Cannon, NH: 01/09/05

[riverc0il]

the improvement at cannon since the last time i skied there a few weeks back was amazing. tram ran for the first time this season on saturday, i wasn't expecting much to be honest but found goods to be sampled on most of the front face.

avalanche was half groomed, half man-made powder. the man-made powder was fantastic being just solid enough to be edgable, yet still soft and fluffy-like. i kept shaking my head at people scraping down the center of the trail as i busted through a few inches of man made fresh! same story on zoomer with huge scraped whales down the center attracting the park folks going big, sweet soft snow on skiers left was butter and bumps on skiers right were fantastic but thin cover. rocket skier's right had nice bumps early, a little skied off later. gary's had a race but had ugly scraped bumps skiers right that would be just right with some fresh. props to cannon for having bumps/non-groomed on the side of every open front face trail! i like it! though the cross cut from the top of the zoomer chair was roped after 10 or so which made it a pain to get to avalanche, i went through before it was roped and while paulie's is pretty thin, you could easily get through the weeds

everything else got scraped up pretty bad by mid-day. mid-mountain was standard with the mid-mountain trails skiing fantastic in the AM but getting scraped down to the cat tracks by noon. bypass opened and skied the best i have ever seen it and paulie's extension served up some man made pow on skiers right.

upper mountain was complete and total crap. tramway injured at least two people, one i saw go down and not get back up then i over heard another injury report in the lodge. upper cannon was junk, just stayed on the pushed off snow on the side of the trails (why does everyone rave about upper cannon? the trail design is flawless for classic new england, but the way most people ski the trail by skidding the corners creates serious issues after only 9 or 10am. this would be a killer trail if it wasn't groomed, seriously. groom vista or something, but having upper cannon and taft off the top be natural would be a dream come true.). i took the cannonball quad up to ski profile, but it was so scraped down to the cat tracks, i just took the least of the tree evils, tramway, back down.

all and all, i lot of coverage and i lot more opened than i had hoped. the man made natural was sweet but will be gone without more natural. i am so sick of the sound of scraping, i made a request to mother nature to send some snow our way. my request was not replied to, but i'm in good with the mother and expect she'll get on it ASAP.

guns were on skylight and upper ravine, expect them for next weekend i would guess. can't wait till snow making trails are at 100% and cannon can start touching stuff up. even lower cannon was scraped, uh! then we just need one big dump to open everything except tramline and kinsman. so close, so close!

pics to follow after the editing job...

 

[joegm]

i'd really like to know how much of an outlay it was for cannon to cut that tramline trail... assuming it was somewhat substantial, it would seem that what ever it was , it could have been put to better use for snowmaking... in a few years, i'd love to see the % of time that trail will have been open during a five year sample... i'll post the early line over / under total at 15% :roll:... and i'm gonna take the under :wink:

 

[riverc0il]

well, seeing as the line was already there for the tram, i don't think it was a huge expense. they didn't exactly have to clear out 2000 vertical feet of trees. though i'm sure they did sink a decent chunk of money into terra forming the line, i doubt it would have bought them much more snow making capacity. they have the gear and they definitely have the water, i think it might be electricity and labor costs that keep the snowmaking production in check. i too would love to see more snow making power earlier in the season; but when you compare cannon to other areas in NH, they are fairly on par for production this season i think.

 

[salida]

they touched up the trail this year with some sort of heavy equipment, pulling some of the bigger obstacles out... must have been trying to open it more often, still I would be suprised to see it open for more than a week this year if at all

 

[riverc0il]

while riding the tram, i noticed lots of stacks of blow down and small size trees under really large rocks. wasn't sure if that was done this year, but will probably maximize fill in and reduce the number of drops, or at least reduce their size slightly. while it may not officially open often, it's nice to see a ski area put a foot forward at legit extreme terrain in bounds in the east. there really isn't much of it.

 

[riverc0il]

pics from saturday:

 

[Anonymous]

It took three guys one summer to cut kinsman the first time, and that was way more of an undertaking than tramline although the AT was already there. You can't even compare clearing out tramline to increasing snowmaking. Cannons snowmaking is restricted by air pressure. They have 5 air compressors 3 of which are over 30 years old. They bought a new one a few years ago and even that thing malfunctions. Anyway at full capacity figure they can blow snow on two trails with that amount of air. Remember snowmaking is just pressurized air and water. Loon can probably afford plenty of air but doesnt have any water. Cannon is vice versa.


A new air compressor would cost at least half a million dollars. It didn't cost half a million to clear tramline...

 

[Lftgly]

Tred, you hit the nail on the head. Plentiful water supply, but sometimes i think all the air is in Billy's head.

Steve, you're right, summer crew did a great job brushing, and trying to fill the holes between rocks on Tramline. It had to be cleared 2 years ago anyway, you can't let the cars scrape over treetops. It was a good use of 'sweat equity' to clear it well enough to ski, and a welcome nod to the experts for Billy and Ski Patrol to open it after a 60+ year ban, (not to mention Billy's 6 years trying to dumb-down "a skiers mountain" and turn it into a poor-man's Loon. Cannon's biggest asset is it's terrain, (oh yeah, and their water supply is high on the list). Did openning the new beginner-intermediate area "moose alley" chair get press in SKI and SKIING? No, the Tramline experts trail gets the press.

Cannon may not have the dough for capital improvements, but they have enough people on the park payroll to accomplish trail and glade improvements. This summer they revisited Kinsman and brushed it out really well, maybe enough for this lean year. The dozer work this summer also delivered a big-bang-for-the-buck.

Nice post Steve, I missed it last week.