I Take It All Back

snoloco wrote

Sometimes I wish I could dump the place, but it is still the best thing that I can get to after school which is what allows me to get 80+ days a season.  I'd rather ski a poorly run mountain than no mountain at all.  If they'd improve these things it would be a truly awesome place.

Marcski wrote

snoloco wrote

Sometimes I wish I could dump the place, but it is still the best thing that I can get to after school which is what allows me to get 80+ days a season.  I'd rather ski a poorly run mountain than no mountain at all.  If they'd improve these things it would be a truly awesome place.

It has been my experience, both personal and what I have seen in others, that as one ages they seem to enjoy quality over quantity more.

raisingarizona wrote

Marcski wrote

snoloco wrote

Sometimes I wish I could dump the place, but it is still the best thing that I can get to after school which is what allows me to get 80+ days a season.  I'd rather ski a poorly run mountain than no mountain at all.  If they'd improve these things it would be a truly awesome place.

It has been my experience, both personal and what I have seen in others, that as one ages they seem to enjoy quality over quantity more.

So true. I ski much less now but get out on the good days. If I went all of the time I would get so bored.

snoloco wrote

I just don't know what I would do in the winter besides skiing, even at Mountain Creek (hill creek).  Even a crappy day there beats going bowling or going to a movie.

snoloco wrote

I am going to take back some of my trumping up of Mountain Creek that I did earlier.  I have actually been pretty frustrated with the place recently.  Here's some reasons why.

1.  The terrain park has been a real disappointment this year.  They didn't install any features until early January and still market it hard that they have one of the best parks in the east.  Even with little snow, they still could have put some simple box rails in which would make it more fun.  The park was shrunk last year to make way for the racing program on Bear Peak and is confined to South Peak.  This caused some crazy lift lines.  They refuse to put any park features on anything on Bear Peak.  Even what the race program never uses.  They took till just this week to set up most of their park trails.  There is too much expert features that no one can hit and not enough smaller stuff which crams people onto one narrow line.  They have room for 4 feature lines on Bakersfield and they have 1 and a half right now with a ton of features sitting in the base area.

2.  They don't know how to handle the crowds they get.  They have a new bus company that runs multiple buses each weekend which is great for business, but they cannot handle the load.  They repeatedly have long ticket lines and not all the windows staffed, long food lines that are disorganized with not all the registers staffed.  The lift operations are some of the worst I have seen at any ski area.  The lift mazes are always understaffed with no organization except for a few barriers that get knocked down.  People are pushing and shoving and ready to fight.  The two so called high speed quads on South and Bear Peak are run very slowly each and every day causing even bigger lines.  By slowly, I mean "may as well have installed a fixed grip instead" slowly.  They recently solved the problem of loading 4 to a chair, but they just made lines even worse by running the lifts so dreadfully slow.  These lifts aren't beginner lifts, so I don't know what the deal is.  They sure have no problem running the lifts full speed when flipping chair so they can go home sooner, but seem deathly opposed to doing so when the paying customers are riding them.  The lift was installed for the benefit of the paying customers, not the paid maintenance staff, so they should be run at whatever speed moves the most people up the mountain fastest.  Sometimes that speed is slower than full design speed because the extra stops and slows at full design speed would reduce capacity more than slowing the lift slightly.

3.  They give no information whatsoever on operational changes.  They once closed all of Bear Peak for racing which sucked and said it would open back up when they got done.  There was a sign stating this at the ticket counter.  As soon as the racers got done, they flipped the chair seats and closed the lift.  I told the guy at guest services that the sign on the desk was incorrect since they closed the lift.  He was shocked and told me they never informed him of this decision and immediately took down the sign saying it would open again.  This was before the connection lift was open so I was stuck on one trail on South Peak the entire time cause they didn't bother to run a shuttle bus so I could get to the other side.  The policy is no shuttle buses on Monday and Tuesday, but can't they make an exception for when the connection is closed?  Another time I was trying to get from North to South via the connection.  It closes at 8:30.  I skied to the trail to Granite peak at 8:20 and they already closed it.  No shuttle bus since it was a Tuesday and when I told guest services and a lift operator what happened, they had no clue that it did.  Information rarely if ever gets around.

Sometimes I wish I could dump the place, but it is still the best thing that I can get to after school which is what allows me to get 80+ days a season.  I'd rather ski a poorly run mountain than no mountain at all.  If they'd improve these things it would be a truly awesome place.

YUKON CORNELIUS wrote

Maybe you should save your Term Papers for English Class.

PS- MC is in NJ.

ml242 wrote

And intricate descriptions of the Gondola loading, and whether the new HSQ was being run at ludicrous speed or not?

Footer wrote

ml242 wrote

And intricate descriptions of the Gondola loading, and whether the new HSQ was being run at ludicrous speed or not?

Had they not made it bottom drive it would have been able to go plaid.  Too bad.  Cheap bastards.