough to keep their jobs.  Who cares if Killington or Okemo or Mount Snow or Bromley is kicking your ass? Just say that Vermont has a "mystique" or some shit to hide the fact that those other places just run their marketing, programs, & operations better than you.

At a certain point, Gore would benefit from a house cleaning among people who have been in certain jobs for so many years. I thought that the house cleaning at Whiteface would do some good, but I'm not sure that there was enough cleaning. At both places, it'd be nice if the incentive structure was flipped so that the career people in charge would value good conditions, friendly employees, and giving back to the local community (the things that ORDA should be focused on) over profitability, cost-savings, & the bottom line.

I don't know the answers, but what Gore has been doing lately doesn't seem to be working. Too bad, too, because it really would be a convenient place to work and ski.

Amazing to see all Clifton Park/Saratoga/Queensbury/Lake George crowd lose faith in Gore over the past few years and start to take the extra drive to Killington & Pico & Sugarbush just to ski good conditions and have fun skiing experiences among people who are happy to be working at a place.

This is an excellent review of the situation at Gore and is fully supported by facts. Despite an almost doubling of terrain and gladed skiing, huge increases in efficient snowmaking, adding a high speed quad and upgrading the HSTriple to a HSQ, adding a new base area that is a short hop to North Creek, and upgrading the lodges over the last 15 years, Gore STILL averages about 210,000 visits/year.

Pratt's ability to improve and lower the cost of running the physical plant while raising prices at Gore is admirable, but his inability to increase visits and by extension increase sales and profits to NYS is a fail. It is not like Gore was ever crowded before Burnt Ridge and the Ski Bowl were added. The lack of increase in visits affects all the areas surrounding Gore. An increase in visits was the main reason why Gov Pataki loaded up ORDA with money for Gore for the improvements. The priorities of ORDA are clear as Pratt's mixed record at Gore got him promoted to run ORDA.

Gore Skier Visits
2002-2003 213,928
2017-2018 212,387
The visit range is from around 160k to 240K
These numbers are from the ORDA annual reports
http://www.orda.org/corporate/corporate.php

They were blowing the snot of Wild Air this AM. Then added Quicksilver and looks lile Sunway by the end of the day. Also were blowing with mainly land guns and not the Low E guns so they were really laying it down with the temps.

On the topic of conditions. It was awesome today once the Dark Side opened, which was around 1. Prior to that was pretty good on Showcase and Wild Air was OK. Big lines at the gondi (10min wait for singles).

Many including myself were thinking Dark Side wasn't going to open, but they got it done, and it was SWEET. Coverage was great, snow had a light wind crust but was barely noticable. I was second legal person down Darby and hit nothing. Hit it many more times and coverage held up great even as of closing. Straightbrook was good too, but skiied in more with little sketchier coverage but I have skiied much worse.

Highlight of the day. Heading to Dark Side Glades to see Lower Steilhang was OPEN. It had better coverage on it than many of the other times I've skiied it in January or February and there was tons of snow on it. Great chowder/pow pile skiing up until the end. Hulabaloo also opened, but I had too much fun on Steilhang to make a run on it. Coverage looked good though except for the cliff.

I will say props to Gore for opening everything they said they would on the trail report (and more). There were quite a few day tickets it looked like, and a lot of people I rode the lift up with mentioned they had planned to ski elsewhere today but went to Gore due to the Dark Side being hyped up to open. Had Gore not opened it, there would have been a lot of unhappy people (myself included).

Was originally going to swing by Mt. Snow tomorrow, but after today I think I'll be headed right back to Gore. Maybe best first day of the season in my book.

Nice Kleetus glad you scored.

1 o'clock? WTF I left at 12:30, too many people , too few trails. Skinny skied at Garnet Hill excellent conditions 35/ 40K open.
I'll admit what was available skied nice, just too crowded for my enjoyment.

Thanks Harvey!
Just cracked a beer and almost shot it out my nose after seeing Old Forge hit -26 near my family's place up there last night. I saw -10 in my car passing by the Piseco Airport, but -26.

That is incredible cold for November. Hope this sticks around, will make for an epic winter if it does (but a little warmer, this kind of cold doesn't breed snow).

We got here today. As I feared the pipes were frozen. Tradition is to turn the heat tape on at Thanksgiving. I knew it was no go when I saw that forecast.   Spent 30 mins with a hairdryer melting it down.

Nordic woods are skiing primo.

I hear you. It was. Had the Dark Side not opened I would not have been happy with the decision not to run the AEII. Once it did tho spread everybody out.

Bummer on the frozen pipes Harvey. Dealt with that before and not fun. Hope it works out and they didn't burst.

Re-evaluating going back to Gore tomorrow in light of discovering Magic is opening. Didn't realize they were and they are saying lots open, skin reports up say the same. Potential to be epic given how Gore skiied on that little natural and the probably light crowd.

Kleetus I might have shared a lift with you today as I remember someone saying they were 2nd down Darby.  Insane once they got the top opened.  I didn't mind skiing the lower mountain early and was planning on leaving earlier but people kept saying the top would open, so I stayed.  That and I was social for a change in the gondi line  I think my favorite run was Lower gun barrel, liftline, or Straightbrook glades whatever you call it right under the straightbrook.  I did come in from the glades entrance a few times but that snow under the lift was fantastic and I don't think I ever bottomed out.
I was shot by the time I skied Dark Side Glade but still fun.  Can't wait for tomorrow...I can only ski in the morning as I have to close our camp...fingers crossed that our pipes didn't freeze.  Sorry to hear Harv, hope to see you out there tomorrow.

-15 leaving Long Lake this morning. It was warm and bluebird after 10am, though. Steilhang, Lower Darby, and under Straight Brook were highlights today. Definitely felt like the mission statement for the dark side with natural boney steeps. I didn’t think they were going to open it for the afternoon but it was a great way to finish day 1.

Suds N has a lesson at 8:30 so with luck I will be near the front of the gondi line, I'll look for you.  A little solo time during a one hour lesson.

Saw Suds but didn't get to ski with him.

Equipment issues cut my day short but the skiing was really good especially the summit. Dark Side, Single Barrel, trees all of it.  As Adk Jeff's son say "thin cover is code for good snow!"

Had another great day. Mellow morning lapping Showcase with a late morning on the summit.  Open Pit was pretty hammered but still entertaining.  Hullabaloo skied great today and was definitely the highlight.

Macintyre and The Trench were our runs of the day. Best November I've seen.
P.s.
They spelled Macintyre wrong on the trail map.

This is my 50th anniversary year of skiing.  My first year on skis was 1968, and while the rest of the world was occupied with assassinations and social revolution, I had my first pair of Head skis, with Cubco Bindings and was snow bound at Ski Dutchess on Mount Beacon in the Hudson Valley.  I was instantly hooked and skiing became a life long obsession for me.  Over the years, I had a number of memorable experiences, from my racing days, first time skiing with Karen, teaching my children to ski, heli-skiing the Andes and more.

This weekend, thanks to Gore I experienced another one of those memorable experiences.  Skiing from the summit down on my opening weekend of the season.  Not only did I ever ski more terrain on opening weekend than ever before, but the majority of it was on natural snow.

I know this is old news on this forum by now.  And I know many of you had the luxury of opening last weekend.  But never the less, it was an amazing and memorable experience.  

A number of years ago, my daughter (now living in Italy) started a tradition of marking the map.  In honor of that tradition, I marked the map with every trail and glade that we skied this weekend.  It is a visual testament to what I would consider an equivalent to a planetary alignment of our entire solar system in skiers terms.

Great report , happy 50th , Ha,,Dutchess 68" ,  We probably crossed tracks!

Very cool.  The map marking is fun.

I like how you went under the lift instead of Hawkeye all the way. I never pass that up when it's open.

This weekend marked my 20th year of lift served.  Jealous of all lifelong skiers.

Congratulations!!!  The visual from the map is impressive.  

What's happenin in the Crick?