blog by: Dale

May 24, 2008

1st Time in Years--Mt Bachelor Positives

I used to be much more the downhill skier than cyclist. I have gravitated to cycling over the years. There's many reasons for that but one is what a disappointing experience I have often had skiing because of terrible job they do running Mt Bachelor. Over the last several years Mt Bachelor has not operated with the idea that the paying customers get there at opening so you should have the lifts open for them. After a snowstorm, and powder snow--when I prefer to ski--they typically would work on the lifts to get them running after opening. I have often joked that you cannot expect them to deal with snow, they are only a ski resort. All too often prime terrain with great snow conditions has not been available, virtually making the ski area a minor bunny hill ski area. To be fair they have had some difficult rime ice freezing on the chairs, but they have been so lackadaisical and not on top of it that it's hard to cut them any slack. Almost everyone blamed the parent corp., Pwdr. Pwdr was only interesed in squeezing every dime of profit out of Mt Bachelor and strangled their operating budgets. Now a new corporate operator at Pwdr has chopped the heads off 4 department heads, including the top guy saying that change cannot come with the entrenched culture. He also said this:

"Lift operations will change, if they have to run a chairlift all night so it will run in the morning, they’ll do that"

That is sweet music to my ears!

And that's just gravy, what I am really stoked about is the new terain they opened this year. Mt Bachelor extended the cat track at the bottom of the mountain all the way around the east side. It dumps you by the Sunshine Chair. On a spring skiing day I did Sunshine-Summit lift "laps" in 20 minutes. In comparison Northwest-Summit lift "laps" take 45 minutes. There are acres of new stuff below the Cow's face run and you no longer have to traverse out of it to get back to a lift. There will be endless stashes here on powder days.



But the best thing about this are the runs...or might I even call them chutes, that are now accesible on the far east/southeast side of Cow's Face. These runs are not as steep as runs in the Cirque, but they are as steep as anything else on the Mountain. Unlike the Cirque these runs maintain their pitch pretty much the whole way down. I'm guessing maybe as much as 2000 feet! These are some of the longest, steepest runs on Mt Bachelor. These are nothing that will thrill people from Jackson Hole, but for Bachelor it great to have something new like this.

tags: Skiing | permalink |

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