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DanoT

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Until I started reading this thread I didn't even know I was supposed to covet untracked corduroy. Who knew :huh:

For me, next to fresh pow, fresh cord is it.
 

dbostedo

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For me, next to fresh pow, fresh cord is it.

Yeah, fresh, unfrozen groomed runs give you a little of same smooth feeling you get from a few inches of powder... no lumps, no jarring, your legs don't have to absorb anything and you can go faster than you might otherwise. Lots of fun!
 
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Bad Bob

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It is all fun; what is not "good" is good for you. A personal fav is skiing the grooming line between smooth and crud.

Love the stuff you're with.
 

David Chaus

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It is all fun; what is not "good" is good for you. A personal fav is skiing the grooming line between smooth and crud.

Love the stuff you're with.

‘If you can’t be with the stuff you love, love the stuff you’re with, love the stuff you’re with, love the stuff you’e with. Doo-doot doo-doot doo-doot doot-doo-doot.”
 

dbostedo

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‘If you can’t be with the stuff you love, love the stuff you’re with, love the stuff you’re with, love the stuff you’e with. Doo-doot doo-doot doo-doot doot-doo-doot.”

Shouldn't that be "If you can't ski, on the stuff you love, honey, love the stuff you're with...."
 

bonusrun

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Copper Mountain. A couple of top to bottom runs off the Super Bee high speed chair are groomed nightly. Longest runs of the Colorado Front Range areas, 2600 vertical feet of corduroy! One caveat - racers from all over the world train at Copper from opening until mid December. Just about all the Super Bee terrain is closed to the public. The grooming on the rest of the mountain is just okay until the racers leave. They must have excellent grooming equipment to prepare the terrain for the race training, ski Copper mid winter when that equipment rolls all over the mountain!
 
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TS
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Paul Lutes

Making fresh tracks
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Copper Mountain........ One caveat - racers from all over the world train at Copper from opening until mid December. Just about all the Super Bee terrain is closed to the public ........

That's a pretty definitive caveat; might even call that a game ender.
 

DanoT

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Copper Mountain. A couple of top to bottom runs off the Super Bee high speed chair are groomed nightly. Longest runs of the Colorado Front Range areas, 2600 vertical feet of corduroy! One caveat - racers from all over the world train at Copper from opening until mid December. Just about all the Super Bee terrain is closed to the public. The grooming on the rest of the mountain is just okay until the racers leave. They must have excellent grooming equipment to prepare the terrain for the race training, ski Copper mid winter when that equipment rolls all over the mountain!

Those race teams that arrive for race training in early season represent a important cash flow for Copper.

Back in the mid 2000s the Austrians were not happy with the limited on snow time that their racers were getting at Copper so they made a deal with Sun Peaks to have exclusive pre season access to race training in early November. Copper has since expanded their training terrain and the Austrians have returned.

The Austrians paid Sun Peaks $1M each year for 4 years prior to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Backhoes and dozers were put on a mid mountain run and the run was reshaped under the direction of the Austrian ski team. Snowmaking was extended to the run and a future chairlift was fast tracked. The first season, before the lift was built, snowmobiles were used to return racers to the top after each run.

The Austrians did allow some other teams to train at Sun Peaks and while the National teams don't train there anymore, these days there are lot of young racers from across Canada who show up to train before their home mountains are open and even before SP opens to the public. A few seasons ago SP added more snowmaking to another nearby run to accommodate increased race training demand. The hotels and restaurants love the pre season and early season extra business. And the race teams love the ease of ski in/out accommodation that allows everyone to be on their own schedule more or less. No more having to get everyone together each morning to load up a van for a drive to the hill.

Due to some mild weather in November and December last season, a lot of resorts in the PNW had later than normal openings. Sun Peaks had to delay the preseason training but did get the mountain open along with the race course on their scheduled opening day. Several race teams from Washington and Oregon who had never before been to Sun Peaks ended up arriving for some on snow training while they were waiting for their home mountains to open.
 

Henry

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Beaver Creek has the best ballroom quality grooming I've seen. All the top "executive" destinations are very good...Aspen, Vail, etc., not necessarily the "adventuresome" destinations like Jackson, etc. (which can be very good grooming, but that's not their main thing.)

And then there are the days...April on Blackcomb where the beautiful corduroy was groomed in the evening before it froze into icy grooves of...starched corduroy.
 

socalgal

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James

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Then there's these groomers.

Amazing no one got badly taken out.
You know it's terrible and could barely stop at that point. Yet, you remain in the middle of a turn as a target. Classic, human plays squirrel sitting in road behavior.
They even escaped two people with sports jerseys on. Very lucky.
 
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Pdub

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I am (again) surprised by all the love Deer Valley gets around here, especially in the grooming department. I've skied DV around 15 days scattered over 20 seasons, at various times of year. I have consistently encountered lousy conditions. It's just icy. (Excpet maybe Empire.) And it's often the firmest kind of boilerplate, the kind my Eastern well-tuned carving skis can barely bite into. And I'm an ice-loving New Englander!.

My theories:
1. DV is very crowded and the trails are fairly narrow. The layout seems to channel skiers down the same slopes at the same time. Many have lower skill sets and slide around, pushing snow off the trail. The groomed runs have been skied out within 30 min of opening by the most damaging kind of skier traffic.
2. DV seems to groom right after closing. All the awesome technology in the world is for nothing if it's not timed right. Unless it's really cold, grooming should occur late at night or early in the morning, after the deep freeze has set up the snow. If you groom at 5 PM before the temp drops 15 degress you end up with frozen corduroy the next day. Groom at midnight after the freeze and you get a much more skiable corduroy.
3. DV is not blessed with abundant snowfall, a double whammy. It keeps people on the regular trails and out of the woods. And older snow tends to get pretty firm after so many grooming sessions.
4. Maybe I just have bad luck, a theory I accept is possible but am not willing to retest. I'm done with DV.

Here are my choices:
1. Grand Targhee
2. Powder Mountain
3 Snowmass
4. Jackson Hole

I think these places benefit from some combination of ample dry snow and/or lower ski traffic per acre. I am intrigued by Sun Valley after reading this thread.
 

DanoT

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I think these places benefit from some combination of ample dry snow and/or lower ski traffic per acre. I am intrigued by Sun Valley after reading this thread.

Sun Valley gets a lot less snow than the ones on your list but they do have 500 snow guns and SV really is the best go fast groomer zoomer in N.A.....by a wide margin.
. DV seems to groom right after closing. All the awesome technology in the world is for nothing if it's not timed right. Unless it's really cold, grooming should occur late at night or early in the morning, after the deep freeze has set up the snow. If you groom at 5 PM before the temp drops 15 degress you end up with frozen corduroy the next day. Groom at midnight after the freeze and you get a much more skiable corduroy.

Most big mountains run a 8 hr. grooming shift as soon as the lifts close and then another 8 hr. shift after that on each machine. It normally takes several hours for fresh cord to set up and if the first shift doesn't end until mid night or 1 am then the timing the grooming issue is not really an issue for most of the season.
 

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