Greetings,
The day is here! Okemo will be opening for skiing and riding
on Tuesday November 24. I
wanted to give you all some ideas on what the plan is as we get the ski season
up and going.
Top-to-bottom skiing and riding is the plan. Guests will
ride the F-10 carpet up to the base of the Sachem Quad. From there they will
ride the Sachem and then ski down Link and Lower World Cup to the Sunburst Quad. From there, Sunburst Six will be the lift to
the summit. In looking at things, I would
say that we will open on Tuesday with skiing and riding on Upper and Lower
World Cup with Nor’easter opening on Wednesday.
The snowmaking plan is to get all we can, laid down before
the warmer weather arrives toward the end of the week. We will continue to make snow tonight on
Upper World Cup, Count Down, Lower World Cup, Link and Nor’easter, as well as
around the Mountain Road area over toward Open Slope down toward the Sachem
quad. With the temperatures that are
forecasted, I also feel there will be some capacity for the snowmakers to run
some guns on Sapphire and Jolly Green Giant.
As we are heading down toward the base of Sachem, we try to
get over onto the grass slopes, as those are normally colder than the paved Mountain Road. We are hopeful that we
can also get to the bottom of the F-10 carpet/Open Slope area so that no
walking down will be required. We are
not planning to use any of our snowmaking capacity from the top of the Base Quads during
this short period of cold temperatures. We just don’t foresee any benefit of trying to make snow from the top of
the quads yet and then not be able to complete the link.
On day one we will have the Base 68 Café, Summit Lodge and
Sitting Bull Lounge open as well as the Clock Tower Snowsports Shop. Lift access RFID cards will be sold at the Resort
Services desk. Seasons pass holders can
pick up their passes at the Resort Services desk too.
The RFID ticketing system is going through the final testing
and looks to be working well. There no-doubt will be some challenges, but we feel very confident that this new system
will be a great step forward for our skiers and riders.
We are looking forward to getting day one under our belt and
starting Okemo's sixtieth ski season.
Thanks for your support and loyalty.
Enjoy the snow.
Bruce Schmidt
Okemo GM
