Gore Mountain Conditions

[westcoastben]

I showed up late to the party after a couple of hours at Hickory on my way north, but it was pretty fantastic. The most crowding I saw was in the Saddle Lodge when I decided to drink my lunch. Cold as shit, but I looked at it as “warming” me up for a frigid day at Jay tomorrow.

 

[tirolski]

Looks like folks dressed up Gore’s trail map.

Trail Maps - Gore Mountain

goremountain.com

Is it me or is it lower resolution than the last ones?

 

[x10003q]

Sunday is still sold out!
Current screen shot:

 

[Kleetus]

I showed up late to the party after a couple of hours at Hickory on my way north, but it was pretty fantastic. The most crowding I saw was in the Saddle Lodge when I decided to drink my lunch. Cold as shit, but I looked at it as “warming” me up for a frigid day at Jay tomorrow.

Jay should be awesome with all the snow. Gore was good but the woods at Jay should be next level with all the fresh the last few days. Jealous

 

[snoloco]

No doubt snowmaking is the most difficult job on the mountain and surfaces have been very good this year, but Rumor only opened on February 16, after only 5 days of snowmaking. Why couldn't it have opened weeks ago when Lies opened? For that matter, why couldn't Lies have opened earlier? Belleayre has been 100% for weeks. What is the limitation at Gore?

Gore has more snowmaking capacity than Belleayre, but Gore is more than double the size of Belleayre, and has much more elaborate park builds than Belleayre does. I'll normally be the first to call out slacking off, but I can't really do that for Gore this year. They covered everything they did last year, plus Moxham which received snowmaking for the first time ever, all in the normal timeframe. There's only so much you can do when you keep expanding snowmaking footprint without expanding snowmaking capacity. They need another capacity upgrade.

OTOH we have a new Hole Shot course, and we're gonna get a new $30 Million zip liner and high speed quad at the Ski Bowl, which is usually open for skiing 3 or 4 weeks a year.

The ski bowl has already been open for 5 weekends so far this season. Last year, it was open for 9 weekends. They need to do better at opening it earlier, but let's stick to the facts.

 

[tirolski]

but let's stick to the facts.

Agree with yer points but it technically ain’t a zip liner either.

North Creek area would do better business wise by having their Ski Bowl open more with ORDA funding more snowmaking instead of the "anchor attraction zip coaster”thingy. It’ll never be an Olympic sport.

Folks can already have fun riding bikes, canoe, hike, etc. in the summertime instead of getting spun around in the air.

Good snow is The anchor attraction.
Look at how Belle’s visits went way up.

 

[NYSkiBlog]

 

[Milo Maltbie]

Gore has more snowmaking capacity than Belleayre, but Gore is more than double the size of Belleayre, and has much more elaborate park builds than Belleayre does.

It doesn't matter what Belleayre has. Gore needs to have enough snowmaking to open on a reasonable schedule, and enough patrollers and other staff to open the whole mountain even on Mondays and Tuesdays, which Belle is able to do. Instead of spending money on projects with marginal value, like zip coasters and replacement of the relatively new and underused lift at Ski Bowl, they should be spending the money to address whatever limitation it is that keeps some of the best parts of the mountain closed until two thirds of the season is over.

But at least we get Hole Shot, so we got that going for us.

mm

 

[snoloco]

It doesn't matter what Belleayre has. Gore needs to have enough snowmaking to open on a reasonable schedule, and enough patrollers and other staff to open the whole mountain even on Mondays and Tuesdays, which Belle is able to do. Instead of spending money on projects with marginal value, like zip coasters and replacement of the relatively new and underused lift at Ski Bowl, they should be spending the money to address whatever limitation it is that keeps some of the best parts of the mountain closed until two thirds of the season is over.

The reason for the difference in snowmaking performance between Gore and Belleayre is due to the GPM per snowmaking acre ratio. That's the best metric to determine the snowmaking capabilities of any ski area. No matter how many low E guns you have, no matter how aggressive you are at hitting every window of cold temps, no matter how smart or experienced your snowmaking staff is, you can never exceed your maximum water capacity. Gore has checked most of the boxes to be as efficient as they can. They have hardwired, semi-automated equipment on many trails, low e guns on almost everything, and they rarely miss windows of cold temps.

Since 2018, Lower Steilhang, Backwoods, Paradox, and Moxham were either cut as new trails, or became snowmaking trails. Lower Sunway and Bear Cub were significantly widened when new lifts were added. Then Wild Air and 2B doubled in width, and they started hosting large competitions. All of these things significantly expanded their snowmaking footprint, but the snowmaking capacity is unchanged since 2018. Of course they are going to struggle to get to everything.

Belleayre had added to their snowmaking footprint, in the same timeframe, but not nearly as much as Gore has. Even though they can't pump as much water as Gore can, their GPM per snowmaking acre ratio is much higher, so they can easily get to every trail, and resurface it multiple times. If Gore wants to open more of the mountain earlier, and be able to resurface regularly, then they need another snowmaking capacity upgrade. It's that simple.

As for the lift schedule, let's stop exaggerating. The ski bowl has been open Thursday-Sunday since January 20th. That's not even halfway through the season, much less 2/3rds through like you think. All other mountain areas have been open daily since they opened for the season, including both Burnt Ridge and High Peaks. That wasn't the case for many years. They've also been running both the gondola and AE2 daily, except for the 2 weeks the gondola was closed, and a few days when they were making snow on Showcase. That also wasn't always the case. It used to be they only ran the gondola most weekdays.

If a high speed lift makes the ski bowl more popular, then I'm all for it. It will put pressure on them to open it earlier in the season. The slow triple keeps a lot of people away from it now. When Backwoods was added, it significantly increased the number of people lapping Burnt Ridge, but had no noticeable impact on the ski bowl itself, even though it was added mainly as a connector to the ski bowl.

 

[Capdistski]

Is it true new ski bowl lift will go high enough to allow skiers to drop down to North chair? That might be more significant than Backwoods in terms of tying Bowl to main mountain earlier in the season. But getting back to bowl would still require both Cedars and Backwoods to be open (assuming not enough natural for Pipeline, and while I really like the workout, Pipeline will never attract the average Gore skier anyway.)