4/2 Roll Call Last Day!

[DiMe]

2 hours ago, enjoralas said:

 

One of the biggest reasons Camelback opens so late is that they insist on opening with a lot of the lookers left part of the mountain, which requires tons of snow to open because they have to cover up the lazy river, etc. 

If they would decide to open with Nile Mile, Cliffhanger, Pharoah/Bactrian, Pocono Raceway*, Rhodo Glen* and Sunbowl for the beginners then they would only be covering grass/natural terrain and they could open with just a few nights of snowmaking like most mountains can. 

They could still use the upper lodge, just walk to the edge of the snow at the top of Sunbowl and ski down to the indoor waterpark lift. Ride Sunbowl lift up and walk to the lodge if you need to or at the end of the day. Hotel guests can walk right out onto the snow from Day 1 of the season.

It seems the obvious way to open that mountain to me, but they go the other way with it. 

 

 

*possibly not these two, since they put that new style alpine slide in a couple of years ago. Parts of it may cross both slops (I know it crosses Rhodo) and may take more snow to bury than early season snowmaking could cover for an express opening

I'm assuming going by how confident they were to reopen April 2nd and how solid the coverage was on what was open they follow a strict snowmaking schedule.  They probably start the season with what was open at the end insuring a base to have both sides and a crossover available in the end.  

It appeared intentional to have a solid base on what was open for their end of season plans.  I have to say it was really nice to have 2 full park builds and as much open as it was.  I was pretty disapointed to not have access to the top of Come Around or any park the entire final week @ Blue until the weekend.  I know that isn't the norm when Nightmare/Dreamweaver is able to be opened and this season just was what it was.

 

 

Edited April 5, 2023 by DiMe

[DiMe]

4 hours ago, indiggio said:

We were checking out the snow guns around Cameltoe on Sunday, WJW!
Every run we went down looked like brand new guns and even a battalion of new sled guns to put in strategic locations.
The gun heads looked like they had 3 different sets of nozzles, perhaps they can pick which ones to use based on conditions?
I think they were these: https://www.hkdsnowmakers.com/products/impulse/
Hopefully the announcement to upgrade Blue's snowmaking will include a bunch of those guns and automate the remaining trails to do away with the manual guns, so the entire mountain can fire up at the flick of a switch.

I notice this as well.  It's almost as if they contracted with one manufacturer for their equipment.  Even the big pile of ground guns stashed near the sunbowl had the new heads.  When I made snow for Camelback in the early 2000s we had a ridiculous multitude of different types of guns.

Edited April 5, 2023 by DiMe

[indiggio]

8 hours ago, DiMe said:

I notice this as well.  It's almost as if they contracted with one manufacturer for their equipment.  Even the big pile of ground guns stashed near the sunbowl had the new heads.  When I made snow for Camelback in the early 2000s we had a ridiculous multitude of different types of guns.

Probably got a discount for buying so many...