25 replies to this topic

[Tin Woodsman]

June Mountain - only way to access a mountain that is supposed to be family oriented is via an ancient, center pole double (Riblet?). Once to the mid-mountain area where all skier services are, you then have a choice of several more modern lifts that spread you out on the upper mountain. Aside from operational/capacity shortcomings during the morning peak, having no place to boot up at the base and forcing families to ride an ancient lift up the steepest terrain on the hill doesn't seem like an optimal approach to me.

[snoloco]

Gore Mountain - There is a section called the Ski Bowl which is pretty far out from the main base. The only way to access it is by going up the Adirondack Express or Gondola and taking a mile long flat skate from the bottom of the North Side. No average skier is going to have any clue how to access it. The only way out is through the Burnt Ridge section which is also separate from the main mountain. Basically it requires taking a mile long cat track from the bottom of the North Side and two lift rides and full runs to get out. The topography of the land is what makes it hard to get out, so I can't knock them for that, but they keep blowing off the cutting a decent trail from the top of Burnt Ridge that goes down there which would mean you could get there without skating. Currently if you're on Burnt Ridge and want to go to the Ski Bowl, you have to ski to the main base, take another lift, ski down a North Side trail, and then skate the cat track the rest of the way. People tend to vote with their feet, and you never see many people down there, so it's probably because the only way down there is hard to find and puts you out of breath.

[snoloco]

The Steamboat base area is definitely one for the bad setups list. There are two ways out, the gondola, and the Christie Peak Express.

The gondola used to be named the Silver Bullet, but the way it actually operates couldn't be further from that. The stupid thing slows down and stops more than any other gondola I've ever ridden. This is because they have a foodservice car on it to bring supplies up to the Thunderhead Lodge. They always slow and stop the lift when transferring it on and off. It's also missing at least 10 cabins, so that makes the line back up worse than it already is. Speaking of which, if you don't arrive at least half an hour before opening, you will be facing a six flags style line. It doesn't take very long for it to back up enough before you end up considering option 2.

Option 2 is to take the Christie Peak Express and go down Main Drag to the Thunderhead Express. Christie is a waste-of-time beginner lift that because it has a turn and midstation, stops even more, and takes even longer to reach the top. It's impossible to ride it without multiple slows and stops.Then you get to take a narrow flat trail over to Thunderhead and ride what I think is the coldest lift on the mountain, at least in the morning to reach the top of the gondola.

The best solution would be to replace the 10 cabins that were removed from the gondola, and find some way to use the foodservice car without slowing the lift and stopping it. That would make the gondola a better option for longer.

[DonaldMReif]

snoloco, on 12 January 2016 - 02:22 PM, said:

The Steamboat base area is definitely one for the bad setups list. There are two ways out, the gondola, and the Christie Peak Express.

The gondola used to be named the Silver Bullet, but the way it actually operates couldn't be further from that. The stupid thing slows down and stops more than any other gondola I've ever ridden. This is because they have a foodservice car on it to bring supplies up to the Thunderhead Lodge. They always slow and stop the lift when transferring it on and off. It's also missing at least 10 cabins, so that makes the line back up worse than it already is. Speaking of which, if you don't arrive at least half an hour before opening, you will be facing a six flags style line. It doesn't take very long for it to back up enough before you end up considering option 2.

Option 2 is to take the Christie Peak Express and go down Main Drag to the Thunderhead Express. Christie is a waste-of-time beginner lift that because it has a turn and midstation, stops even more, and takes even longer to reach the top. It's impossible to ride it without multiple slows and stops.Then you get to take a narrow flat trail over to Thunderhead and ride what I think is the coldest lift on the mountain, at least in the morning to reach the top of the gondola.

The best solution would be to replace the 10 cabins that were removed from the gondola, and find some way to use the foodservice car without slowing the lift and stopping it. That would make the gondola a better option for longer.

As bad as that is, take into account that the base area had an even worse setup before the Christie Peak Express lift was built. Back then, the alternate to the Gondola was to ride one of two double chairlifts (Headwall or Preview) or a triple chairlift (South Face) over to the Christie II and III lifts, and ride one of those up. It made the base area pretty cluttered. The construction of the Christie Peak Express lift saw the removal of Headwall, Preview and Christie II and the realignment of the South Face lift, which became the current Preview lift.

I haven't been to Steamboat in five years, but I don't recall the Thunderhead Express lift feeling like a pretty cold ride in the morning, even though I recall that on the last time I was there, there was one morning where everyone had to use the Christie Peak Express-Main Drag-Thunderhead Express lift route because the Gondola was on wind hold.

[snoloco]

Yes, well aware of the bad setup that was there before the Christie Express went in. I went over Christmas week and it was the best skiing that I'd ever done since it was my first time out west, but getting to the upper mountain each morning sucked. All but 2 mornings the gondola line was already past the covered area by 8:15, so I was stuck using the Christie-Main Drag-Thunderhead route most of the time, which sucked. They really need to do something about that gondola. It constantly slows down and stops, sometimes for long periods of time. I've never seen any other gondola stop as much. They can't change the fact that they have only one base area, but they can replace the missing gondola cabins, and find some way to use the foodservice car without slowing the lift down.

[Emax]

This thread is laughable.