adrock

Just a little attempt to try and explain a few things. First off, it is impossible to make up for the lost revenue from the beginnig of the season. The vacationers that were coming for Christmas (who account for a LARGE portion of revenue) aren't here and they're not coming anymore this season. Every financial decision at a ski resort, just like any other business, is based on ROI- Return On Investment. If we were to light up the mountain now for three days and spend a hypothetical $15,000 on energy costs, that $15,000 would have to show some sort of monetary return , which at this point in the season is not likely to happen. Think of the snow on the ground as if it were money. If a ski resort closes April 1, which most in the Poconos do, and there is three feet of snow on every trail, that is basically money laying on the trail. An ideal situation would be to close April 1 and have all the snow melt on April 2, which means that you made the exact right amout of snow for the season. Some larger ski areas with large real estate holdings don't have to worry so much about earnings from ski resort operations because it is more of an amenity for their real estate owners. They make the bulk of their money from these real estate transactions. However, stand alone ski area like Shawnee and others, really have to watch operational costs and expeditures in order to stay alive. The only way to try and negate the affect of the early season lost revenue is to cut costs and watch expenses.

Here are a few pics from the new park....

Sorry that I have a typo in my post....Post was done at 2:30 AM after working since 8:00 AM the previous morning. But, if you are going to point out a mistake at least quote the mistake correctly....lol....I actually spelled it Saturady....not Saturaday....I will proofread better next time...Thank you for your feedback

The Bushkill Park will be open Saturady! The layout is as follows. Down Rail, Jump, Jump, Mailbox on hip, Flat down box, Up box - Double Staircase with flat down single barrel, flat down box, flat down rail- C-box, Down flat down rail, Step-up box, Flat down flat. The park should be completed Saturaday night. A couple more hits and rails to be put in. Check it out and let us know what you think...

Just wanted to let you know that the nextsnow search is on Sunday, not Saturday..

Bushkill will be open by this weekend.

The progression park was pretty jank the other day. For some reason all the features were located on the side of the trail, so you had to edge on the snow to end up flat on the features. Also that flat-down needs trashed or totally re worked. I had fun anyways though. ... Still better than CB's park The reason that we had to use the side of the trail is because our ski school will be using the other side of that trail for two hours on weeknights to teach lessons. We have a huge group lesson business and with the limited terrain open they will have to use that trail. I hope it didn't create too big of a problem. It's a little tough when you have people with different needs that you are trying to accomodate in a limited amount of space. Also, one of the problems we had in our park last year was people just riding down. We thought that by putting features on one side and leaving the other side open then people who were just "riding through" would stay out of the way of those that were using the features. As for the flat-down....it came out slightly out of level to the left. If this was what you were referring to it will be re-set in the next day or two. Thanks for the feedback.

We have been blowing in the Bushkill Park for around 48 hours now. We are going to continue to blow for the next two days and we will be building the park Wednesday and Thursday. Barring any major setbacks the park should be ready by Friday. We are not going to build the pipe yet. Once we get some more terrain open we will go back to the pipe and start blowing that. I will have a park layout soon. We currently have our incubator learning park open which has a nice progression of low, wide ride-on boxes and rails leading up to a gap on flat-down box. Perfect for little guys learning how to slide.

We're planning on using four elements for the El Nino Rail Jam on Saturday. The setup will most likely be two seperate jib lines with two elements each. We are going to use flat down box, flat down handrail, flat box and flat rail. This may change depending on how much snow we lose tonight but thid is the plan for now.....

Hello again everybody...just a little follow-up to my announcement yesterday. I just got word that the new grand prize for the Rail Jam @ Shawnee on Saturday is going to be a FREE week at Woodward. I was supposed to keep this a little secret, but I got super stoked when I heard about this and wanted to let everyone know. Just to let everyone know, we thought this Rail Jam up yesterday and are really pushing to make it a sick event. I know it's short notice, but we were really looking for something to get our core riders excited and all riders in the area excited. I hope it's working....See you on Saturday.

Hi boys and girls. Sorry we haven't been posting since parkbuilder left, we miss him too. I was parkbuilder's boss last year and I should have kept up his momentum on here, but I've been slackin a little (also pretty busy). We had a lot of things planned for this year and have not been able to put many of them into action. But instead of cryin' about it we're gonna have a freekin' rail jam. This Saturday @ 1 o'clock, at the base, right in front of the lodge. There will be no entrance fee. All you need to do is show up and have either a ticket or a seasons pass. It is going to be a straight open event with no categories. The 3 people who kill it will get $100 gift cards for Shawnee. They can be used anywhere, the ski shop, the caf (even the bar if you're over 21!!!). There will probably be some other schwag floating around too. Hope to see you there.