Royal Mountain Conditions

[Harvey]

Anyone ski Royal, forum members or lurkers (join!) tell me what you know! How to ski it, where to go when there is new snow. Trees?

Someone posted a comment in my last Gore piece, made me curious.

 

[Tjf1967]

If the powder gets deep I am not certain you could go down it without pushing. It would be fun on an old wooden toboggan with a bunch of friends and a 30 pack.

 

[Harvey]

I want to establish a metric. Maybe call it "snow and terrain rating" or something.

A number of inches from one to 24 or maybe 30.

Each mountain could be assigned a number that correlates directly to the most new snow* it can handle and still be fun to ski.

?

 

[Jim]

Royal was in surprisingly good shape today, given the recent rain followed by the current cold. There were some hard pack and chunks in a few spots mostly on Prince and the terrain park, Knight and Queen were pretty good with a few more slick spots and Royal was skiing great. There's been a good amount of snow made on Challenge, but not enough to push around to open it up quite yet. People were going in the woods but I'll hold off on that until the cover is better.

Things should all soften up nicely with the warmup later in the week. There shouldn't be any trouble with coverage on the trails opened so far.

 

[Jim]

Monday was nice, but today was very good. Some freshly-made snow over most of the mountain and a few days of groooming and skier traffic have produced pleasant packed powder conditions almost everywhere. Today was also the season debut of Challenge, which was left ungroomed with some very large whales. About the top 3/4 of it skied really nicely. The snow was made when it was very cold, so it was a nice surface most of the way down, but the bottom portion was a little chunky. All the main trails are now open except the T-Bar Line, Captain Jack's, and Doc's Drop. I ventured just a bit into Princess Woods but popped back out pretty quickly - not quite enough natural snow right now. The woods between Knight and Prince just below Princess Woods were much better - enough of the snow from the guns on Prince and Knight found its way in there to give some solid cover. I won't explore too much more off the trails until we get some better natural snow.

 

[Jim]

Another nice day today. Lots of sun, packed powder on most of the mountain, becoming soft where it got some sun, especially on the practice slope, where I spent a good chunk of my day teaching. Challenge remains ungroomed but seems very popular in that state. I hope it remains like this as long as they can. I suppose after a rain/freeze there will be no choice but to groom it out. The big improvement for the day on Challenge was that the chunky bottom 1/4 was groomed out last night. Lift lines got long by Royal standards for a while. I waited 4 or 5 minutes for the B lift a couple times while crews were troubleshooting on the A lift. For those not familiar, they are parallel to each other, with A running to the top of Queen, and B running to the top of T-Bar Line/Royal. Once the A lift got going, waits were just a few chairs if anything.

I'm not planning to go up tomorrow, back on Saturday. Hope the rain holds off to get in a mostly dry day.

 

[MarzNC]

For those not familiar, they are parallel to each other, with A running to the top of Queen, and B running to the top of T-Bar Line/Royal. Once the A lift got going, waits were just a few chairs if anything.

Here's the trail map.

Does the C double run much slower than than A and B?

 

[Harvey]

Another nice day today.

Sometime this season would love to ski with you when the trees are in.

 

[Jim]

Does the C double run much slower than than A and B?

Yes, it runs on a slower speed. A carpet lift is coming soon (hopefully arriving within days) which might allow C to run a little faster. Not sure if that's the plan, though.

 

[MarzNC]

Yes, it runs on a slower speed. A carpet lift is coming soon (hopefully arriving within days) which might allow C to run a little faster. Not sure if that's the plan, though.

If you mean conveyor loading for the chairlift, in my experience the lift for beginners isn't run much faster. The advantage is that fewer people have a problem loading that requires really slowing down the lift or stopping it completely. My home hill, Massanutten added conveyor loading to the base quad that's been around for decades. Now on a busy weekend, that lift stops once or twice during a ride up. Used to be 4-5 times.