Hello Skiers and Snowboarders,
Soft mushy snow covered my stairs this morning. I was not extremely excited with the possibility of turning in beautiful powder snow, but you never know unless you go. It took two turns down God’s Knob realize I was wrong. A little ice at the top and then lovely soft powder through dense trees.
We were not the first to load Scott Chair. We watched skiers and snowboarders race down Scott Chute and Juniper Face at speed as we rode up Scott Chair. We decided to try Gentian in hopes of grabbing a clean line. Our skis smiled, as did the people tied to them, as we stood staring at an untouched field of powder stretching between tall trees and extending as far as we could see. Yep! I am sure we were in heaven.
The surface was just deep enough to know we were in powder, and just light enough for making easy turns around tree trunks. It was an uplifting feeling to remember for a long time. It was one of the best runs of the year.
We found Tower 19 to be delightful, and continued into Terry’s Return where untouched snow lay in front of us once again. We did not have a regrettable run all day. There were happy turn squiggled on Reily’s Run, and packed powder turns enjoyed in the Expert Shortcut area. Skiing today was excellent.
Not every moment of the daylight hours brought happiness to my soul. We stopped skiing to make parking reservations a few minutes before noon. There we sat in the Alpine Chalet waiting, with phones in hand, for the clock to strike twelve. I guess half the world was also doing the same thing. Of course, we were not interested in paid parking. Our ski passes cost enough.
I was unable to get to the app a number of times, as I kept receiving an error message. After wasting ski time attempting to obtain a Saturday or Sunday reservation, I gave up. My friend actually got one for each day after trying for fifteen minutes, but she had to re-enter the app over and over again. It appears the app cannot handle the traffic that is created by offering just two times on one day for thousands of people try and make reservations. NOTHING LIKE RUINING A PERFECT MORNING BY TAKING TIME AWAY FROM SKIING TO GET FRUSTRATED TRYING TO MAKE A PARKING RESERVATIONS.
I was asked if I knew when Lakeview might open. I am not sure when it is scheduled to open, but I can tell you that I viewed a snowcat building a ramp at the base.
Happiness is being able to ski most of the mountain. A little more snow is on the way before the weather turns to sunshine, and then the entire mountain should be open. By the way, the restrooms at the base of Sherwood Chair appear to be open and available to accept customers.
Enjoy your day,
Andy
We decided to leave the mountain a bit earlier than we wanted, just to get home in time to make parking reservations on the desktop computer, and maybe have better luck with that method than the phone. Well, starting right at noon we got countless error messages, so we just kept at it, like we were in a 100yd dash…and finally by 12:12 had both days secured. Not a happy customer…
The parking app from hell. Your description made me laugh because I sat there trying to get a reservation but kept getting the error message. After about 5 minutes it finally worked.
The skiing was excellent today. Not quite as good as Saturday, but certainly good. Once the powder was used up, I did a post lunch trip into Gentian Gully. It was like armageddon had hit there. I guess now that there is a bit more snow on the entry, more people are going there! Afternoon laps on Sherwood Face were awesome.
I also saw the cat working on the load platform at Lakeview this afternoon. Also Ray’s Rut was groomed overnight, and that is a HUGE job. Kudos to mountain ops for getting that done. For those unfamiliar, that is the road that lets you get from the bottom of Lakeview over to Sherwood. It’s been single track until now. We had a rowdy series of runs in the WTF zone this morning, with quicker laps due to the groomed Rut.
At noon, four of us were in the lockerroom, cursing what is not an “app” but a kludge of internet redirects that accesses the Honk servers. Earlier in the season it just looked ugly and unprofessional. But with the performance issues over the last few weeks, it is an absolute insult to customers. Three of us got reservations. Just wait until next week…Super Tuesday.
Poised to get a parking reservation at 7:00 sharp. Was redirected to Honk to “complete my purchase “. The icon spun around for a couple minutes, going nowhere.
I backed out, managed to get a res for Sunday. When I went to make another reservation, Saturday was apparently sold out. At 7:04 pm. WTF?!
Isn’t this just special? Unable to log into parking res tonight from 7:00 to 7:56. Gave up. Great system. Wonder if this is just bait to encourage use of $30 res.? Love to know where our $30 fees are going.
You also could have named this post “Am I in Hell?” as it applies to the terrible reservation system. 😎
Strangely, my mobile phone was more successful than my laptop at getting weekend reservations. The phone got through in 10 minutes, the laptop never did.