From: dwl@watson.ibm.com (David W. Levine)
Subject: Re: Sugarbush Skiing
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 01:07:58 GMT
Reply-To: dwl@watson.ibm.com 
Disclaimer: This posting represents the poster's views, not necessarily those of IBM
Organization: IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center

In article <1gr41rINNofv@hpscit.sc.hp.com>, dianeho@hpdstma.ptp.hp.com
(Diane Ho Binder) writes:
|> Hi,
|>    I'll be skiing at Sugarbush (Vermont) in the weekend of 1/22.  I wonder
|>    whether any netters who have been there could tell me more about
the place.
|>    What is the percentage of ski trails for each class: novice,
intermediate,
|>    and advanced?   Will there be lots of powder skiing during that time
|>    of the year?   How about moguls skiing?   Is the parking in the
|>    weekend terrible?  Any info you can think of (except lodging) would
|>    be very much appreciated.
|> 
|> Diane
|> 


Is there a New England ski conditions part of the FAQ? If not, there should
be and I'll even volunteer to take input, edit and submit one.

In any case. For a given New England Resort, on any given day between
November first and May first, one or more of the following snow surfaces
may be found:

	Hip Deep Powder
        Hip Deep Cement
	Loose powder
	Heavy almost unskiable fresh wet snow
        Packed Powder
	Machine Tilled and Groomed loose granular
	Wet Snow packed and Granular surface

	Machine Made Hardpack
	Machine Made Heavy Wet Slop
	Machine Made Light granular
	Boiler Plate
	Blue Ice
	Grass/Rocks/Twigs

Most of these surfaces can and do co-exist, on the same mountain, trail
, day and
hour. The existance of any such surface at a point in time and space should not
imply that the same or similar surface will exists in adjacent time and space
points. 

Note that weather at any point in space time during the same spread of time can
range from +60+F to -60- F With anything from bright sunshine to blinding 
precipitation of any phase that liquid can enter. (Liquid, Solid, Gaseous and
all combinations thereof) Wind can range from zero to well above 50 Mph.

Sugarbush,  has a good mix of terrain, but it's sort of split up, both between
it's two (disjoint, connected by 5 minute shuttle bus) mountains, and on the
mountains themselvs, and further split by snowmaking and lack thereof. 

Sugarbush proper has a wide range of natural snow terrain and a very limited
range of snowmaking terrain. A little of each, I'd guess the bulk of the
limited
snowmaking stuff is intermediate, although they have one genuine expert
snowmaking
run and a bunch of beginner terrain with snowmaking on it. They have amazingly
nice expert and intermediate stuff, but it all requires a fair bit of natural
snow to open

Sugarbush North has a broader amount of snowmaking terrain, and has a
bunch of it
in most categories. They have a lot less overall expert terrain, and
several of the
Upper intermediate -> lower expert trails seem to have been widened and
smoothed
out in the past few years. If they are having a bad snow stretch, expect
most of
their stuff to be agressively groomed to conserve snow. 

Parking is rarely a problem at Sugarbush South (main mountain) It can be
annoying at north, if only becuase the lot is as steep as most blue squares.
It staircases downhill steeply from the base lodge and it doesn't take
many cars
at all to end up with a long climb to the base lodge. 

The biggest bumps across the two mountains are probably on Upper FIS,
unless it's
an amazing snow year, in which case Steins and all the Castlerock runs
will beat
out even Upper FIS. 

David W. Levine --  dwl@watson.ibm.com  -- IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
                   -- My Opinions, IBM's hardware. -- 
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your
aim" - George Santayana