BC-Mark

Part 3

Part 2

Hey everyone, Thanks again for all the input. It looked like we were getting over the hump with snowmaking and then Tuesday's deluge set us back again. On the bright side the grooming staff has really stepped it up a notch with the addition of Dave Shankey direct from Deer Valley, Utah! Ok, here are a few questions that we would appreciate you taking the time to answer. They are simple questions that will help us determine how we should proceed with the development of our parks.

This thread has really taken off. We do not own all of the "backside" of the mountain. If you are standing in the base area looking toward the top of the mountain we own about 3/4 of the ridge to the right of tubing, we own about 25' into the woods off the top of A lift, we own quite a bit of the land behind F lift and the old Mountain Hut, about 45 acres to be exact. If you go over the knob off the top of Timberline we own about 1/3 of the way down the slope. We have had informal discussions with a neighbor about leasing their land for potential use but it hasn't progressed beyond that. As for a high speed quad the issue really becomes one of lift line length. If you have a lift line length under 3000' feet you have big chair spacing issues with the high speeds. Everytime the chairs detach from the line they reattach at a slightly different spot. The shorter the line length, the more often the chairs detach/reattach and the faster your end up with chair spacing issues that can cause the lift to close down for maintenance. In our case, the line length is only 2300' for B and 2100' for F. Skier visits are up from last year but not quite as high as we would have hoped. The weather is obviously not working in our favor but it looks like they just revised the forecast for Saturday night and we should have a good 18 to 20 hour window Saturday afternoon into Sunday morning. I hate to blow snow on our guests but in a year like this it is a better option than making them ski on grass and rocks. Not everyone has grass skis!

This is great input! In the planning budget we have $25,000 just for lighting. We will be lighting the super park and the super pipe well enough to host national level competitions. On a side note, we do have lighting on skiers right of the current Black Bear park but are having a few issues with the electrical circuit that feeds it. We should have it up soon. I will talk to the electrician about possibly adding a few fixtures on cascade to improve the lighting for this year. Thanks

Thanks for the input, we were actually shooting to improve the skiers experience by widening and flattening out Timberline and using it for racing on Tuesday/Wednesday and not closing off Polar Bear and Broadway. I am sure we can keep the banked turns and still run Nastar. Thanks for the input.

Let me begin by saying that I am the General Manager at Bear Creek and I appreciate all the ideas, compliments and constructive criticisms I have been reading on this board and I want to thank everyone for their support over the years and during this rough weather. Before the rumor mill really starts rolling let me put some facts out on the table. We are trying to get permits in place to make some more improvements for the 2006-2007 season. First is the expansion of the lodge. Assuming we have permits in place we should begin construction in April on 64 more rooms, another banquet facillity and an outdoor pool. Second, we hope to add more terrain so we would like to add more water storage. We would like to add another 33 million gallons to our capacity which would allow us to put 6.75' of snow on the mountain without any refresh to our ponds. Third, the terrain additions include: - A gladed trail on skiers left of Grizzly. - A gladed trail from Baby Bear down to Kodiak. - Doubling the width of Timberline and making a normal trail (no more boarder-x) and using it on Tuesday and Wednesday nights for a race trail. - Rotating tubing 90 degrees to the left as you look up the mountain but still use the same runout Now here is the big one for most of the people here: - Use the current tubing park plus Cascade to create a super park. Cascade would be doubled in width from the first cutover from Black Bear all the way down to the tubing area. We would have restricted access to the park through one entrance at the top of Cascade. We will put in a staging area with a 45 degree drop in to get speed for the top flat section. The tubing section will have big hits on skiers right and a true competition super pipe on skiers left. The pipe would be serviced by a handle tow. The Black Bear park will be turned into a beginner/intermediate park with one entry point. The current pipe would be cut down in length to create and exit from the super park and the walls would be cut down a bit and the pipe would be made a bit narrower to create a learning pipe. Here is the catch, we need to get the improvements through DEP permitting before we can do any of this and we will be asking for YOUR input on the use, increased traffic, increased revenue and a few other ideas via an online survey we will post here in a few days. The owner has expressed a good deal of interest in seeing this project come to life but we need to make sure that the $1.5 million is money well spent. Stay tuned for details. Thanks, Mark