Hello Skiers and Boarders,
I was skiing with good friends this morning. The sky was blue and the air crisp. It was cool enough so that snowmaking guns could be used to fatten the pack on Red Trail in hopes of opening it soon.
Snow guns pumping out snow on Red Trail
Our first few turns down from the top of Roundhouse Chair were quite nice. The overnight grooming crew had laid down a soft blanket of corduroy for us. Each of the past few mornings this has been the treat that met us. Similar to a number of previous mornings the soft topping of snow was pushed around by early morning skiers. Early morning skiers and boarders scrap off the surface after a few runs exposing the underlying firm manmade snow. As we know this creates a slick top in some areas and deeper sugar-like piles of snow in other areas. None of this is bad. It just makes skiing or boarding a little more challenging, especially when the trails become more crowded.
While I was on the hill, lift lines were minimal. I heard a rumor that there were fewer people on the hill this morning than yesterday. We could tell the difference, even though Weasel Run looked very well used from the chair.
A question came up while we were riding Roundhouse this morning regarding the spacing between Chair 1 and Chair 88 (the last numbered chair before the numbering system begins again with Chair 1). Why is there such a gap between these chairs? The gap looks wide enough to have hung two chair in the space. No one on our chair knew the answer, but we had a couple of guesses. We would love to know the real reason, but here were our guesses.
1-The space is left so groomers can get under the lift line when working on ramps at the base or top of the lifts without hitting chairs that might be in the way.
2-Software used to measure spacing between chairs ends its calculation when Chair 88 passes by and begins again when chair 1 passes the base terminal.
Perhaps the gap alerts it to the fact that the last chair on the line has completed a circuit. I am not sure this makes sense, but that was a guess. It seems as if a computer would not need a long gap between the first and last chair to calculate the proper distance for spacing all chairs on the lift line.
3-A gap is left at the top so that chairs do not swing excessively in very high winds.
4-The chairs that should be in the gap were damaged and the new chairs have been on backorder for a very long time. Enough of this quiz for the today. If you know the correct answer leave a comment.
This shows the pace between Chair88 and Chair 1
Skiing on Christmas Eve would not be special without Santa Claus sightings on the hill. We saw Santa a number of times as he made is way around the mountain.
Santa posing with members of my posse
We ran into Jeff Goldstone this morning at the base of TLC. Jeff crossed his fingers, tough to see when he was wearing gloves, and mentioned that Red Trail might be open for skiing Tuesday. They were making snow like crazy on this run today. He also mentioned that Summit may open Thursday ( assuming he gets a little new snow from the coming storm). Thank you Jeff for the heads up, and a very Merry Christmas to you, and your wonderful and hardworking staff.
During the holiday seasons I am always reminded how lucky I am to have had such wonderful parents, both are gone, who brought me to mountains to ski, hike, and enjoy so many other opportunities available in this special place. I am so grateful to live where I live, in these beautiful mountains, and to worry about snow conditions instead of the where I might find my next meal. I look up into the sky and wonder when cold white flakes will fall to the ground, when others are looking to the sky wondering when and where the next bomb might fall. I have a lovely home with beautiful views and a switch to click when I want heat. So many others do not even have a roof over their heads. I am thinking of them tonight and hoping that there lives improve over the coming year. I wish that all of us earthlings could find peace, and that we could find a way to accept each other for who we are and stop disliking those of us who are different from us in one way or another.
Enjoy your day and be grateful for what you have,
Andy
Andy,
What a wonderful message to get on Christmas Eve. Nice to hear the update on the mountain. & ongoing efforts of Ops team to create the best skiing experience possible.
Mother Nature – HELP!
Particularly thoughtful and caring of you to express your thoughts in the last paragraph about the abundance of riches, safety, and security that most of us experience. This is not so for many others in our, big wide world.
Happy holidays to all
Is the spacing between chair 1 and 88 where the spice in the cable is?
I do think your correct, it brings back memories of the boss telling me when we replaced Roundhouse chair&added towers to Sherwood in early 90’s
(Joe its SPLICE! with an L in it!) My thought, o.k. o.k. boss from Germany.
Could the gap because of weight load limits?
Happy Holidays Andy! Loved the sentiments in the last paragraph and enjoy reading these even if my skiing is all skate skiing.
I do not know the answer to the chair gap question.
But i did ask Chat GPT about how many times I would have to ride Roundhouse to have a good chance of riding all 88 chairs.
Chat GPT let me know this is a “coupon collectors” or “baseball card” problem. It did not actually do the calculations. So I searched for a calculator and found:
https://demonstrations.wolfram.com/CouponCollectorProblem/
So inputting the desired number of 88, the calculator said that 455 would be the estimated number of tries to get all 88. But it is not a perfect world as every round of trial is just based on odds.
So I ran the calculator about twenty five times and got answers from 395 to 700.
Last season, I rode Roundhouse 855 times, so odds are pretty good that I did accomplish the feat….maybe…because riding a chairlift is not quite as random as opening a pack of baseball cards. Roundhouse is actually an interesting case as the time it takes a chair to come back around is close to the time it takes to ski down and stand in a short line. As an example I rode chair 87 three times in a row today. On a day where I rode Roundhouse 8 times in a row, there’s a good chance that all of those rides would fall within a very short range Ie Chair 70-88.
In an average season, it’s likely that an average rider would NOT ride all of the chairs.
Sounds like you’ve been smoking some good stuff,can you hop on the B2B and share with the Bros on this side?
I was told the only way to know you have ridden every chair during a season is to use a NOTE BOOK. So get some paper and a pen and start keeping track.
AW
I cant say for sure about round house, but typically a gap between the final chair and first chair is left so a maintenance carrier can be added without removing a chair.
Hopefully somebody in AM lift maintenance can weigh in on rhis one.
The obvious conclusion to the chair question is that #89 fell off of the cable somewhere. Merry Christmas to all – and watch out for falling chairs.
I believe that a gap exists between the last chair and chair #1 in order to allow room so the system can manage spacing between chairs. I’m not sure if newer lifts require this gap but the older detachable lifts at Alpine all have one. Is there a similar gap on TLC?