Bear Creek, Pennsylvania
Bear Creek, an hour from Philadelphia and with other major cities nearby, has been on a tear lately. The 510-vertical-foot area has upgraded its on-hill facilities in recent years, and is now building a new lodge, hotel, banquet facility, rental shop, ski school and day care center. In all, this is a 110,000-square-foot project. All except the hotel will rise on the foundation of the existing base lodge; the hotel will be right next door. Construction began even before the season ended, and all pieces of the puzzle are expected to be ready for the 2004-05 season.
The 57,000-square-foot lodge will house guest service amenities on the ground floor, including a new 1,400-square-foot day care center and a 2,100-square-foot ski school and children’s learning center. A new 11,000-square-foot cafeteria and family seating area occupy the second floor, with space for up to 1,000 guests. Adjoining the dining area is a 4,000-square-foot restaurant and bar. A 7,200-square-foot rental shop is rising just 40 feet from the new lodge and ticket windows, providing improved traffic flow. This building will also house an equipment tuning shop and sports shop.
The new 43,000-square-foot 53-room hotel will offer a combination of traditional rooms and two-room suites. Guests will also have access to a private parking area, as well as an indoor pool and two hot tubs. Adjoining the hotel is a 5,060 square-foot banquet facility with seating for 325.
Mt. Baker, Washington
As part of its long-term program to replace double chairs with fixed-grip quads, Mt. Baker is replacing Chair 6 with a fixed quad. The area has already replaced four other doubles with quads, and plans to replace the remaining two in the next few years. Another goal, says GM Duncan Howat, is to remove the area’s double-black diamond unloading ramps. Since base depths can reach 30 feet, unloading ramps can be long—and steep—before the base builds. On a snowboard, tool of choice for more than half of Baker’s clientele, it was particularly difficult. So the new lift’s top terminal has an adjustable bullwheel, which can be raised as the base grows. Hydraulic rams, powered by a snowcat, raise the bullwheel on a track on the terminal structure, then the bullwheel locks into place.
Baker began removing the old top terminal the day after the area closed. Crews built snow roads to the terminal and towers and towed the old parts down over the snow, using D8 and D9 bulldozers. The new top terminal was also hauled up over the snow (the machines were still getting around on snow, up to 20 feet of it, in early June). Another advantage of the Northwest’s prodigious snows: it keeps the ground from freezing during the winter. So the area began digging and pouring footings in spring as well. The top terminal, along with three lift tower footings, were completed by June 1.
The new bottom-drive, bottom-tension lift is a Doppelmayr/CTEC with diesel power. All Baker’s lifts are diesel powered since there is no public power supply to the drive terminals. Both main and backup engines are sound-insulated 3406 D15 Cats, with electronic fuel control and nearly 500 hp, so the area can extract full carrying capacity out of either engine. As with many of Baker’s lifts, this one is short and steep: 3,855 feet long, with 1,400 vertical. Capacity will increase only from 1,200 to 1,800. With lift rides of six minutes or less and ample capacity for its clientele, detachables are unnecessary. In fact, on the area’s many powder days, staff will only load every other chair to preserve the goods.
Wild Mountain, Minnesota
Wild Mountain has just added the newest feature to its 20-year-old water park: a 5,000 square-foot interactive playground called Wild Adventure Island, aimed at young kids. Imagine a schoolyard play center, equipped with water toys and plunked down in a shallow, 30,000-gallon pond, and you get the idea. The playground structure has six levels, outfitted with crawl nets, four water slides, water cannons and jet sprays that users can operate, and topped by a 350-gallon bucket of water that, like a hyperactive Old Faithful, gushes forth its contents every five minutes, dousing anyone nearby. The pond itself is nestled amid the twists and turns of the water park’s lazy river, so work crews built a bridge over it for building and pouring the pond. The play structure is off the shelf, from Whitewater West Industries. Cost for the project is about $500,000. The new playground complements the rest of the wet-and-dry park, which consists of water slides, a go-cart track, and Alpine slides. GM Daniel Raedeke says that summer volume at the park is 100,000, nearly equaling the ski area’s 125,000 annual visits. Combined with the resort’s paddleboat cruises (the resort operates 250- and 150-person boats) and the 135 campsites, summer business exceeds the winter’s.
Wintergreen, Virginia
In the summer of 2003, a rainstorm dumped 12 to 14 inches of rain on Wintergreen and collapsed the steep hillside next to the area’s tubing hill tows, wiping out the lifts. Right then, the area decided to rebuild with a Magic Carpet conveyor lift. In addition to greater capacity, the carpet liftline requires just six to eight feet in width, versus the 35 to 40 feet the two handle tows needed. The space-saving advantage of the carpet meant that the toe of the hill could be more gradual, making future washouts less likely. “The carpet has greater capacity, is easier to load and unload, and is easier and less expensive to operate,” says GM Jay Roberts. “Although it was more expensive to install—three times as expensive. But in the long run it will be a much better investment.” Work on the 400-foot, 40 hp conveyor was completed just in time for the 2003-04 season. Construction began in late November and finished in early December, just as Wintergreen was beginning to deploy its new, 100-percent automated York snowmaking system.
Whistler/Blackcomb, B.C.
As part of its preparations for hosting the 2005 Snowboard World Championships, Blackcomb has spent US$73,000 to excavate a truly super Superpipe. Located at Base II just above the town of Whistler, this was a cut-and-fill job. Work began Monday April 26, the day after Blackcomb closed, with timber clearing. Two excavators–a 45-ton 345 Cat and a 230 John Deere–tore through the rocky soil, making it unnecessary to blast, as the area had planned to do. The big machines carved out a 150-meter-long (492 feet) trench with a 16.5-degree pitch. The bare pipe is 22 meters wide (172 feet), with 45-degree walls that are 4 meters high (13 feet). With a coating of just 1-2 meters of snow (3 to 6 feet) to cover the ground and shape the walls, it will be possible to make the pipe ride-ready and bring the pipe up to Superpipe dimensions–with 5-meter walls, for example (16-17 feet). To make sure that snow is available, Blackcomb is also installing a six-hydrant snowmaking system, equipped with SMI Super Wizzards. To work the snow, the area installed a winch anchor at the top of the pipe. To remove meltwater at the bottom, the area installed an elaborate French drain. The area is stringing up lights as well, which will enable the World Championships halfpipe event to be broadcast live in prime time. After the Worlds, the lights will make the pipe an evening attraction for all Whistler/Blackcomb guests as a centerpiece of its Night Moves action. The Superpipe is a small piece of over US$10 million in construction at Whistler/Blackcomb this summer, work that includes a 1,100-acre terrain expansion and the final renovations to Creekside, the original village at Whistler that has undergone a four-year facelift.
