Feburary Showers bring March Powder?
The first half of February has been uncharacteristically warm here at Snowriver. Only a few inches of snow have fallen so far this month, but despite the warmer temps we're still holding onto a solid two feet of base across the mountains. The skiing has been fantastic with sunny skies and plenty of corduroy to carve up. If you haven't made it up to see us yet this season, the next couple of months are looking prime. We have ski-in/ski-out lodging available on most weekends for the rest of the season, with great specials in place to make your ski vacation even more affordable.
Last night's rain was less than desirable and unfortunately led us to close the ski area for the day (2/15/2023). Without ample time for the snow to drain out and set up again, we didn't want to send our machines out to lock in that moisture. Giving the snowpack the day off will provide for better conditions upon reopening on Thursday for the holiday weekend. Mother nature has already switched over to heavy lake effect snow as of 9:00am this morning and has the hill looking fresher already.
Mogul Making
With the lack of fresh snow over the past couple of weeks, some of our ungroomed trails haven't been quite as fun to ski. Trails like Buffalo, Nimbus, and Steiger's Mill didn't bump up quite as much as I'd hoped they would with skier traffic alone. From the beginning, our intent has been to create a diverse ski experience across both mountains with long, smooth cruisers, tree skiing, terrain parks, race courses, and ungroomed trails for powder play. This week, we started the process of building machine-made moguls on select runs to elevate the experience on those ungroomed trails through the rest of the season.
Building moguls is a funny concept. We take the groomer, designed specifically to get rid of moguls, and use it to push piles of snow up to resemble moguls, then try to smooth them out as little as possible with the tiller to create a more dynamic, skiable surface. The process is very time-consuming and takes quite a few hours to bump up half of a trail the length of Alpenglow. While we do our best to make them like the skiers do, they never come out quite as perfect, so we need the help of all of our guests to "ski them in." With the snow forecast for the next few days, it will be perfect timing to do just that. With any luck, we'll have a few fun bump runs to enjoy throughout the spring. It's hard to beat slush bumps in the sun!
New Pedestrian Zone
If you've visited Jackson Creek summit within the last week, you've noticed a few changes to the arrival experience at the mountain. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, we built new outdoor ticket windows this fall with the goal of reducing congestion inside the chalet. It took us a while to get the bugs worked out in the ticket window. We had been using them as overflow for a few weekends to learn a bit more about how they would change the daily flow of guests and what we needed to do to be ready to use them as our primary point of sale. With that behind us, this last weekend we transitioned to using the ticket windows full-time. Moving the line outside has greatly improved the flow inside the chalet during busy mornings. Whoohoo! The guest service counter inside the chalet will now be used only to print season passes, provide general assistance and answer guest questions.
In order to accommodate the lines outside we have redesignated the former dropoff lane as a pedestrian zone, and the first row of parking as pick-up/drop-off only. We'll look to enhance the area with additional ski racks, benches, and landscaping in future seasons, but we've been happy with the new functionality of that space. Be sure to check out the awesome barricades our building maintenance team built out of old rental skis. Always neat to see the creativity of the team.
Dudley's Operating Days
When we reopened Dudley's there was some miscommunication on our team about the operating days and times. In my previous blog post, I stated that Dudley's would operate every day of the week. After one week of operation and having the opportunity to review the business levels during our weekday evenings we are reverting to what the original intent was. We will continue to operate Dudley's on Friday and Saturday nights only, for the remainder of the season. Sunday-Thursday, the new lobby bar will be open along with the Legacy restaurant to provide refreshments during the evening hours.