West Mtn, 03/09/2016: Get It While You Can

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Way to go Jeff. I totally agree. Use it or lose it.

West Mountain facebook page Sunday the 13th is their last day. I think they had a super season inspite of all the no snow. trails still looks great as of yesterday. They'll  open Friday  thru Sunday and call it for the year.  

81 in March. WTF?

Are we still denying things are changing? It's seems to me that the changing is picking up momentum. Maybe last year was record cold but now.....everything is just all over the place. It's crazy.

It's an el nino year, which means warm/wet on the ec, and it's the strongest one ever.  Obviously it's going to be a sucky season.  Luckily, most ec ski areas have huge investments in snowmaking technology and are able to outgun mother nature and still have skiing.  You can complain about how man-made snow homogenized and destroys skiing, but there would be zero eastern skiing without it this year.  My hope is that this year prompts many snowmaking upgrades all up and down the ec.  In the east, natural snow is obsolete!!

Sno,you might be smart,but what you don't know fills this world.

As HH already pointed out, West is done for the year as of Sunday.  To underscore what a difficult year it's been for ski areas like West, the Post-Star ran this article this morning.  West Mountain is reporting that revenue will be down by about a third this year - an $800 thousand shortfall - and that "chatter among industry insiders is ski revenue is down anywhere from 30 to 50 percent" for other mountains.  In good news, improvements planned for next year - another new lift, more lighting, electrical and snowmaking upgrades - are still on track.

so many places are done as of this Sunday. It's really sad. The last time we skied in 80 degree weather was at Sugarbush on May 4, 2013....

snoloco wrote

It's an el nino year, which means warm/wet on the ec, and it's the strongest one ever.  Obviously it's going to be a sucky season.  Luckily, most ec ski areas have huge investments in snowmaking technology and are able to outgun mother nature and still have skiing.  You can complain about how man-made snow homogenized and destroys skiing, but there would be zero eastern skiing without it this year.  My hope is that this year prompts many snowmaking upgrades all up and down the ec.  In the east, natural snow is obsolete!!

 

Why do you turn every conversation into something about increasing snowmaking?

I think you are more into snowmaking than actually skiing. Whatever floats your boat I guess...

http://www.madriverglen.com/mountain/history

Mad River Glen first cranked up its now famous Single Chair on December 11, 1948. Roland Palmedo, the founder and an original investor at Stowe, envisioned a ski area where sport not profit would be the overriding concern. Roland believed that " …a ski area is not just a place of business, a mountain amusement park, as it were...."