Hi Folks,
I went up to 7springs today with my eldest son. In short, great conditions, and a lot of fun!
They made a ton of snow, and it was good quality. Not a lot of trails, but enough to get warmed up for the season. Maybe 3 blues, 3 greens and a small terrain park, served by 3 lifts. Beautiful blue sunshine for most of the day, reasonable crowd, enough people to know that people are stoked to go skiing this year, but not enough to make the wait for lifts unreasonable. Maybe 3-5 minute wait time for the six pack, and 1-2 minutes for tyrol and cortina. What blew us away was the great powder in the tyrol glades area. Several of us skied there extensively throughout the day. Great vibe from the crowd. Best opening that I can recall at 7S.
Cheers!
I made it up for opening day, but did the Twilight session to avoid the morning craziness. I agree, the conditions were very good for early season. I took my rock skis out, but I really didn't need them. I think I at most hit one rock, and that was a fluke. They were reporting a 2'-3' base on what they had open.
As mentioned, 7 runs were open, including a terrain park. I didn't hit that, but I skied everything else at least once. Stowe seemed to be the iciest, but it was also the most challenging run available so it looks like it was quite popular. I think they could have had at least the middle of Tyrol open if they pushed some snow around - maybe even avalanche as it looked decently covered from what I could see. There was plenty of snow in the trees between Tyrol and Stowe, so there were a good amount of tracks on those.
I was by myself, so I really didn't have to wait in any lines. Polar Bear was the busiest lift, as to be expected. I pretty much skied on to Cortina and Tyrol lifts. The crowd thinned out as the day went on. I wrapped up around 8pm as my legs were shot. Good timing as Wagner and Stowe were really starting to ice up at that point.
All in all, it was a good day. I paid for it in soreness, but I had a lot of fun and got to work on my transition to shaped skis. I was going to hit HV Saturday, but with the weather and the lack of runs, I decided to give it a pass.
Link to the pics below - couldn't get them to post.
7 Springs just sent out an email bragging about the amount of time they have spent snowmaking this year compared to previous years.
With all the hours spent snowmaking, it begs the question, Where is all the open terrain to show for it? The open runs to date are no more than what they have open at this point historically. While I am usually a big supporter of 7 Springs and Nutting for all he has done with 7 Springs, Hidden Valley, and Laurel Mountain, this doesn't sit right with me.
258 / 24 = 10.75 days of around the clock snowmaking. We've not had that much cold up this way.
Look at 2015. 24 hours? There's no way they opened that resort running the guns 3 nights for 8 hours ........ for an ENTIRE season..
You should ask for clarification.
Blue Don 1982 wrote:
258 / 24 = 10.75 days of around the clock snowmaking. We've not had that much cold up this way.
Look at 2015. 24 hours? There's no way they opened that resort running the guns 3 nights for 8 hours ........ for an ENTIRE season..
You should ask for clarification.
Don, those are statistics for November only. So they're saying they only ran the guns for 24 hours in November 2015, not the whole 2015/2016 season.
Edit: I just looked it up, and yep, they didn't open until December 23, 2015. The stats line up.
I haven't been to 7S in years but the rehtoric I've heard from regulars recently is they tend to focus a lot of resources on the parks. Maybe all the snow is stockedpiled for park features etc, not opening trails?
I think what this about is very simple....cold weather. Some years we have little or no snow making weather in November, or even December for that matter. We are very fortunate this year to have an abundance of cold weather and it’s not even December yet. For this week the snow guns were running non-stop since Monday. And I believe they started making snow on November16, which is the earliest I have seen in my 14 years of owning in the Laurels. I think they concentrate making snow on the main runs to build a sustainable base. It would not make sense to open up large swaths of terrain in November only to see the thin base disappear during the next warm spell. Hey, other local resorts have not even made an attempt to open up terrain. Give 7S some credit.
Blue Don 1982 wrote:
258 / 24 = 10.75 days of around the clock snowmaking.
Have not had 10 days in November by any math I can see.
Could this be "gun hours"? 25 guns running for 10 hours each? That doesn't make sense either.
So if they have made all this snow, why were the not open all week like Snowshoe?!!
I really wish that they would put more effort into snowmaking off of Gunnar, I feel like it has been closed more often than not the last few years. I do believe they should’ve had week day openings, but I’d hold some judgement until the snow report comes out tomorrow.
Comparing springs to snowshoe is a tough comparison though, it appears that snowshoe has significantly more fan guns, which give them much more control in the wind. Seven springs is also way more open and exposed than snowshoe, so they are again fighting the wind, other than skidder most of snowshoe has decent wind protection. Also it is known that seven springs gs invests very heavily in the parks, which need the snow. Despite snowshoe having more trails and more vertical I believe seven springs is actually more skiable acres, I do believe snowshoe puts out a better snow and conditions, but the layout I would imagine is much easier to make and contain snow, and snowshoe tends to be slightly colder most of the time.
If the winter continues to be cold I suspect seven springs will have a similar number of open days as snowshoe as they will go later in April
Ok...snow report only added 1 trail and no lifts from last weekend . Still nothing over 500’ vert. I don’t get it either, if they were going to close for the week they should’ve had more ready to go by now.
rbrtlav wrote:
I really wish that they would put more effort into snowmaking off of Gunnar, I feel like it has been closed more often than not the last few years. I do believe they should’ve had week day openings, but I’d hold some judgement until the snow report comes out tomorrow.
Comparing springs to snowshoe is a tough comparison though, it appears that snowshoe has significantly more fan guns, which give them much more control in the wind. Seven springs is also way more open and exposed than snowshoe, so they are again fighting the wind, other than skidder most of snowshoe has decent wind protection. Also it is known that seven springs gs invests very heavily in the parks, which need the snow. Despite snowshoe having more trails and more vertical I believe seven springs is actually more skiable acres, I do believe snowshoe puts out a better snow and conditions, but the layout I would imagine is much easier to make and contain snow, and snowshoe tends to be slightly colder most of the time.
If the winter continues to be cold I suspect seven springs will have a similar number of open days as snowshoe as they will go later in April
I disagree about the wind. There is almost no place in Mid Atlantic Skiing more exposed than the top of Western Terriotory and Top of The World at SS.
rbrtlav wrote:
Ok...snow report only added 1 trail and no lifts from last weekend . Still nothing over 500’ vert. I don’t get it either, if they were going to close for the week they should’ve had more ready to go by now.
Can one of you negative nabobs tell me when our local resorts have had this much terrain open in November? Not sure why 7S does not open during the week? Maybe not enough people show up ? Maybe they don’t have the staff available yet? Historically, no resort around here with the exception of Snowshoe has been open weekdays in November.
snowsmith wrote:
Can one of you negative nabobs tell me when our local resorts have had this much terrain open in November? Not sure why 7S does not open during the week? Maybe not enough people show up ? Maybe they don’t have the staff available yet? Historically, no resort around here with the exception of Snowshoe has been open weekdays in November.
Well at this point this is putting them out to December 6th. Historically the snowtime resorts have opened 7 days a week from the start and stay open 7 days a week until close. (except for a few occasions where it has been pouring) They have opened as soon as Black Friday, although they need a bit more luck on the weather front.
I have 6 days on the snow this winter, largely due to the way Snowshoe operates, but I would be upset if I was a passholder at Springs about them closing this week, being short-staffed in November is one thing, but short of 2015/2016 I can't think of a year 7 Springs hasn't been open by this point.
7S and HV will be open daily starting on Friday. No word on BK or LM yet.
