Hope this finds all of you doing well. We have had some exciting weekends the past couple of weeks. We learned a bunch too. Up until two Saturdays ago, we really had not been tested as far as capacity concerns. We were not even reaching our lowered projected number of skiers. The reason for that was that the snow conditions were not up to par for some folks. Once it snowed, the skiers came in droves … reduced droves, that is. All went well inside and at the lifts; although it is frustrating to load one person per chair nearly 50% of the time. I guess I didn’t anticipate that there would that big of a percentage of folks riding without a friend or family member, or the family members had split up and were riding different lifts; alone. Hard to say.
I also didn’t anticipate that with the reduced number of skiers we would have trouble with parking. As it turns out, the amount of people riding in a car together is drastically reduced from what we are used to on busy weekends. Normally we average 3.4 people per car. This season that average is 1.8 people per car. In hindsight, that sounds about what we should have expected. Since we no longer promote carpooling, eliminated buses/groups, and reduced our own employee shuttles, all of it has contributed to more cars and yet fewer skiers. So, I get why someone may question if we are doing what we promised we would do, which is to reduce the number of skiers on busy days. The optics don’t seem to support that. I promise we have indeed achieved that with great success, but as it turns out we are just as successful at increasing the number of cars in the parking lot.
Any rate, we are going to have to turn the screws a little tighter so to ensure all our pass holders can find parking on the weekends. Meaning: in February there will be no walk-up ticket purchases on the weekends and limited online ticket sales. This weekend is selling out quickly, if not already, and President’s Day Saturday/Sunday are already sold out. Hopefully, we can open things up a little more once March rolls around. Stay tuned.
For those who can, it would still be helpful to our fellow skiers and riders who only have weekends off to visit on weekdays. Be a weekday warrior … it’s better anyway … just sayin.
