Zee Lights

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Night skiing at Blue is Lit!!!  Quite literally 

[saltyant]

1 hour ago, RidgeRacer said:

Unfortunately not

Are you sure? On the webcams, looks like bright white lights, which I definitely prefer over the old orange ones.

[AtomicSkier]

I actually find the more orange lights to be a better contrast with the snow.

[tarponhead]

Way to get after it!!!  I’m lucky business is slower during ski season although I met with four families today...

Why is that?

[saltyant]

7 hours ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

Salty actually used the gift card for night skiing and the night ticket was $5 less and it turns out they didn’t give him the $5 difference so the next run he went into the lodge and demanded $5 difference and he ended up losing the $5 gift card lol.  Salty is something else. 

Thanks, you have a great memory. I forgot all about the $5. Camelback probably found the $5 Blue gift card this summer in a swimming pool.

[tarponhead]

Ski2Live, I will save space for you here on the island for misfit toys. Currently it's just myself and Eaf.

This is actually funny

[momskeeztoo]

5 minutes ago, tarponhead said:

Why is that?

Yeah, I wondered that myself. Also,is  it really difficult to set the headstones with all the rain we’ve had?

[Johnny Law]

Blue's orange lights are orange becuase they are high pressure sodium bulbs and orange requires the least amount of energy and is thus the cheapest. I do think they are better then the white ones. Blue's problem is that sometimes it seems only half of them are on, switchback one year had like three in a row out, it was hilarious though sketchy.

[tnt]

3 minutes ago, Johnny Law said:

Blue's orange lights are orange becuase they are high pressure sodium bulbs and orange requires the least amount of energy and is thus the cheapest. I do think they are better then the white ones. Blue's problem is that sometimes it seems only half of them are on, switchback one year had like three in a row out, it was hilarious though sketchy.

The only time I've been night skiing at blue, took my daughter and some of her friends.  they were off doing their thing, and I was just poking around.  Was a few years ago - there was a TON of snow and conditions were very good - packed powder.  Tons in the trees.  Took a peek at the bike trail between lazy and sidewinder.  There was a little light spill from the trails, so I figured, what the hell...wasn't nearly as bright in there after about 5 yards, and the bike trail was slick and fast as hell, but somehow I survived.  Wouldn't recommend tree skiing at night though.  

[toast21602]

3 minutes ago, tnt said:

The only time I've been night skiing at blue, took my daughter and some of her friends.  they were off doing their thing, and I was just poking around.  Was a few years ago - there was a TON of snow and conditions were very good - packed powder.  Tons in the trees.  Took a peek at the bike trail between lazy and sidewinder.  There was a little light spill from the trails, so I figured, what the hell...wasn't nearly as bright in there after about 5 yards, and the bike trail was slick and fast as hell, but somehow I survived.  Wouldn't recommend tree skiing at night though.  

I’ve done that on pow nights with Justo before. Stupidly unsafe, but fun as heck. 

[RidgeRacer]

Looks like it on the webcams. I haven’t been to blue at night in at least 10 years. 

Yeah they do look white on the webcams. The view of the mountain from our neighborhood here shows the familiar orange that we've all come to know and love. That said, I can see the mountain from here like my favorite Bette Midler song... from a distance. So who knows, maybe they brightened things up a bit.

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

1 hour ago, RidgeRacer said:

Yeah they do look white on the webcams. The view of the mountain from our neighborhood here shows the familiar orange that we've all come to know and love. That said, I can see the mountain from here like my favorite Bette Midler song... from a distance. So who knows, maybe they brightened things up a bit.

Do you know any other Bette Midler songs??

[enjoralas]

9 hours ago, indiggio said:

Yeah, went back to previous page and saw it.  Edited post.
Never know with Blue though.  They didn't say anything about lower Main on first day and they opened it.
However, they may not want to staff valley lodge quite yet.

Seems they could just say “All services at the summit lodge” and just staff the lift.

Not complaining, but in the interest of fairness to those paying daily prices I would think it’s more fair to base the switch to charge full price on opening a high speed lift rather than on opening Lazy

[enjoralas]

9 hours ago, indiggio said:

I was looking for that too, but it's impossible to tell if they blew anything over that way now.

Looks like they’ve turned on some guns looker’s right of the main st chair, seeing some blow over on the cam now. Hopefully that means they can open ski in both sides

[toast21602]

18 minutes ago, enjoralas said:

Looks like they’ve turned on some guns looker’s right of the main st chair, seeing some blow over on the cam now. Hopefully that means they can open ski in both sides

Maybe blowing in Burma 

[indiggio]

8 hours ago, Johnny Law said:

Blue's orange lights are orange becuase they are high pressure sodium bulbs and orange requires the least amount of energy and is thus the cheapest. I do think they are better then the white ones. Blue's problem is that sometimes it seems only half of them are on, switchback one year had like three in a row out, it was hilarious though sketchy.

One would think with how thin they run things at Blue, they'd bite the bullet and switch out those high-energy sodium bulbs for LEDs.

[zzslope]

14 hours ago, JFskiDan said:

Wait.....you bought flat skis from Buckmans, and it took like 2 weeks for them to get them to you?  They really arent doing anything to help with the "shop local" thing.  

my understanding is that buckman's has one workshop that all work gets taken to, so add 2 days for delivery (out and back). That is why I go to pelican, or blue mt. for mounting, they do it in house so my equipment isn't being beaten up in a truck during a drive around the countryside. 

[JFskiDan]

25 minutes ago, indiggio said:

One would think with how thin they run things at Blue, they'd bite the bullet and switch out those high-energy sodium bulbs for LEDs.

LED's to replace those bulbs are pretty expensive, and would probably end up being really white, like almost Blue.  If they dont have the ability to do it in-house, which is more than just screwing in a bulb, it probably isnt cost effective.  Being a large consumer of electricity, i can tell you they pay about half of what the normal household pays for electricity.  So, the payback is still there at some point years down the road, but its not as lucrative as the normal household user switching to LED's.  

[indiggio]

39 minutes ago, JFskiDan said:

LED's to replace those bulbs are pretty expensive, and would probably end up being really white, like almost Blue.  If they dont have the ability to do it in-house, which is more than just screwing in a bulb, it probably isnt cost effective.  Being a large consumer of electricity, i can tell you they pay about half of what the normal household pays for electricity.  So, the payback is still there at some point years down the road, but its not as lucrative as the normal household user switching to LED's.  

Yeah, it wouldn't be cheap, but it's a capex and could be amortized over a number of years in addition to the electricity savings that would be ongoing as well as the lifetime of the LEDs should be substantially longer.  

I'm sure the maintenance guys could do it and the existing power lines for those sodium bulbs have to be overkill for the LEDs.

A quick Google results in some direct replacement bulbs for sodium vapor bulbs (I'm sure with the age of Blue's, they probably don't have them, but still) and claiming 60-70% energy savings!

Edited December 6, 2018 by indiggio

[AtomicSkier]

53 minutes ago, indiggio said:

Yeah, it wouldn't be cheap, but it's a capex and could be amortized over a number of years in addition to the electricity savings that would be ongoing as well as the lifetime of the LEDs should be substantially longer.  

I'm sure the maintenance guys could do it and the existing power lines for those sodium bulbs have to be overkill for the LEDs.

A quick Google results in some direct replacement bulbs for sodium vapor bulbs (I'm sure with the age of Blue's, they probably don't have them, but still) and claiming 60-70% energy savings!

I'd also venture to guess running those lights is a small fraction of Blue's electrical usage.  Sure, every bit counts, but I can understand why it's not high on their list.

[indiggio]

2 minutes ago, AtomicSkier said:

I'd also venture to guess running those lights is a small fraction of Blue's electrical usage.  Sure, every bit counts, but I can understand why it's not high on their list.

Oh yeah, I agree that the lights are diddly in comparison to running the pumps and compressors.

Just a diversion in the topic of lights while waiting for the weekend, that's all.

 

[saltyant]

1 hour ago, indiggio said:

Just a diversion in the topic of lights while waiting for the weekend, that's all.

This is by far the most relevant discussion to thread title in the history of this site.

[GSSucks]

Im sure someone on here knows the pump capacity at Blue, Im to lazy to do the research. 100,000 gph with a bit of head and youre at ~$2000.00 an hour pretty quick and thats just to get water to guns. Ends up being ~$48k a day. They also need to run the compressor house. Id assume snow making is one of the biggest expenses they have. 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

8 minutes ago, GSSucks said:

Im sure someone on here knows the pump capacity at Blue, Im to lazy to do the research. 100,000 gph with a bit of head and youre at ~$2000.00 an hour pretty quick and thats just to get water to guns. Ends up being ~$48k a day. They also need to run the compressor house. Id assume snow making is one of the biggest expenses they have. 

A snow maker I talked to said they were pumping out 8,000 gallons of water a minute the day before opening when it was in the teens. 

[RootDKJ]

Way to get after it PASR! #rootfriday

https://www.skibluemt.com/snowmakers-blog/view-all/december-5th-2018/