Resurfacing Trails

Forgive me if this has been discussed, but I have been wondering about resurfacing trails via snow making?  How deep do the mountain ops and groomer guys think is enough?  My guess is that it is really trail dependent.  With the awful rain on MLK weekend, Mt. Snow was bragging about how quickly they resurfaced 250 acres.  I canceled Vermont plans that weekend and went to Hunter on MLK day.  They did a great job resurfacing, but how long does it really take?  I would love to hear some insight if anyone has any.

Hunter can resurface basically everything overnight.  In 2011-2012 they'd do it just about every weekend when there was cold temps, and many people were saying how Hunter was skiing so much better than Windham and even Vermont.  This was under the original owners, and they just posted a bunch of pics on social media proving that Peak Resorts is doing the same thing.

Gore/Whiteface are very underpowered and usually it comes down to the choice of opening up new terrain or temporarily improving conditions on already open terrain as they don't really have the capacity to do both.  Gore can sometimes focus too much on trying to get maximum open terrain and leave lots of stuff thin and icy for weeks, while Whiteface has this year been overly focused on trying to resurface everything that they have had the lowest amount and percentage of terrain open in the east for well over a month straight.  I guess they're doing better than Pico which has 10 trails open now, but they don't really make much snow at all.

Belleayre is also underpowered, but to a lesser degree.  After a thaw, they tend to try and make snow on one closed trail and put the rest of their capacity to resurfacing unless it gets totally desperate and then they'll focus entirely on resurfacing.  Once everything is in decent shape they'll put all their capacity towards opening new terrain until they've opened all their snowmaking terrain and then just resurface and build base depths until President's Weekend.  Right now, they're working on their last two trails, which really makes one run from the top to Overlook.

Gore is trying to open up Topridge for the weekend and resurfacing on Fairview, Cedars, and the High Peaks Area.  They gave up on trying to open Pine Knot for now, but I think it will get done after Topridge.  After that it's really just the Ski Bowl that they need to get back open and those trails don't require much snow to cover.  I'm very concerned about Whiteface since they still don't have Wilmington open and while they made some snow on there a few weeks ago they have probably lost most of it.  It's going to take a week to open that and they won't even start there until next weekend at the earliest and they still have to do Hoyt's, Lookout Below, and Lower Sky.  There's no way they can get those completely done in time and done well.  Maybe if they actually opened Wilmington when they had weeks of perfect temps they wouldn't be so far behind.

Sno, not intending to be snarky or cute, but how do you know this all?  Past observation of conditions and current monitoring of respective snow reports?

A friend actually skied sugarbush yesterday and said WF is in way better shape. Vermont and NH didnt get any snow from the MLK storm and actually got heavier rain...  lots of closed terrain.

Its a resurfacing kinda season.  

I thought Okemo was in way better shape last Sunday and they had all lifts open READ ALL lifts open.  If Whiteface is going to give up on my favorite terrain, I'm going to give up on skiing there.  Enjoy standing in lift lines.

Okemo?  Is that a cream for zits?  

It's a ski area that I can go to on Max Pass and while I'm usually not a fan of it, it's way better than how Whiteface has been this season.  Horrendous lines on numerous occasions that were for reasons within their control and now the lowest percentage and amount of terrain open at any major ski area in the east.  Total embarrassment.

ScottyJack wrote

Okemo?  Is that a cream for zits?  

WHOA! That was a good one!

Thank you.  Exactly what I was looking for.  A place like Hunter has so many tower guns mounted and ready to go.  Belleayre, Gore and I assume Whiteface are still dragging around snow guns.  Not as easy to resurface there.  

Gore has a lot of towers and it saves them a lot of air and labor.  Whiteface still has many key trails with only ground guns and they are way short snowmakers this year which makes it difficult to move them frequently to resurface, yet they have this obsession with trying to resurface every single trail after even one drop of r*in and they only just barely finish before there's another r*in event and they have to start all over again.  And this year they haven't even gotten to resurface the best terrain that has been opened so far which is the summit.  If they'd actually run the Little Whiteface lift all day every weekend no exceptions plus some weekdays it wouldn't be so bad, but they don't even run it even close to that much.

I find at Gore people tend to spread out and use all the lifts (except Burnt Ridge and Ski Bowl) more evenly.  At Whiteface it's like no one is willing to ride a chair.  Everyone just HAS to ride the gondola and nothing else.  Many times last season the gondola line was out of the ropes and there was zero line for any of the chairs.  I guess I shouldn't care too much though because it's their loss not mine if they would rather wait in line than ski.  I guess this explains why Whiteface has not resurfaced anything that isn't off the gondola so far.  There's no way Gore can really resurface all their terrain and they tend to focus on one section each time.  This time was High Peaks.

Ok skied Gore today. Yes the sun was out, kinda warm, overall good day.  Here's the rant:
- about 930 went from Saddle to Wood In to Nope not the Dark Side as STOP there is a closed sign and rope half way down so yaaaaa get to do Pete Gay which was bad bad bad on onto the slowww quad.

Why why why no sign at the saddle saying the Dark Side chair not spinning??? Grrr these are the little things that drive Gore passholders nuts.

Then - to tie back to this thread - best run, run of day, twice is Darby!  Yes Darby!  Just the Upper part, so much snow, on the steeps, fun for 30 seconds.  Then the rest of Dark Side hockey rink like rest of mt.  I get it, this Winter starting in Jan really sucks, its not Gore's fault- but why why why the only recent snowmaking is on Darby?  

Yes TopRidge has huge whales.  Could see them from the rope across the top all morning.  Did they ever pull the rope?  Sigh.....help.......

They also blew snow on Hullabaloo...

... and left it closed all day.

I also went down Wood In thinking the lift was open only to find out it wasn't and have to take a boring runout down The Loop and Pete Gay and that awful North Quad back out that should've been a HSQ when they upgraded it from a double.  20 minutes down the drain.  Heard that the lift broke later in the day but I'm not sure.  And it seems to always have a big line now, so definitely time for replacement with something with a higher capacity.

Not sure why Hullabaloo was closed but I assume they blew it too wet and you'd sink into it.  I liked Topridge and Fairview a lot.  Hoping they'll both be open tomorrow.  Probably won't be very crowded tomorrow due to r*in tonight.

Normally I take laps on the gondola until it has a big line or the top opens.  Whichever comes first.  If there ends up being a line before the top opens and I end up on the AE2 then it's usually gonna be a while before I make it up top since they haven't been very good about getting the Dark Side chair open on time lately.

And who said that they shouldn't have blown Topridge?!