Golf Course or ski lifts

It's not that simple as you put it.

The plan to raise money for lifts has been around for a long time, and the financing for the lifts has been long underway. This is not a new thing.

The golf course is its own entity and is being financed by a separate group that has nothing to do with the hill, but it will be good for the hill as it will allow the hill to bring in additional revenue for operations (i.e. pay for the new chairs??)

And a new lift is NOT pocket change. The current plan is to replace Motherlode, Paradise, and renovate the Red Chair and some other things. And no, you will not have to wait to get to the top, as the new Motherlode is planned to be a high speed quad, and the new Paradise will be a fixed grip quad. Not cheap.

Hope that answers your questions.

can't say whether or not there are more golfers than skiers in canada (it's not like we can do both all year round)
but it seems to me that golfers are willing to pay for the experience whereas skiers feel they are entitled to toe everything at a discount....

Whatever you do make the mother start at the bottom so we don't have to ride the painfully slow sillyload chair.

Don't get your hopes up:

" We just need a solid base to expand on first - get the facilities and the current chairs upgraded and where we need them "

translation: its about the real estate

Good old Howard, what a talker -- the guy has yin-yan up the ying yang.

You can take the Kat out of Kalifornia, but you can't take the Kalifornia out of the Kat.

The Scorpion and the Frog

One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.
The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn't see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.

Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.

"Hellooo Mr. Frog!" called the scorpion across the water, "Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?"

"Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?" asked the frog hesitantly.

"Because," the scorpion replied, "If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!"

Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. "What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!"

"This is true," agreed the scorpion, "But then I wouldn't be able to get to the other side of the river!"

"Alright then...how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?" said the frog.

"Ahh...," crooned the scorpion, "Because you see, once you've taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!"

So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog's back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog's soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.

Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.

"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"

The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog's back.

"I could not help myself. It is my nature."

Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.

Funny.

I didn't mean "where we need them" in terms of physical location. I meant that metaphorically. You can rationalize all you want, but in the end, I believe everyone will be happy.

Guessed, you keep bringing up real estate, but how do you think we'll pay for the new lifts? It's an unfortunate reality of the mountain, but it's being planned so it's as unobtrusive as possible.

Also, this just has to be said - my opinion is not the official position of the mountain, even though i am employed by the hill. it's just my opinion. Believe me, I don't want to see the town turn into Whistler or Aspen, or see a median real estate price in the millions. I just want the character and economics of the town to stay intact, while the hill runs a smooth and expanded operation with new facilities and expanded terrain.

Does that mean be running motherlode down the same line rather than re-aligning it? Beaver definitely raises a good point about making it possible to avoid Silverlode. But perhaps accomplishing that without substantially interfering with real estate plans might be more difficult.

Nope, at least not to my recollection. If I ever did previously bring up real estate it was a long time ago, but by all means correct me if I'm wrong on that one.

Nevermind the straw-man arguments and red herrings, it should be about the real estate yielding to the skiing & not the reverse.

Let me try to find out more specifics about the lift plans, but it would definitely make sense to put the lower station of Motherlode at the base, next to Silverlode, especially for those snowboarders who get stalled in the runout to Motherlode from Silverlode on a powder day.

I wonder if the base area layout would allow for it though - it would be close in proximity to the new Silverlode if it ran down the old path of Motherlode/Silverlode.

Guessed, I don't have any qualms about having a discussion about skiing vs. real estate, and I do agree with you that the quality of the skiing should not be impacted by the real estate in the first place, and I should hope that it would be improved.

Hard to tell for sure, but it probably could be squeezed in on the uphill side of s*lode. On the plus side it might save a few bucks if some of the the footings and possibly even towers could be re-used with the new lift.

9am on the big days it sure would be nice to have another lift loading at the bottom.

Sounds like a great idea.

We can all ski down through the nasty wet snow and rain on those less than perfect days.

Not only that, we can close earlier because there will be increased skier traffic at the base which will nuke the thin snowpack on the skiout even faster.

Best part - it will take even longer to do avalanche control laps in the morning, so we can preserve the powder even longer...

Just ask any KHMR locals if they love their top to bottom gondola.

Like Ryan, I work there, but these are _MY_ opinions.

Not a big deal really, we're only talking about a few hundred extra vertical feet, not like KHMR where its 3800 total on the bowl over side. (what were they thinking) those that have a problem with it can stick to paradise on those few days!

good point - definitely need to plan on heavy duty summer grooming and eventually snowmaking below indian flats to boost the snowpack early in the year.

Not so - having the lift goes all the way to the bottom assumes it will be high speed. AC laps will be much quicker than they were for the first nearly 30 years on Granite, before the triple.

And of course the upside is being able to avoid Silverlode at 9am and at midday when taking a break, and having more uphill capacity straight from the base.

My reply was based on a ML that ran from the bottom vs one from the current location, whether high speed or not...

The base area is already immacualtely summer groomed. Can't do much more in that zone except plant turf grass. Then we could play golf there. ;) I'm not sure were we could get water for snowmaking.

Personally, I'm happy to trade a few extra minutes on one ride once or twice a day than make every ride that much longer.

I do think it would be sweet to have alternate access to the top, but I have better ideas for that... wanna hear them?

Here it is.

Replace Paradise Chair. Realign it to go deep into the bowl below the pits on Red. Advantage? Longer runs in Jumbo/Orchards area, longer runs off of Roberts, more runs skier's L of Ledges will feed the new chair, longer runs off Red via Rte 66 etc.

Add a Poma or T-bar out of there back to the top of the T-bar.

Voila! Alternate access + way more skiing.

It doesn't offer much more intermediate terrain (groomed) for the people marketing is trying to attract. It also makes it if you want to ski the current runs in Paradise you have to basically go all the way back down the mountain on a cat road... yay... Now if you put that lift in and kept the current Paradise where it is, it might work out.

I'm not sure about that...

It seems that money would be better spent replacing the current alignments and then opening new terrain, rather than redressing the current terrain. It seems that people want to keep the current familiarity that Red has, including the runs off the top of Paradise, while adding more terrain. First and foremost is getting a chair on White Wolf and Grey, and then Topping Creek. However, I think Topping Creek is just for the benefit of the condo people.

That would be pretty cool though, a chair from the pits and another one to the top of the T-Bar. Definitely adds more dimension to the hill - and is a solid backup in case of failure of the Paradise chair.

All of the talk of how to turn Red around, and new lifts high speed or not, new real estate, new lodges etc. is all a complete waste of money unless the most basic of solutions is first solved. The solution to making Red a success for locals, destination guests , staff and all is to OFFER GOOD SERVICE! All of the new lifts in the world, and all of the new real estate in t he world is USELESS unless Red is a FUN place for all to go and not listen to burnt out staff complain about the operation while on the job to guests. What it takes to make a change that will influence aspects of the resort positively is to create the motivation for the staff at the mountain to work hard and offer great service. Incentives , staff parties, some recognition of the staff that are working their ass off without proper resources or time to get there job done...... Creating happy staff, leads to staff enjoying their jobs, leads to great service and friendly faces on the mountain, and makes everyones experience more fun.. and that's what it's all about HAVING FUN, not about who has the best facilities. Facilities will come, but fix the underlying problem first and boost the service levels at the resort. I can list off literally hundreds of simple solutions to improve the guest experience that all cost less than a fraction of a new lift.

You make an excellent point, and that is one of the points that is pushed at nearly every staff meeting. We in general are a happy sort, and we do try to give our service with a smile, especially when we are short on resources and time. (it definitely happens, there are a few at Red that are overworked).

Even with the shortfalls of resources, we still get commendations on our staff and service. This is one that brought a smile to my face:

Good service is not hard to give. :wink: