Cannon thread con't

joegm

joegm

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i put in a new thread so it would load quciker <BR>frank, i agree with you about t bars.. i think t bars are killer....i wish more areas had em... but like we have been discussing , the type of skiers who drive the economy probably would not put up with them... don't get me wrong it's nice sitting down... but t bars are so quick and i would guess, cheap.. it's a shame they are not used more in certain spots in areas for expert terrain... a great example is the t bar at burke, vt... that bar gets you almost , i think 85% of the vert at burke in 1/2 the time of the quad... yet it is not run every day for lack of usage or just when river and his former brethren are out.... or , since it's burke, for lack of skiers probably too... that's a shame up there in burke cause that's a great hill when that t bar is running, good steep race line on warren's and nice lower expert bump lines when conditions are good...always a good place to see solid skiers with good technique... even if they are all in tight suits ( don't worry river, your coming up next up next :-) ) ... when it's not running though, that 17 minute quad ride is tough to take ... the terrain is not as rad as m.rg , in my opinion, so that makes it tougher to take... can cat, any comments on t bars and practicality for expert access <BR> river, what i meant was the race runs get fixed at the end of the day...i did not mean fixed during the race... believe me river i respect racers a lot... but i really think bump skiing on a non pro, recreational level, is harder... like the cat man pointed out.. you just don't see people skiing bumps... that's why a lot of places are lacking bumps.. the boys in eastern canada seem to have more options as far as intermediate bumps. i also must disagree about access and time on snow... look at tenny and thier plan to open monday through friday on oct 1st for only alpine racing teams ... they plan to spin lifts from 6am till 6pm .. 12 hours a day 5 days a week for racing.... loon mountain shuts down 1 whole run and at least parts of 2 runs at least 3 days a week during jan and feb ... no public access at all... i think they shut down the bump run under the triple 3 times a year for a comp. ( although i have to give it up to loon on the blue bump run under the quad... it's killer for the intermediate bumper, but it gets trashed real easy with all the loonatics ... now if they would just blow snow on it and fix it every now and then... it would be heaven ) but like can cat pointed out to me... it's all about the benjamins... and he is right.. they pay for it.. the one thing that does bug me about racers ( not all racers mind you, and i got a feeling you were never one of these guys river ) ) is that i think they treat every run they are on like it is a comp race run... with no regard for anyone else... i have seen too many people in the tight suits going way to fast on blue runs that are loaded with public skiers .. although the way the speed demons were going you would never know it...for some racers i think the concept of the person in front having the right of way ( which is clearly the accepted norms in skiing ) is one that they just do not acknowledge... again it's not all racers... i find it's the middle to upper intermediates who think they are bode miller and who think that because i am in front of them burning short mogul turns and then decided to mix it up and go wide or because i'm doing some drill in the middle of speedracers line that he clearly has the right to becasue he is a racer and i'm just some pain in the ass screwing up his line, that he can get pissed off... like i said it's not all racers... but the percentage of nit wits who put the public in danger is much higher, in my opinion than bumpers , who generally, if they are skiing out of control, are only going to ruin themselves ( see me 3-19-2003 loon mtn 3:35pm attempting a simple 360 in the bumps with only 300 degrees of rotation.. how's that for a new school bump air... i think there is a new name for that jump... "joethejackass"... moseley was working on it out a blackcomb this summer... he might try it if he comes back in 2006!!!!! ) and not little mary 5 yr old in her wedge turns... iv'e been hit 5 times in my 8 years of skiing... 3 by racers in suits, 1 by a novice recreational skier and 1 by a snowboarder...every time i was in front....and what's up with the "i have no use for competition quality bump run " line?... that's like me saying i have no use for comp quality g.s course... of course i don't... i don't race!!!! bumpers should have the same ( within reason ) quality snow conditions to match their type of skiing as racers are alloted!!! i don't know if cannon salts thier race courses during the height of race season, but you can be sure they are groomed to perfection nightly. <BR> can cat, your the man !!!! i was pushing the groomer aspect of the bump runs because i assumed it was cheaper than the snowmaking angle... i figured the only place that would dedicate that snowmaking resource to maintain moguls would be K MART....but it's obvious u know what you are talking about... i'll keep buggin nat... and you have to intorduce me to the guy flats groomer... my buddy gil and i will have to have a talk with this boy!!!!! <BR>p.s... k marts mid week pass is $299 till 8-18 if anyone cares
 
Hey Joegm, this is what we would need, for surface lifts ;) <BR> <BR><IMG SRC="http://www.firsttracksonline.com/discus2/messages/8/2690.jpg" ALT="Slingshot"> <BR> <BR>I wonder why there is only some of them at Portillo, Chile. <BR> <BR>What I like in the t-bars is often the fact that the other skiers don't like that ! hehehe. So it's the best way to preserve an incredible terrain, although I also prefer a lot to sit in a chair. (particularly true when I did my 30 000' vertical in a day with only t-bars !! especially as the 2nd t-bar of Mt Shefford, which was the only one open, is REALLY tough to take, with the steep upper part ouch.) <BR> <BR>Of course, I understand that the surface lifts don't attract the tourists, but for some coop ski areas which just have powder junkies for clients, it should be correct, I think, as it's something extremely cheap (may be not the slingshots ... don't know) to buy and to operate... and the junkies don't care for the lifts. A double chairlift could also be possible for a ski area in the kind, but not above that. One of my life target is to operate a ±private ski area in the kind, in the future (yes, I know... I'm still very young and naïve. hehehe) A ski area just for the real die-hards ... and OK... their families. <BR> <BR>About Burke, is it really 17 minutes to go up ?? I thought it was 11-12 maximum. But it's true it looked like 17 minutes, at 0 degrees, on FTO day last january ! It was sad that the poma was closed that day, cause you can reach most of the terrain with this one. I guess it's not easy, when you arrive at the curve, cause it's a serious one ! I wonder if it's the only remaining poma with a curve in the east. <BR> <BR>About racers, I think it depends of the mountains too. The worst place I ever seen is the "Kamikazee" of Owl's Head, which is the main liftline and a black run with 3 serious pitchs on 1400' high. The ski competition team ski at 50-60mph there, missing to cause many accidents to the many normal skiers also loving that trail. I can't believe there was no deads in the last year in that trail. <BR> <BR>You're not lucky if you have been hit 5 times in 8 years...... I got hit for the 1st time this year... while I was stopped to fix one boot, near the top of a mountain. I just don't understand why a kid of like 8-9 years, which looked experimented skied right on me, like if it was voluntary. Even though it was a kid, it seemed so voluntary that I was a little bit out of me. <BR> <BR>Anyway, good luck in your blue mogul runs fight !!
 
Yup, The racer's get hill time at a lot of mountains, but they pay for it. If you want to dish over some cash, I think I can get you your own bump run once a week. <BR> <BR>As for the T bars... The business cliamate of the ski industry is wacked. There is very little growth at all. The basic premise has been to attract someone else's customer away with bigger, better, and faster. This has been led by the mountains with lots of terrain for expansion and lots of flats for real estate. Nothing gets attention more than "20 new trails" blah, blah, blah, and nothing feeds off attention like real estate sales. That's where the big cash is in the ski industry. The mountain is merely a reason to buy the property. A T-bar lift is NOT an attention getter to the people buying the property, so it is better to put in a quad just for the property sales it generates. Bretton woods is installing a 4th HSDQ. They don't need one volume wise, but it sells condos. For mountains without the property, there is little cash. Look at Sunapee. Okemo dropped a mint on Sunapee. There is no way they can recoup that outlay on ticket sales. That's why they are trying to get the approval to drop a lift and a trail to some private land that can be developed. Good?/Bad? that's for a different post. Without that cash though, there wouldn't be the explosion of improvements. When you are restricted to ticket sales as your income, improvements are few and far between, so when you do pay for a lift, you put one in that covers the widest possible range of needs. Cannon took out a T-bar and a double to put in the quad. Saved on operational costs that way, increased capacity and kept up with the Joneses. A T-bar just isn't worth the outlay. I think it is a good way to access expert terrain, but again the people who would appreciate it don't pay the bills. <BR> <BR>Racers? They're not that bad. The mentality that you speak of is a common trait in young people who are part of a group that uses a facility regularly. It is seen alot in ski race clubs. They figure they own the mountain and are better than the general public. But just to piss you off a little...you owe the bump lines that do form to their regularly spaced turns in soft snow. Joe Skidded Turn isn't doing it! But you see the same attitude in people who ski at the same mountain every weekend even if they don't race. Every group has their a$$holes! I've even been cut off in the bumps! By a BUMP skiier!! It wasn't you Joegm was it? <BR> <BR>As to the post regarding beg/int trails in the previous thread, Yeah, Cannon is hurting there. That is why the original Mittersill expanion was so desireable despite the hit the OB skiers would take - loosing their playground and all. A HSDQ to just below the summit opened up three or four intermediate routes that were the same length as the ones on the main mountain. That would have helped to ease the traffic on the mid mountain trails we see now. Losing the land swap terrain leaves the trails half the length and the layout isn't as well suited to the intermediate. The increase of blue and green terrain would leave the expert trails to be more challenging. The best example is Upper Hard. When it is bumped, it is a black. Goomed it is a blue. Another blue is needed from the top, so I say cut some new blacks further out and groom Upper Hard as a blue route down. Then keep the new blacks bumped. Then we all win. This type of shuffling won't help the front five much but they are better suited to 1/2 and 1/2 anyway. Incedentally, an expansion onto Mittersill proper would access private developable land and the cash that goes with it. Some sort of arrangement with the owners would be needed but I have seen arrangements that could work.
 
Cancat : Of course, when we talk of t-bars, it's not for ski areas like Cannon. Although, it's the chairlift investments that sunked the ski areas in Quebec. Now, most of the ski areas are just profitable on the very very good snow years. There is just few areas that are always profitable, like Tremblant, St-Sauveur, Bromont. If the HSQ haven't been invented, we would now see many more t-bars and really better profitability in the ski areas. Why ? Simply cause they wouldn't have to do millions of investments in chairlifts... and in snowmaking which have a huge cost, especially in Quebec where the electricity rates for the ski areas are 3x higher than for normal companies. With less chairlifts, they just would have to do a little bit of snowmaking to operate. Also, they would be able to offer some quite less high rates and the sport would be more popular cause it's not everyone that can pay 30-60$ by person for a ski day... and many other ones can't do that often. All the accumlated deficits of the ski areas here are due to combination with huge investments in chairlifts and few bad snow years. Many ski areas will close because of that, so it may go up a mountain fast, but it will kill most of the ski areas at almost short term. It's already began. We had about 115 ski areas here in the 1970s and 108 in 1990. There is 85 now and it's decreasing each year. The last ski area that opened in Quebec is Mt Restigouche, in Gaspesia, 10 years ago. The last one in the Montreal region was... hum... Val Saint-Côme, in 1979. 25 years without a single new ski area in a zone of 4 millions of potential skiers / riders... I think it's obvious there is a problem and the problem is the huge costs of the lift investments of course, cause a silly developper found the idea of building some HSDQ. Ok, it's fun now to climb fastly a mountain (although HSQ have less uphill capacity than fixed grip quads (2000 against 2400 skiers per hour) and it means that it's less long to arrive on top, but you wait damn more as soon as there is a crowd and with ±20 minutes of waiting, it can become faster with a fixed grip quad than with a HSQ to arrive on top.) <BR> <BR>In Quebec, in 1988-89, we topped the 10.9 millions of ski-days. 2002-03 was a record year for many years with .... 6.9 millions skiers. <BR> <BR>And I must say that I have personally something against a particular fuckin quad development. Today, my nickname is Frankontour... but up to 5-6 years ago, it would have been something like Frankompetition. The "competition" was a classic extreme trail of Mt Olympia just beside a t-bar line (it's one of the trail looking the most like "Contour" that I've known so far). It was my holy trail. In 1998, they decided to build a quad chairlift on this side of the hill. I found it a great new to access to my trail with a quad. And when I went in the north the first time for skiing in fall 98 (nov 29 exactly, I will never forget that date), from the I-15, I almost fell unconscious, when I saw that they simply cut all the trees between my trail and the t-bar line, so it was now a huge groomed trail. Not only I boycott this mountain since that day and forever (even though it's where I began to ski), but I talk in bad of this ski area since 5 years without stopping. I think they probably lost a good amount of clients (or potential clients) because of me. It's only a tiny revenge, but I will continue the most I can as long as I will breath. <BR> <BR>Since that time, I'm just FOR the developments in the ski areas where I don't have some holy trails. It's why I was so scared about the new lift at Orford (and I'm still scared, but the game is not lost.)
 
QUOTE and what's up with the "i have no use for competition quality bump run " line? /QUOTE <BR> <BR>you mis-quoted the exact words i wrote despite the quotes you used. EXACT quote as follows: <BR> <BR>"although, you raise an interesting point in that you don't see competition bump lines any where. but there's no demand for that, even i really don't care about a competition styled bump line. " <BR> <BR>i NEVER said YOU (or anyone else for that matter) doesn't have a use for one. i stated that there probably is not enough demand for one to be set at most ski areas and it's not a high priority in my book, despite the fact that i am a bumps skier. it takes a lot of time and labor and money to set a competition quality bump run. unless a resort in the east holds a bump comp, i can't imagine that the resort would deem it worth it. i think it would be worth it at Ski Area Utopia, but ski areas just can't justify the expense. they can barely afford to let runs like zoomer bump up, let alone dedicate a trail to a comp bumper. <BR> <BR>regarding tenney's race program, those are open to select ski TEAMS (not individuals mind you) willing to pay big bucks. of the hundreds of ski teams in new england, probably only the top and elite teams will get this gate time. when a ski area holds a race, racers only get TWO timed runs (if they don't DSQ or DNF the first). that's hardly practice time in the gates. individuals not with a team have almost NO options short of Nastar for training. most ski teams don't have much practice time except for the top and elite teams, and they come at HIGH costs. you're debating an issue that you have no fist hand experience or knowledge with someone who has six years experience and has considered joining the masters. <BR> <BR>as a bump skier and former racer, i've improved my bump skiing 100% faster than i improved as a racer because i can practice bumps almost everywhere i ski. when racing, it was only on select days for not much time. <BR> <BR>sorry to hear about your experiences with rude racers. the reason they ski fast on the groomers is cause that's usually the best place to practice cause gate time is hard to get. not an excuse though, but that's the reason. also, can cat is very right about "home mountain." i ski a LOT more bolder at cannon than other areas, conscious or not. <BR> <BR>ffwi, i've seen snow chunks and nuggets and crap conditions on garys and rocket which are cannon's race trails (on a day when i was racing no less!). i've seen bumps on both too. they don't always treat those trails perfectly. all the trails get the same style grooming from what i've witnessed. cannon cators to their race program, but they don't run the mountain. <BR> <BR>FRANK! FTO day at burke was freezing indeed! the quad definitely felt like 17 min, but it is surely less than that. i've never ridden that poma, but it's on my to do list. <BR> <BR>can cat, front five are indeed perfect for half and half. i just thought of this: those trails are HUGE width wise. they really could all be two seperate trails if the chain saws didn't cut up so much wood! indeed, they really should all be treated like two seperate trails.
 
Hummm... I think I will just give a little info for Burke........ Unfortunately, on my day summary, I just noted that there was 22 towers and 164 chairs, on the quad, but not the lenght of the ride. I'm sure it wasn't over 12-13 minutes. It's almost impossible for that lenght anyway to pass over that. The fixed grip quad at Le Massif du Sud have 205 chairs and about 30 towers and just takes 11 minutes according to my summary of my visit in march 2002. It is a little bit faster than the one of Burke, though, but it's far from 17 minutes at Burke, I can ensure you !
 
i've been to burke every year at least once for the past 5 years...i've timed it every year at least once also... it's has never been less that 16 and 1/2 minutes... maybe i was there on days when it was running slow
 
"One of my life target is to operate a ±private ski area in the kind, in the future (yes, I know... I'm still very young and naive. hehehe) A ski area just for the real die-hards ... and OK... their families." <BR> <BR>I assume you've heard of <A HREF="http://silvertonmountain.com" TARGET="_top">http://silvertonmountain.com</A>. With the 2004 NASJA meeting being in Telluride, I hope to visit and report on Silverton during the first half of that week. <BR> <BR>FYI, Silverton's chairlift was an old double purchased from Mammoth, which had replaced it with a HSQ. There are other examples. Castle Mountain doubled its vertical and tripled its terrain by buying a double from Sunshine, which was replacing its peak chair with a HSQ. And Red Mt.'s Silverlode and Motherlode chairs were the original triples from Blackcomb. <BR> <BR>There are a couple of areas that use surface lifts to access their expert terrain: Crested Butte and Lake Louise. I have been very surprised that the lift lines on Louise's Summit Poma are not longer. The North Face poma at Crested Butte does get backed up sometimes. Both of these areas are low in snowfall, so it's probably a good idea to keep skier density down to preserve coverage and surface on the steep terrain.
 
Joe, were you at Burke on the FTO day last year ? <BR> <BR>I can't believe that it was long like that. I wouldn't have survived to that, with 0F of weather ! lol <BR> <BR>Tony, Silverton ? No, I didn't know this ski area before. I looked a little bit the website and it looks to be interesting. It looks to be a little bit like I would like to build, but I must say that QC mountains are a """""little bit""""" different than the ones in Colorado. <BR> <BR>My idea of having a ski area like that comes from when I was 12-13 years old, when I discovered the trails like "Competition" at Olympia, "Chiquita & Abrupte" at Garceau (and many other wild narrow bumped trails that are ³£¢¬¤ groomed today and many of them widened. <BR> <BR>Good explanation for Lake Louise and Crested Butte and as you know, it's even worst in Quebec, so it would be important too, but the mountains are not enough big and every skiable spots are used a lot. <BR> <BR>About the recycled chairlifts, I can tell you the 1st HSQ in the world is actually at Owl's Head mountain, Quebec, they moved it from Breckenridge to Owl's Head, 3-4 years ago, to replace the orange chair. They also bought a new HSQ this year, coming from Blue Mountain ON, I think. And last year, they also added a quad from somewhere else. They're really the kings of recycling chairlifts ;)
 
I was Just thinking...(I know, everybody duck.) <BR> <BR>What if we put a nice double chair "castlerock style" in the Hardscrabble Drainage. Hmmm... <BR> <BR><IMG SRC="http://www.firsttracksonline.com/discus2/messages/8/2696.jpg" ALT="Hardscrabble drainage"> <BR> <BR>1200' of experts only.
 
answer to cancat : hmmmmmm <IMG SRC="http://www.firsttracksonline.com/discus2/clipart/happy.gif" ALT=":)"><IMG SRC="http://www.firsttracksonline.com/discus2/clipart/happy.gif" ALT=":)"><IMG SRC="http://www.firsttracksonline.com/discus2/clipart/happy.gif" ALT=":)">
 
Don't need to spend big bucks and run up our ticket prices with another chair. Just get a few Cannon employees "on the clock" to thin those glades a little and make 'em "official". I've had some very nice runs in there in the past, but it's been getting a little too thick lately, since the freelancers have applied their talents elsewhere. <BR> <BR>But you may be clairvoyant; without the landswap, a new chair there is the closest they can come to developing that side, and stay "in bounds" of the F.N.State Park.
 
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