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Black Mountain Resort Saturday, December 21, 2024 | |
Submitted on December 22, 2024 by alpinevillagepres ( 146) | ||
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Session | Afternoon |
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Ticket Type | Indy Pass |
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Lift Lines | 0 minutes |
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Trail Conditions | 25% open; Packed Powder, Frozen Granular |
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Glades | N/A |
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Moguls | N/A |
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Terrain Park(s) | N/A |
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Run of the Day | Maple Slalom / Speedwell |
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Food and Beverage | Slightly better quality hot dog than before and a much better bun at the Lostbo Cabin. My friend Sarah ordered chicken tenders in the pub and got popcorn chicken bites with fries instead. More on all this below. |
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Comments | General Rant Disclaimer: My parents took me for my first ski lesson in 1985 at the age of 5 and I've been skiing ever since. I love to ski! I don't like change, never have. I'm a throwback. I probably belong in a different era, not exactly sure which one. I prefer the adhesive ticket wicket over the RIFD crap... Welcome to the new Black Mountain NH! I do respect and applaud Erik from Big Red RFID Data Co, Inc for taking this all on and making the big $$ investments needed as the mountain would not be open without his capital investments and visions, but I do miss the funky things that made Black unique. Natural snow, self serve crock pot hotdogs, self adhesive tickets, Allman Brothers over the loudspeakers around the base. The horses, the maple tap lines in the spring. I drove almost 4 hrs each way to Ski Black, I probably would never drive that far for any other mountain. Open basically one trail top to bottom off the double complete with 2 gigantic stair cases on each side of the mid station. No idea why they need 2 of them. Everything is painted red. It is a nice traditional barn red, I'll admit. J-Bar was left alone. Lostbo Cabin has a big new deck with top of line outdoor firepit and 7-11 style hotdog roller and waffle iron. Stainless steel ENTEBANLI RFID & Credit Card kiosks everywhere. I guess the fantasy of using your INDY Pass card as an actual Lift Access Card will never happen.(See Rocket's RFID $5 rant) RFID scanners on double lift and J-Bar (why??) but curiously not the platter pull. Skiing was good for a very cold early season day. Firm yet very edgeble, only a few key spots were skiied off and icy by 2 pm. Upper Maple Slalom was blasted for upper mountain snow farming as we all know. It is a bit wider and smoother, especially at the bottom. Closer to an intermediate trail now than what it once was. Great views from the summit. No lines ever. Maybe the crowd topped out at 50 total skiiers all day. Felt like I saw the same 10 people on each run. Way more staff on hand than they really needed. Erik calls the Lostbo cabin "Alpine Cabin" now for some reason although all signs still say Lostbo. Horse Barn and Horses are gone as was promised. I'm sure there won't be any maple sugaring operation in the spring either. Lower section of lodge remodeled for RFID kiosks and rentals. Same cafeteria and pub upstairs. Saw the setup for the big CO-OP meeting. Enough audio visual equipment to rival a local TV News station! You can read the report on that on this site. Of the $5 million needed to get the Co-Op going, $1 million goes back to Entebeni for their investments. Wonder how much of that is for their RFID crap? A mountain that size and with that base area layout really doesn't need that. Needs 3 times the skiers to be sustainable?? I'm convinced all the electronic data RFID crap raises the overhead of this area way too high. Spent way too much too fast to be able to recoup and fold it all into a happy feel good co-op in one year. Some light remodeling and building and lift maintenance as well as a few more snow guns would have been fine to start. But, like it or not, things change, and Black Mountain is saved from becoming another NELSAP footnote, at least for this season. Merry Christmas! |
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Report Rating | 6
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