We’ve officially been open now for a little over a week. What a rollercoaster it’s been. After delaying our opening a couple times due to warm temps in the base, we finally got the window to get enough snowmaking on trails for Opening Day. That first day of the season is always one of my favorites. When you work in the industry year-round, it sort of becomes an unofficial holiday, full of all the same positive vibes of some of the other big dogs like Thanksgiving or July 4th. It was great to hand out hats and breakfast sandwiches to so many of you, and I’m always impressed by the dedication of the folks who get there early for first chair. If you didn’t know, we’ve started giving our Opening Day banner out to those first in line to bring home with them. You know, in case you need a little incentive to show up earlier next time.
The Story So Far
So we opened Gate House, and with it several trails. We began making snow over on Snowball and Spring Fling, but as you’ve likely seen on our social media, we then ran into another speed bump. While the temps were OK for snowmaking, we had officially run out of water in our Lincoln Peak snowmaking pond. Well, “run out” might seem a little confusing since there was still water in the actual pond, but we had essentially withdrawn as much water from the pond as we are able to. Even more unfortunate was the fact that the Mad River, the main source of water for that pond (others being ground water recharge and some small streams) was also quite low and below the level where we are allowed to withdraw from it based on restrictions with the state. The drought that had lasted most of summer and through the fall had left these water sources at pretty low levels.
Luckily we were able to open up all of the natural terrain off of Gate House on Saturday, as well as hiking access up on North Lynx. After evaluating additional terrain, we made the decision not to open up natural trails on Valley House or Super Bravo. For anyone who skied the Gate House natural the last several days and saw the condition it was in by the end of the weekend, you might understand why patrol didn’t feel comfortable opening steeper, and in many areas rockier, terrain yet.
Recharge
On Wednesday we received rain all through the day and into the night, eventually turning back to snow and netting us another 1-2″. While you never wish for rain in the ski industry, it did have the silver lining of really helping get our pond refilled. We were even able to start withdrawing from the Mad River again.
So the guns went back on, heavily focused on Snowball, Spring Fling, First Time, and the base area.
Now comes to the good news…
Thanks to the hard work of the snowmaking team and the much needed rain, we’re set to open Super Bravo tomorrow for experts only. There will not be a groomed way down as we’ll have both Snowball and Spring Fling open ungroomed and under the guns. We’re also planning to drop ropes on some of the natural terrain including Lixi’s Twist, Moonshine, and The Mall. Tomorrow could be shaping up to be one of the better days yet. And with that rain creating a bit of a zipper crust, it might even get a bit better as it gets skied in.
Plus, we’ll be opening the Welcome Mat along with First Time to help expand our beginner terrain.
Patrol will be out assessing any and all Bravo/Valley House terrain for more potential openings, though we will continue to avoid the work road accessing Heaven’s Gate and beyond. That includes trails like Gondolier, parts of Lower Jester, and Heaven’s Gate Traverse.
Speaking of Heaven’s Gate, we’ve overcome a major milestone by passing our Acceptance Test earlier this week. Next, Doppelmayr works through their final punch list of items before the lift gets inspected and we can get the guns going on Heaven’s Gate terrain and the trails needed to access the lift. We’re already beginning to move snowmaking operations towards Downspout. Once that piece gets connected and once we get Jester into place as well, we’re expecting to have that ready to go. We just need the weather to hold up. This could be right around the time we’ll be opening Mt. Ellen for the season but we’ll have a better idea sometime next week.
This hasn’t been the start of the season we had hoped for, and for that we apologize, but things are looking much brighter ahead. We’ll continue expanding terrain every chance we get, now let’s just cross our fingers for Mother Nature to keep helping out.
Are you participating in our vertical challenge yet? The Descent to Rise Above is our season-long challenge to rack up a BILLION vertical feet to raise $50,000 for mental wellness and resilience. We’ve already posted north of 3 million vertical feet since opening last week…and that’s with just one lift spinning. As we continue to expand terrain we would love your help contributing even more. Simply open your Sugarbush or Ikon app before your first run, tap on Tracking and every turn you make will count to getting us closer to skiing and riding a BILLION vertical feet in a single season.
Plus don’t forget, The Wall of Fame, where we’ll be inducting Win Smith, and SugarBash featuring the Dave Grippo Funk Band are both tomorrow night. Valley Ski & Ride Week starts Monday. Then we rapidly enter into a plethora of events around the holidays. We can’t wait to celebrate with you.
See you on the mountain.