Jan 14, 2014, Alp + Central, Scientific Suckage

Probably starting to position themselves for "we were open for X days and Y nights, you had ample opportunities to use your pass" at the end of the year in case the season continues to fizzle.

This. And it will backfire in the long run if conditions this poor persist and Summit tries to tell pass holders they actually got a season in.

What makes everybody so confident their motivations are so sinister, is that how you run your business?

The lifts are open for all the locals who love to ski (and by local I mean the 1million+ people in a 60 mile radius who call the pass their home hill), they're working hard to make the snow safe & fun, and there are now many people, international & local, who have a livelihood again.

Real skiers seem obviously aware that the season is often skewed (see the "Is Winter Over?" thread--which by the way, 'NO', not until March 20th 2014) here.  But if blaming is one's bag, I say blame the ski media; pre-season mags in the mail in Sept & Oct, movies all fall, a created expectation that powder slaying commences between Thanksgiving & Winter Solstice/New Year while the masses are all conveniently on break/holiday.

Skiing, at it's roots, is an elemental sport & we can only take what the mountains give us.  The mechanized industry, and our $400 passes, obviously (myself included) helps us forget that from time to time.

If people are really worried about what the pass is going to do, I'd suggest you contact and start a dialogue with them.  Their guest services have always been very kind & open to my bitching.

Now I'm going......skiing, and then hiking under the 96%moon on some lovingly lined corduroy. 

w.r.t. the "many people, international & local, who have a livelihood again", it's not quite fair that the resort basically locks those folks into committing to work come Dec. 1st even when there's no actual work available. The internationals showed-up to a closed hill with nowhere to go, no work to do and no paychecks to collect. It wasn't until the holidays that mgmt decided, "hey, maybe we should feed these people at least one meal a day since we can't pay them to do the work we brought them here to do." And then not allowing your employees to ski at other Boyne resorts, which is one of the biggest benefits of being an employee of a bigger resort company, while there's no work to be had... tsk, tsk.

It's widely accepted by those I know who work up there that Boyne is really an acronym for "Bend Over, You're Now Employed"

This thread keeps staying alive. Buying a season pass is always a gamble. You don't pay extra if it's a great year, and you don't get your money back if it is a poor year. In case you were not aware, the ski area has no control over the weather. They have done everything they can to get the slopes open with the meager snowpack. The parking lots were all scraped and the snow moved onto the hill. No-one wants to be closed. I see lot's of people out skiing, even at night. They look like they are still having fun.

Hey thought about opening another thread, but figured I will just pile on. Went up last night to Alpy and West. Beautiful night, excellent* snow conditions, had a great time, beat moping around wishing I was taking runs.

Took my daughter up for her first time just to build some confidence before lessons Sat, so did not hit chair 1, but looked pretty much like described above by the OP, with one sort of groom-ish path down chair 1. Chair 3 was hard frozen, piles of ? graupel? corn? not sure what you call the loose stuff that accumulates on top of thaw/freeze cycle snow. Groomed (really only on main chair 3 run) but very closely following terrain variations. West was the same as far as groomed concerned and following low-snow terrain features.

I would bet with the warming conditions during the day Sat. and the right timing on chair 2 could be some extremely fun sun-loosened snow. Full sun exposure on West might soften that up too, if you are by chance held captive there or Central by kids ski school.

If you are going BC guessing you will alternate later in the day what could be some nicely softened south facing in the open with frozen conditions under tree cover. Per NWAC watch for loose wet slides when it warms up.

* excellent as relates to crappy early season low coverage snow beats doing something besides skiing.

slopes exposed to air above 4,000' skied really well today from 11-3.
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