Mount Snow Conditions

Hit Mt. Snow today for what was my last day of skiing for this year.  Conditions were great (the $39 lift ticket scored on Liftopia may have helped this opinion!) - 75% of trails open in some fashion.  Hardly a soul there.  

Here was the typical trail:



A bit firm in the morning but by noon it was a blissful corn festival.  Wonderful soft slushy turns on a few soft moguls.  Kudos to their ski patrol - they opened a handful of trails that most places would not.  These trails had a combo of decent coverage and then dirt, ice and OMG you better find a good line through all of this crap!  Was a lot of fun picking my way through these trails.  Also went into some of their glades for a few runs - some nice corn snow in there and no danger of bottoming out.  North side never softened up much unfortunately.

By 3:30 the mush was starting to firm up again so I call it quits.  I'm satisfied with the 16/17 ski year - from one extreme to the other.  I only recorded 9 days for the season but it was nonetheless very satisfying!  For those of you that get 20+days...I salute you!

Wow, a year has passed and the only TR on this mountain is my report from a year ago!  Oh well, I know Mt. Snow isn't the most exciting place but I was there today so here you go...

After an awesome day at Magic Mtn. on Thursday we decided to take advantage of Mt. Snow's $17 tickets.  My niece and her boyfriend (both snow boarders) were to meet up with us for the day.  We thought that the cheap tickets were limited to a few lucky people on Liftopia...nope.  Have never seen that place so crowded - apparently almost everyone got to cash in on that deal...was a crap-show from parking to lift-lines.

No matter, the conditions were superb and the mountain was 100% open.  It's a big mountain and can easily absorb the crowds.  Soft snow and soft moguls were on tap for the day and we all had fun doing laps off the high-speed lifts.  Glades were very much in play as well and I gained some street cred by showing the 20 y.o. boyfriend some of the goods!  Plenty of untracked powder in those woods as most people skiing there stick to the groomed slopes.

Learned a new term... "Send it".  

onscott wrote

Learned a new term... "Send it".

Beyond the linguistic achievement... did you send it?

Mount Snow blowing tonight:

https://www.mountsnow.com/ski-ride/snow-report/

"Tonight, we’re going to go ahead and fire up the most powerful snowmaking system in the Northeast for a quick resurface on a few of our most popular trails. No, this isn’t an early April Fool’s joke, we just want to be sure some of your favorite trails will be skiing at the level you’ve come to expect from us for the last few weeks of the season. The plan is to run snow guns from around 2:00 a.m., to around 10:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, on Canyon, Snowdance, Long John, and potentially one or two others."

Now THIS is how you run a ski area in a warming climate and show commitment to your product and customer experience.

ORDA CAN SUCK IT

snoloco wrote

Now THIS is how you run a ski area in a warming climate and show commitment to your product and customer experience.

ORDA CAN SUCK IT

Could also just be the difference between privately owned vs. gov't owned.

Sweet! I’ll be making my first trip to Mount Snow on Monday for some of those $35 online tickets.

snoloco wrote

Now THIS is how you run a ski area in a warming climate and show commitment to your product and customer experience.

ORDA CAN SUCK IT

Finally some people are showing some love for Mt. Snow!  But yeah, you have to give them credit for making the most of what they have.  It's a fun place and good for some high speed laps.

Mount Snow:  invested 30mil in snowmaking and then put the extra capacity to use by opening earlier than ever and possibly closing later than ever and offering the best conditions in the area by resurfacing through all of March.

Whiteface:  didn't increase capacity at all, opting to spend all the money on lodge "improvements" instead.  Then took money out of the snowmaking budget when they went over budget on the lodge, nearly resulting in an early March close if it weren't for all the natural.

The ORDA strategy of lots of money for lodge construction and not enough money for lifts, snowmaking, and even paying employees a decent wage will not serve the skiing public or the local economy well going forward.

onscott wrote

Hit Mt. Snow today for what was my last day of skiing for this year.  Conditions were great...

By 3:30 the mush was starting to firm up again so I call it quits.  I'm satisfied with the 16/17 ski year - from one extreme to the other.  I only recorded 9 days for the season but it was nonetheless very satisfying!  For those of you that get 20+days...I salute you!

Hit Mt. Snow today for what was my last day of skiing this year.  Conditions were great...

By 3:30 the mush was starting to firm up again so I call it quits.  I'm satisfied with the 17/18 ski year.  I was quite fortunate and recorded 22 days for the season, my most ever.  That included stops at 3 new mountains, Snow, Stowe, and Belleayre.

The conditions were fabulous for late April.  Hell, these would be considered great for most anytime.  

Here was the typical trail:



Snow at the top:


Snow at the bottom:


(onscott: hope you don't mind me poaching from your 2017 closing year post )

Good for you!  If I wasn't still in recovery mode I would have been there myself.  Mt. Snow killed it this year - they hung on through thing times and ended in a bang!  Can't believe those pictures - looks like an normal mid-February.

Mount Snow to open Saturday

PeeTex wrote

Mount Snow to open Saturday

Most likely not with the winds that will be affecting that area of NE.

We skied Mount Snow yesterday after not doing so in a number of years. While the wind was howling all day, with a temp of 10 degrees when we started, the surface was about as hard as it gets after a rain storm and freeze-up. Add to that the masses from the NY metropolitan area, and I now know why I haven't skied Mount Snow in quite some time. What an absolute zoo!  I thought Killington was bad at times, but yesterday was sheer madness. Needless to say, trails got scraped in no time.

Last Saturday the conditions at Mount Snow were absolutely fabulous. They had 36” of snow that week and did a great job with grooming. I did encounter an unexpected stream running through a rare ungroomed blue. Crowds were well managed and lines were not very long.

Fast forward to 12-13 and the $12 lift ticket Founders Day- the rain had melted away a lot of the base and Coopers Junction and Snowdance were very thin in patches. Most trails without snowmaking were closed down again. I did laps on the Canyon lift singles line until 11am and there were few people in line. I stayed low to avoid the thickening fog. Then the lines got longer and  the fog got worse after 11. I headed over to the North Face and took that lift to the summit to avoid the Bluebird lift lines. Visibility was terrible but the snow was nice and soft on Ridge and Canyon Runs. My foggy day retreat trail Sweet Sixteen was also in nice shape. My new 78% VLT orange lens and following the tree line kept me out until 3:30 when the lifts closed. The crowds/lift lines were not that bad for Founders day. Definitely some amateurs out there such as the guy doing a snowplow straight down the fall line under the north face lift. The worst part of the conditions were invisible moguls that were popping up and getting pretty big at the bottlenecks/intersections by midday. The light was so flat and the fog so thick that nobody could see the bumps and people were crashing or getting launched left and right in these spots.

Snow was solid today, I hadn't been in a few years and nothing had changed.  They definitely blew a lot of snow last week, you could carve the sides over at Sunbrook, as well as the north side.  Typical big mountain holiday crowd, those that ski one time a year over the holidays.  With almost 50 trails open, it was easy to escape them.  Nice bluebird day to boot, always appreciated at Snow.

Today at Mount Snirt, there was very thin cover and large dirt patches to dodge all over the place. Mother Nature has not been kind to us lately. The snow conditions were extremely variable and included loose chunkular on Sunbrook, drifts of fine dry shaved/pulverized powder, and boilerplate/white ice in the AM. Conditions were very firm in the AM. Later in the day, sunny areas softened up to spring like conditions surrounding high boilerplate rises. It was very crowded in many areas but the fixed grip lifts had minimal lines and we didn’t stand in any lines for more than a couple minutes by avoiding the high speed quad/sixpackss. I give a lot of credit to the thousands of intermediate maniacs out there doing their best not to crash into each other in pretty difficult conditions today. The carnage was surprisingly minimal on the blue runs. A beginner did clip me on Long John (only way to exit from Beartrap) and then yard sale 20 feet down the trail.

Mount Snow is a nice mountain to ski. Unfortunately all of the high speed lifts create far too much congestion. Plus, the clientele isn’t my cup of tea.

Chris Diamond wasn’t able to run the place back in the 80’s, so Les Otten pulled him out of there and had him babysit Steamboat, which he managed to not mess up. Kelly Palack did a little better, but the six pack to the summit was a huge mistake IMO.

NYSnowflake wrote

loose chunkular

Thats some quality snow reporting right there.

Harvey wrote

NYSnowflake wrote

loose chunkular

Thats some quality snow reporting right there.

Yes, I agree but that is just the tip of the iceberg. This sounds like a wild day

NYSnowflake wrote

Today at Mount Snirt, there was very thin cover and large dirt patches to dodge all over the place. Mother Nature has not been kind to us lately. The snow conditions were extremely variable and included loose chunkular on Sunbrook, drifts of fine dry shaved/pulverized powder, and boilerplate/white ice in the AM. Conditions were very firm in the AM. Later in the day, sunny areas softened up to spring like conditions surrounding high boilerplate rises. It was very crowded in many areas but the fixed grip lifts had minimal lines and we didn’t stand in any lines for more than a couple minutes by avoiding the high speed quad/sixpackss. I give a lot of credit to the thousands of intermediate maniacs out there doing their best not to crash into each other in pretty difficult conditions today. The carnage was surprisingly minimal on the blue runs. A beginner did clip me on Long John (only way to exit from Beartrap) and then yard sale 20 feet down the trail.

The proper response to this post is: Do you have any pics? Trip Report please!