News story

[sexkitten]

Vermont ski resorts investing

 

Mon Jul 30, 1:56 PM ET

 

KILLINGTON, Vt. - They're coming off two lackluster seasons in a row, but Vermont's winter resorts continue to pour millions of dollars into improvements designed to lure more skiers and snowboarders.

 

New lifts, trails, base lodges and luxury housing are among the improvements resorts are making as many have been turned into construction zones during the short summer building season.

 

At Mount Snow in Wilmington, $3.5 million out of $5.5 million in improvements will be focused on snowmaking, with the purchase of 100 new energy efficient snowmaking guns, said Chris Lenois, spokesman for Mount Snow owner Peak Resorts.

 

"We expect to be able to extend our season; we expect to be able to open with more terrain then we normally have been able to," Lenois said, "and we expect to recover far more quickly from temperature fluctuations."

 

Farther north, Mad River Glen, a small, nonprofit ski area, has raised more than $1.2 million in charitable contributions, in partnership with the Preservation Trust of Vermont and the Stark Mountain Foundation, toward the $1.54 million cost of rehabilitating a single-chair lift in operation since 1948.

 

Magic Mountain, Sugarbush and Okemo are among other resorts making improvements to snowmaking, while several are expanding their offerings designed to attract visitors during the warmer months.

 

Stowe Mountain Resort, for example, is including an 18-hole golf course and 21,000-square-foot spa

[Ski]

'Kitten, MRG's single chair costs more in annual maitenance than any high speed quad. They could simply rip it out and replace it with a new lift and be done with the nightmarish upkeep. The single chair, btw, is the reason there's no snowboarders allowed at MRG. MRG had been one of the first resorts to embrace snowboarders, but the flat offloading area at the top of the single forced boarders to push off the chair and it would throw the alignment out. So boarders were banned from that one lift. The owner, at the time, was an elderly lady that was well known in town and a couple of teenage snowboarders cussed her out in a grocery store, so she banned all boarders and even though ownership is now co-opt, there isn't enough votes to allow snowboarding. And they consider it heresy to even consider replacing the single chair.

[sexkitten]

'Kitten, MRG's single chair costs more in annual maitenance than any high speed quad. They could simply rip it out and replace it with a new lift and be done with the nightmarish upkeep. The single chair, btw, is the reason there's no snowboarders allowed at MRG. MRG had been one of the first resorts to embrace snowboarders, but the flat offloading area at the top of the single forced boarders to push off the chair and it would throw the alignment out. So boarders were banned from that one lift. The owner, at the time, was an elderly lady that was well known in town and a couple of teenage snowboarders cussed her out in a grocery store, so she banned all boarders and even though ownership is now co-opt, there isn't enough votes to allow snowboarding. And they consider it heresy to even consider replacing the single chair.

 

Don't get me wrong I love the idea of preserving history I just didn't realize a single would cost so damn much.

[Ski]

Don't get me wrong I love the idea of preserving history I just didn't realize a single would cost so damn much.

 

I'd be voting every year to rip the f*cker out and put in a triple. I used to hit MRG a lot when I lived in Mass. because that's where my friends wanted to go. Crappy snowmaking, lousy grooming, a muddy parking lot, and relying on high water content snowfall just never appealed to me. Some people LOVE it. Good for them.