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It's best to take care of Wilmington when there is a weeklong window of perfect weather. So they are being opportunistic in taking advantage of it. They've also performed very well with snowmaking this season. They have taken advantage of their elevation when they only had good temps up high...

They said on the snow report to "be on the lookout for snowmaking". I thought it was too good to be true. Then someone sent me a screenshot of the Bear Den webcam, which showed guns going on Wilmington. Later on, they posted a video on Facebook showing top to bottom snowmaking on the trail...

In the last 10 years, Gore has been at the forefront of modernizing guns and hydrants, replacing pipes, and adding pipes to trails that didn't previously have snowmaking. But they have not kept up on increasing their water capacity, especially as they increase their snowmaking footprint, and...

Earliest start to snowmaking on The Wilmington Trail since 2010.

I was concerned about the ski racks. They appear to be the stock version from Sigma, the cabin manufacturer. Palisades Tahoe has the same ones on their Base to Base Gondola, and they don't fit wide skis. They were designed in Europe where skis are narrower. Killington and Stratton also have...

The website is down and can't be updated. They are making updates via social media.

On Sunday, they put a note on the snow report saying that the gondola was running at reduced speed, and to use Tomahawk for upper mountain laps. I noticed on the webcam that it was running at about 3 m/sec, and continued running at the slower speed all week. I figured that it was either running...

To be clear, I'm not sure any ropes were dropped on Sunday that weren't on Saturday. But they had significantly more trails open than they reported. The gondola was open for upload/download only. All skiing was off Tomahawk. You couldn't ski to the base. The point I'm making is the things they...

I didn't go on Saturday, but from what I've seen, I think it's a legitimate criticism that they were unprepared for the number of people who showed up. I went today (Sunday), and they made adjustments to handle a larger crowd, such as running the gondola for upload/download to make additional...

I'm rather picky about quality of lift operations, so I most definitely noticed that it was running at a snail's pace and still slowing down and stopping constantly. It was bad enough that other people I rode the lift with were complaining about it.

The 7 open resorts, ranked by vertical, from least to most. 7. Sunday River...............560' 6. Killington......................591' (750' skiable from top of K1 to bottom of North Ridge, but can't be lapped) 5. Sauveur.......................603' 4. Gore............................733' 3...

They can approve based on expected weather, and have done so in previous years. It's going to depend on how much snow they have made by then, and what the forecast going forward looks like.

Yes, it says "The Hudson Chair". Note that they are running it on diesel in the video. That's common on new lifts when the chairs are first put on the line. The electrical work isn't done yet, but the diesel engine can be operated manually to spin the lift for things like tower and terminal...

Powder Mountain continues to radicalize. First they privatize a third of the mountain, and now they won't even sell tickets to normal people on February weekends. Note that they'll still give you a tour if you're looking to buy real estate there. It's a terrible business decision. Weekends in...

Vail Resorts definitely behaves more like a wall street corporation than a ski company. They seem to be milking the infrastructure of the resorts for all it's worth and not investing in them. That way, their quarterly reports look better. Only one new lift in a company that owns 42 ski resorts...

I think Pico breaks even but not much more. It's not worth much to a separate entity because it can't compete directly with Killington. I think the only reason Otten kept it so long is because of the interconnect. Otherwise it might've been treated like Haystack and been shut down and sold, with...

Of the 4 properties that they are selling, I don't think any of them are unprofitable, but Killington and Mount Bachelor will need a lot of lift investment in the near future. The other two are in better shape. They're keeping Copper, Snowbird, Boreal, and Soda Springs. If they're keeping those...

Over the last 15 years, Vail Resorts has largely set the price that ski resorts sold for. If they pivot from buying to selling, then they will be upside down on a lot of resorts they acquired with debt. Worse yet, it may affect other owners who purchased during that time. With regard to 7...

The issue with ski resorts is that for the last 15 years, Vail Resorts and then Alterra have largely set the price of ski resort acquisitions. They were buying up literally every resort they could get their hands on. I wouldn't be surprised if they were sending unsolicited offers to the previous...

In an era of rapid consolidation, it's surprising to see such a large resort go the opposite direction. Powdr was far from perfect. They did a few large capital projects, but went many years between them. Their infrastructure is aging and needs to be overhauled or replaced. I think there's...