Wasatch 23/24 Stoke Thread: Red Snake Coverage coming at you live from tgapp's fartba

[Shaaarrrp]

Thanks for the recs yall. Sports Den indicated they could definitely help but Level 9 at the evo campus comped what looks like a perfect match.

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[NBABUCKS1]

Pretty big announcement for pow mow with 4 new lifts and closing some existing terrain to home owners only

https://liftblog.com/2023/12/12/powd...lifts-in-2024/

[MarsB]

Pretty big announcement for pow mow with 4 new lifts and closing some existing terrain to home owners only

https://liftblog.com/2023/12/12/powd...lifts-in-2024/

If true, that's a major fucking blow. Village & Mary's access some of the best terrain on the mountain. Fuck Reed Hastings.

[NBABUCKS1]

well straight from reed's mouth (fingers)

https://powdermountain.com/blog/lett...eed-whats-next

[Stuntmonkey]

I've never seen home owner skiing deliver numbers to keep the lifts running on schedule. My guess is within a year or two they'll realize this and either do black out dates or maybe a priority line or something.

[sfotex]

You missed the most important part:
" we’ve upgraded the Timberline bathrooms, and we reduced the price of night skiing from $39 to $19 to make it more accessible for our community. Come on up!"

[Bunion 2020]

I've never seen home owner skiing deliver numbers to keep the lifts running on schedule. My guess is within a year or two they'll realize this and either do black out dates or maybe a priority line or something.

Seems to work fine at the Y/C.

[One (+) Sentence]

Wasatch Peaks may be on the ropes and Powder Mtn sees an opportunity to pick up the slack?

[phatty]

I've never seen home owner skiing deliver numbers to keep the lifts running on schedule. My guess is within a year or two they'll realize this and either do black out dates or maybe a priority line or something.

It's not delivering skier numbers, it's delivering real estate sales. Private powder on some of the best terrain might get some folks to buy there versus PC or other places. As he said, they need to sell real estate to keep making money.

[Canada1]

What is the terrain at Yellowstone like? It seems like that is the demo they are competing for and with?

[skifishbum]

im just glad i dont netflix or pay Reed anything to ski his mountains hes suckin the soul outta in the name of the almighty dolla dolla bill yall
sweet more gapers who cant bootpack or skin 15 minutes or shell out snowcat ducketts to get up lightning ridge sure will suck as much as loosing raintree
i hope the raintree cougars eat the rich

got out for a crack of noon tour with my icegrom bro groomers over to supreme skied well
still some fresh lines of good coverage soft pow to be had in the rock point


brisk cool winds so we headed into the sun and up to wolvie

most entrances looked meh even grannies and most aprons where chips ahoy
only line in the cirque was a gutsy borders in ragtime or scratch n sniffs


wrapped around to patsey and skied some drive in movie theater hot pow down to the summer road

suck limited to forgetting the memory card, my off the couch jelly legs and a large coreshot
all of which are future fixable

[mst1228]

Sick day skifishbum!


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[Bunion 2020]

What is the terrain at Yellowstone like? It seems like that is the demo they are competing for and with?

Some of the best tree skiing in SW Montana, all the trees between the cut runs were thinned and are firs and very nicely spaced. The cut runs are well done, mostly fall line, quite long with a good pitch and Y/C has a legit non stop 2700 vertical, excellent grooming and you can go really fast, the upper mountain reminds me of the Supreme terrain and the ridge is about 3/4 of a mile long but the vert is a bit short, 1000 vert +-.
The aspect is a bit dodgy being mostly NE and SW and the upper mountain gets damaged by sun later in the season but they do get a lot of storms with a SW flow. There is also ski in/out access to Big Sky so the members have access to around 8500 acres.

Downside is, supposedly they have sold out memberships and to afford to live there requires you to be a multi-millionaire unless you bought in early.

[Hammer-Down]

Some of the best tree skiing in SW Montana, all the trees between the cut runs were thinned and are firs and very nicely spaced. The cut runs are well done, mostly fall line, quite long with a good pitch and Y/C has a legit non stop 2700 vertical, excellent grooming and you can go really fast, the upper mountain reminds me of the Supreme terrain and the ridge is about 3/4 of a mile long but the vert is a bit short, 1000 vert +-.
The aspect is a bit dodgy being mostly NE and SW and the upper mountain gets damaged by sun later in the season but they do get a lot of storms with a SW flow. There is also ski in/out access to Big Sky so the members have access to around 8500 acres.

Downside is, supposedly they have sold out memberships and to afford to live there requires you to be a multi-millionaire unless you bought in early.

is their financial model working well? or do they constantly have one foot on a banana peel and the other in the grave trying to rob peter to pay paul? Im assuming with these private models they can just inflict big fees and assessments when shit goes south, and if you don't like it you can suck it.

Powder is epic or ikon (or whatever the flavor of the month is) within 5 years

[Bunion 2020]

Their financial model initially crashed and burned (too big too fast and 2008 crash) and they were acquired in Bankruptcy by an extremely large hedge fund from Boston. To join a member must have agreed to buy a property and build, lots started in the 1 million range way back when and were selling for 10-20 million before they sold out. An initial $300K is required to join and a yearly fee of a reported 30K is required along with some additional dues to cover maintenance.

The place is very well maintained and has a huge staff to make it run, they do pay decently and have invested heavily in employee housing. Time will tell as the originals age out but a lot of my clients there are fairly young (40-50s) and seem to have bottomless checkbooks.

[Canada1]

So, they are assuming this Yellowstone model without the Yellowstone terrain. I find the area to be beautiful in the summer. It feels less pretentious than Deer Valley or the Colonies at the canyons and certainly has a whole lot less people. I guess it is that lack of crowds that I find attractive that the investors are trying to overcome.

[phatty]

So, they are assuming this Yellowstone model without the Yellowstone terrain. I find the area to be beautiful in the summer. It feels less pretentious than Deer Valley or the Colonies at the canyons and certainly has a whole lot less people. I guess it is that lack of crowds that I find attractive that the investors are trying to overcome.

While I agree with everything you say about the area vs. Park City, I disagree with your other point. I think it is that lack of crowds that makes the selling point of their real estate. It's the anti PC/DV for the rich people who want to avoid the crowds. By making portions of the area private to the homeowners, it only enhances that "uncrowded" selling point. Hastings is saying they need the profit from the real estate sales to continue as a business, not the dues for the amenities (though those should lead to some profit as well).

[raisingarizona13]

Throwing a little gas on the fire......

From The Storm Skiing Journal

We wouldn’t want a gondola to ruin the view of that beautiful highway

Opposition to the proposed gondola up Little Cottonwood Canyon has always hit me as a little bit stupid, particularly when it’s framed as some great mission to save the environment. Check out this excerpt from a recent lawsuit filed against UDOT to stop construction, per The Salt Lake Tribune:

Among other claims, the lawsuit [to throw out UDOT’s environmental study as flawed] says the proposed gondola through the canyon would, “affect the natural habitats of golden eagles and other fauna; contaminate and endanger a critical watershed; disrupt recreation areas unrelated to resort skiing such as climbing, hiking, and backcountry skiing; and permanently alter the breathtaking views of the canyon.”

You know what the most disruptive thing you can possibly build into the wilderness is? A paved road. You know what permanently altered the view of that breathtaking canyon? State Route 210, the road punched through its gut in the 1940s. What do you suppose has a higher chance of “contaminating and endangering a critical watershed” – thousands of individual oil-leaking, exhaust-spewing vehicles, or a gondola with 22 towers that each occupy a few hundred square feet of land?

Anyone who’s serious about protecting the environmental integrity of LCC ought to be advocating that they close SR-210 permanently and replace it with low-energy, low-impact alternatives such as the gondola and, perhaps, a train. The road could remain open to emergency vehicles and, perhaps, residents.

When protesters are not complaining about imaginary environmental impacts, they are complaining about the lift’s price, ignoring the astronomical expense of road maintenance and avalanche mitigation. The gondola will cost an estimated $728 million, which sounds like a lot until you realize that mountain roads cost more than $4 million per lane, per mile to build – and that’s in 2014 dollars. There’s also the cost to the individual of purchasing and outfitting vehicles that can manage extreme winter weather on steep terrain – the gondola would mostly negate the need for such Monster Truck One-Upmanship, as it would move the resorts’ base down to around 5,000 feet (from 7,760 feet at Snowbird and 8,530 feet at Alta), below the major snowline.

A UDOT spokesman told The Tribune that the lawsuit may delay implementation of so-called Phase 1 elements of the LCC traffic-control plan, including tolling and increased bus service, while the agency prioritizes resources. The plan appears to be to deploy the Early Winters strategy, which stopped a potential Washington ski resort with a philosophy of petty nitpicking. Per Methow Valley News:

“The first realization was that we would be empowered by understanding the rules of the game.” Coon said. Soon after it was formed, [Methow Valley Citizens Council, MVCC] “scraped together a few dollars to hire a consultant,” who showed them that Aspen Corp. would have to obtain many permits for the ski resort, but MVCC would only have to prevail on defeating one.

Administrative and legal challenges delayed the project for 25 years, “ultimately paving the way to victory,” with the water rights issue as the final obstacle to resort development, Coon said.

That article is from 2016. These activists are still so proud of themselves, decades after killing Early Winters. But what did they achieve, besides stopping something that could have been transformative for the entire region? What could have been an extra ski resort in a state that desperately needs more skier capacity is instead “open space” that is zoned for the development of exactly five homes.

This is what’s happening in Utah. A band of reflexive nimrods, brainwashed on the U.S. American imperative to spend unhealthy percentages of their income on personal vehicles tricked out with military-grade terrain-scaling features, recasts the most obvious fix to the traffic and visual clutter that mars one of America’s most gorgeous canyons as an engine that would instead destroy it. This is one of those things, like Americans’ obsession with air-conditioning or ketchup, that looks absurd with even a little distance. Little Cottonwood Canyon was never meant to accommodate thousands of vehicles per day. It was never meant to accommodate vehicles at all. SR-210 holds the highest avalanche hazard index of any road in North America. Removing personal cars from that road is such an obvious solution that it rates alongside toothpaste application as Things That Shouldn’t Have to Be Explained.

But the fight will go on, until one side or the other breaks. And I doubt that will be anytime soon.

[raisingarizona13]

So, they are assuming this Yellowstone model without the Yellowstone terrain. I find the area to be beautiful in the summer. It feels less pretentious than Deer Valley or the Colonies at the canyons and certainly has a whole lot less people. I guess it is that lack of crowds that I find attractive that the investors are trying to overcome.

You Utah skiers are funny. If a ski area gets less than 400 inches people on here say it doesn't get enough snow, if the terrain isn't LCC people on here say it's not worth it.

The reality is most people don't need either of those things.

If climate science is right (I'm no scientist and I don't care to say it is or it isn't) the private ski area model is going to explode for places that receive enough snow and cold weather to be open regularly. Regular people aren't going to be able to afford skiing anymore.

With the mega pass affect more and more people with money will be looking for these private areas to get away from the masses and long lift lines. Real estate and membership fees will be plenty to keep these places afloat.

Let me repeat, The average skier doesn't care to have 500 inches of snow a year and scary steep terrain, they like sunshine and groomers. Powder Mountain can deliver these things in spades.

A lot of Utah skiers are seriously spoiled and out of touch with what most people deem as an acceptable skiing product.

This is the future. I fucking guarantee it.

[Benneke10]

Removing personal cars from that road is such an obvious solution that it rates alongside toothpaste application as Things That Shouldn’t Have to Be Explained.

That was the stupidest thing I have read in a while. I could waste my day refuting every argument it makes but this is the most egregious, because nothing in the proposed gondola solutions would take personal cars off the road.

[Shaaarrrp]

I will not pretend to have the answer but the paved road is already there so I am unclear on why the cost to build it is more relevant than the lack of marginal cost to keep using it vs replacing it with something new.

A road is a means to destroy wilderness but they could certainly do a shitton more to destroy LCC that they haven't come even close to doing. I think it's fair to wonder if attempting to efficiently push as many people up the canyon is the biggest danger to what it represents.

Obviously they have to maintain it but it seems like folks believe there are viable options like snowsheds that udot isnt fully exploring.

[Dantheman]

Throwing a little gas on the fire......

Strawmen upon strawmen upon strawmen and frosted with bullshit.

Also, ketchup is awesome, fight me.

[raisingarizona13]

That was the stupidest thing I have read in a while. I could waste my day refuting every argument it makes but this is the most egregious, because nothing in the proposed gondola solutions would take personal cars off the road.

Maybe but the point I got from it is that the local skiing and enviro folks should be advocating for the gondola to do those things you mention and be that useful public transportation fix as well as a train or whatever makes sense but instead they are saying NO to the gondola because they don't want to lose their ability to use their personal car to go up and down the canyon. Yeah, the gondola hasn't been sold as that fix but it should be and be free public transportation. He's saying that the environmental opposition is kind of full of shit.

[Benneke10]

The environmental opposition is kind of full of shit really.

I'll take a guess and say you don't live here? No way the guy who wrote that article lives here

[Dantheman]

People are saying "NO" because the proposal that is actually in writing in the ROD (1k ppl/hr, 120 days/yr of operation, insufficient base station parking, no public transit to base station, no info about fees, slower than the bus on the majority of days) sucks. A 4k ppl/hr gondi with 10k parking stalls at the bottom that runs year-round and all ride free sounds fucking awesome, but that's some unicorns and rainbows shit that is not going to happen.