Larchmont

With "something" as base and a night with a low of 19, they can keep open if they really want it... But it won't be wide or deep or good.

The lights are on timers. Depending on the mountain ops situation they'll leave lights on until 7:00, turn particular trails on, or turn off lights around midnight - typically that's late enough for snowmaking to be fully fired up. They leave lights on while there's limited skiable terrain because often those trails get checked on foot, and often trails will be left on even if only a couple snowguns are active over that way - there's a fan gun at the top of Challenge, for example, so to light up that one gun Challenge lights have to be on. I'm sure there are efficiencies they could find, but 9,750 HP of air compressor makes them look like a rounding error.

If they manage to go from dirt to selling tickets in eight hours I'll eat a glove. They have the firepower in the pump room - seriously, they could make Challenge look like Superstar - but they really don't have the right snowguns or the 20 person per shift snowmaking crew to make it happen. The automatic low energy towers are miracles but they spread that firepower out across six or eight trails at once.

They can kind of push up to a ~30 wet bulb on certain guns. Production isn't great, obviously, but it is mostly frozen when it lands. That's usually an "anything to save this already open trail" move and not able to go from dirt to skiable...

The Paradise+Finally Here, Midway+Lower Main Street, Burma Road, and Vista+Easy Out, with runout to the lifts, is what they're able to start up at 27 degrees on the first day. Basically two trails off each peak. Paradise is the weak link, every other trail on that list has at least as much firepower as Burma does. Middle Paradise might get stripped to connect Freeballing if they're really pushing things.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1670176350074686?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v Twenty six fans and seventy-something new towers. I figure that's Paradise, Came Soonish, Home Stretch, Shuttle, Lower Main Street, Midway, Come Around, Easy Out, Vista, Burma as their opening day ambitions. And if they keep upgrading like they have been, they have a legitimate path to add Lazy Mile and Tuts Lane or Dreamweaver to that opening day map. If every trail at Blue gets swapped to those low energy towers or fans, they could in theory run the whole mountain at once. And management has apparently figured that out.

Per their Stories on FB, Comet is still down and they don't know if it'll be back by this weekend. They said there was "extensive damage". But it's all good, Tubing Hill 1 has something like 15 brand new TechnoAlpin fan towers so we can all enjoy that this winter.

And now they've lost the Comet for the biking weekend thanks to a lightning strike.

Well. Blue just posted about an absolute crapload of new fan guns on their FB. Twenty-odd new fans is a big deal.

Scrapped, as of 2017 at the latest.

I'm making a point not to refer to Freeballing by its official trail name because the actual name is stupid.

If Home Stretch isn't running they're either not cold enough or they found a leak - Burma can hook into the summit pump, so can Freebird, etc.

The groomer shed is close to Vista. If they don't get a snowy path out of the barn, they'll track mud on the snow and they'll wear out their tracks a lot faster. Besides, Burma takes literally two Paradise guns worth of air to run. Vista takes no air. Easy Out is the one I'm suspicious of - I'd hold off on that if it were me. But Burma and Vista are essentially free, and they need to start early in case December sucks and they need the depth.

Friend of a friend says I'm wrong and Vista, Easy Out, and Burma are on the menu for breakfast. Paradise, Freefall, Shuttle, Home Stretch too. I don't know what they actually got to so far.

Early season they can run Ski School on Frontier Airlines - I mean Alley - if they need to and allocate the resources there.

If somebody drives past, I'd be really curious to see which trails if any besides Vista got attention.

I genuinely don't think they can open Easy Out, they need to move big equipment to the summit.

Looks like Shuttle's been completely rehabbed with new guns and grading.

I'm fine with the Root we already have.

They've definitely got the ability to fire Paradise. Unfortunately there's less firepower on Paradise than on Main Street, and Paradise is wider. Not that they can't get there, but it might take a bit more time than we're used to. I'd like to see a new opening day route happen just for the novelty if nothing else.

Those are also not accounting for humidity - you pick up hopefully a degree or two when you convert to wetbulb. Unfortunately it's trended warmer since I posted optimistically, but it's at least still cold enough for some testing.

Camelback is also automating Nile Mile with new HKD equipment, I hear.

Per Facebook, the Summit terminal is now on site but not yet lifted onto the supports.

Snowmaking temps on the 13th. They've fired up earlier than that before. I wonder if they'll get the haul rope up by then? And I don't think Camelback is quite done with the Nile Mile automation/HKD upgrade yet. Kind of six to one, half dozen the other.