Acreage and Other Ski Area Size Measurements Revisited

[Tony Crocker]

Once it becomes a reality, Utah would leave Colorado in the dust with skier numbers, instead of the other way around

Not likely, given the current numbers of 11M for Colorado and 4M for Utah. Skiable acreage won't go up that much (it would only take 4 lifts, remember) and neither will bed base. And the "volume" destination ski business wants a resort town, of which Utah has one and Colorado has many.

But at a place like Stowe, does anyone know what the real skiable acreage is when you include all the hike-to terrain up top and the sidecountry?

In my incomplete project (inspired by Patrick, put on hold after doing the SW 1/4 of the US over a year ago) to rate ski area size, reliability, distances from places to live, I try to make adjustments for such factors. I've skied Stowe only one day, but I saw some of the between-trails terrain and the official 485 acres is ridiculously low. 1,000 seems about right for what's lift accessible, somewhat influenced by MRG which counts its between-trails terrain and claims 700 acres. Hike-to I put a limit of 10 minutes or so and within controlled boundaries, I think a reasonable compromise between the salidas and JSpins of the skiing world and the typical resort skier who won't even take a few steps uphill.

There is no good substitute for seeing the terrain yourself. Any number-crunching model needs to be tested vs. the real world experience of knowledgeable people in the field. In term of skiable terrain size I consider Mt. Baldy between Mad River Glen and Stowe in size, and would be interested if others who have skied all 3 areas agree. Comparisons like this will help to bring some objectivity across regions. The Euro comparisons would be much more difficult. The directly accessible off-piste between designated pistes is vast and often not controlled. So it's more apples and oranges.

 

[salida]

I've skied Stowe only one day, but I saw some of the between-trails terrain and the official 485 acres is ridiculously low. 1,000 seems about right for what's lift accessible, somewhat influenced by MRG which counts its between-trails terrain and claims 700 acres.

My subjective vote would say, if MRG claims 700, Stowe could claim twice that. There is a tremendous amount of terrain upvalley that is accessible with traverses. Just isnt on the map. Both on the mansfield and spruce side.

 

[Mike Bernstein]

I've skied Stowe only one day, but I saw some of the between-trails terrain and the official 485 acres is ridiculously low. 1,000 seems about right for what's lift accessible, somewhat influenced by MRG which counts its between-trails terrain and claims 700 acres.

My subjective vote would say, if MRG claims 700, Stowe could claim twice that. There is a tremendous amount of terrain upvalley that is accessible with traverses. Just isnt on the map. Both on the mansfield and spruce side.

Not to mention what you could include if you counted the acreage accessible via the free shuttle coming up Rt. 108.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

The fact that people here are having to make educated guesses indicates that the northeast should get its act together and adopt a uniform boundary-to-boundary (obviously, skiable acreage only) measurement system.

 

[Patrick]

The fact that people here are having to make educated guesses indicates that the northeast should get its act together and adopt a uniform boundary-to-boundary (obviously, skiable acreage only) measurement system.

Well for us old enough to remember, skiing in the woods was strictly prohibited at most places when I was in my teens, so the number still reflected that in some way. Claiming numbers boudary-to-boundary isn't necessarly better or worst, most skiers will never venture off the map. I would bet willing to bet that on proportion, a higher hate of skiers at MRG venture off the map versus those at Stowe. Mind you, I'm talking "rates" here, not absolute numbers.

Boundary-to-boundary numbers poses a problem, if you only count the acreage between the trails or do you go behond that?

Would B2B at Sugarbush count the Slide Brook - which is between their trails network.
At MRG, 20th hole is outside the trail network.
Stowe has the Nose, Chin, Notch and the backside toward Bruce and Underhill. Where do you draw the line?
And the Notch at the Smuggs.
Cannon and Mittersill + Tuckerbrook...

I remember telling Tony that I never liked acreage as a number. The one that I prefer is vertical, it's simple and the numbers generally means the same thing everywhere. I know it's not perfect cause you might have a place like Whiteface than has about the same vert as Mammoth or Lake Louise, but nowhere near the same acreage. But that number tells you vertical top-to-bottom which is the same...unless you talk about places like Big Sky. :lol:

No number is perfect. In Europe, they count km of runs. Anyone that has skied the Tram at Cime-Caron at Val Thorens will tell you that 2 runs of the front side kms on 800meters vertical doesn't do it justice. :mrgreen:

 

[jamesdeluxe]

The one thing that is missing in all the talk about linking places in Utah is the fact that in Europe, and the reason most Europeans prefer the ski experience over there, you can ski all day to reach a picturesque shack on a mountain or a ski all morning to reach a remote village for lunch.

I've mentioned that so many times recently in other threads, I felt I would be moving into :dead horse: territory by bringing it up again.

Boundary-to-boundary numbers poses a problem, if you only count the acreage between the trails or do you go behond that?

True, that would be an issue back east because some ski areas don't want to officially open treed terrain. For example, my home hill Belleayre has, beyond a few official glades (that get tracked out quickly), a fair amount of nicely spaced trees between trails and outside the perimeter of the property. For whatever reason (financial liability is always a good guess in the U.S.), they don't "allow" it, but I've often gone into the trees right in front of a patroller with no response. The only time I was sternly reprimanded was when I re-entered an in-bound trail from a clearly OOB section (i.e. not on state land) --apparently, doing that with a valid lift ticket is verboten.

Meanwhile, out west the boundary-to-boundary measuring stick sometimes includes terrain that is patently unskiable (huge rock piles that never get enough snow to cover them, flats with dense pines) or would only be skiable with one of those Shane McConkey parachutes.

So I guess there's always a sticking point with these kind of measurements.

 

[Marc_C]

But at a place like Stowe, does anyone know what the real skiable acreage is when you include all the hike-to terrain up top and the sidecountry?

In my incomplete project (inspired by Patrick, put on hold after doing the SW 1/4 of the US over a year ago) to rate ski area size, reliability, distances from places to live, I try to make adjustments for such factors. I've skied Stowe only one day, but I saw some of the between-trails terrain and the official 485 acres is ridiculously low. 1,000 seems about right for what's lift accessible,....

IIRC, Stowe literature at some point said 1200 acres, boundary to boundary. The hike-to terrain above the lifts and the far side country off the gondola are all considered out of bounds and not included in their official acreage.

 

[J.Spin]

As we've discussed many times, there's a similar apples and oranges thing going on between northeastern ski areas and the west. Most ski areas here only measure the acreage of official cut trails and occasionally include the acreage of official tree skiing -- leaving all the unofficial glades uncounted.

The discussion of ski area acreage reporting is an interesting one that as you mentioned, we’ve had at least a couple of times before on the board. One time it came up in the thread for one of my Lost Trail Powder Mountain reports from 2006, and it was discussed again in a Stowe thread from earlier this year. Those links above are to where the acreage discussion starts in each of those threads, so those that are interested in the topic can go there to check it out. I guess I’d never thought too much about trail acreage until it came up following that Lost Trail report, but I became quite curious when I found out that Lost Trail somehow had more acreage than the biggest resorts in Northern Vermont. Having skied all those areas extensively, that clearly didn’t seem to be the case, so there had to be differences in the way acreage was being reported. As you also mentioned, a lot of it has to do with only counting “formal” trails, although fortunately some of the resorts around here do supply total acreage numbers now that allow a more level comparison. I think that each time we discuss this topic, things become a little clearer, so I’ve added some calculations and comments below.

But at a place like Stowe, does anyone know what the real skiable acreage is when you include all the hike-to terrain up top and the sidecountry?

Based on that conversation that came up in the “Stowe's now officially for sale” thread linked above, I started to get an idea of Stowe’s acreage. Using Google Earth, I measured the approximate dimensions of Stowe’s in bounds terrain, and calculated the area to be roughly 2,000 acres. Since Mad River glen indicates that they have 800 acres within their boundaries according to that 2006 discussion with Tony, 2000 in bounds acres at Stowe seems reasonable to me based on extensive time spent at both areas. Also, if you simply pop onto Google Earth and take a look at both areas from the same eye altitude, it’s easy to see that Mad River Glen is fairly compact. Stowe’s Spruce Peak area alone is nearly as large as the entirety of Mad River Glen, and then Stowe has all the Mt. Mansfield terrain. Also, it’s difficult to tell from looking at Google Earth, since the Toll House trails are fairly narrow and all you see is the lift line unless you look very closely, but Stowe’s Toll House area goes quite a distance down the mountain road. That area certainly doesn’t feature very steep terrain, but there’s another good chunk of in bounds acreage heading all the way down to the base of the Toll Road. I’ve had many a fun day noodling around in the trees down there. So anyway, the 2,000 acres of in bounds terrain at Stowe seems reasonable to me based on Mad River Glen’s numbers, the feel of skiing both areas, and Google Earth estimates.

Estimating Stowe’s hike-to terrain is more difficult because one may have to pick an arbitrary amount of hiking like Tony pointed out, so I’ll start with sidecountry that you can access by traversing, without having to hike. If you look off both sides of the Spruce and Mansfield in bounds areas, you’re probably talking about another 1,000 to 2,000 acres of terrain. I put a pretty big range on that number since there’s so much of it that I’ve yet to even ski, but if you consider stuff like the Bruce Trail that can take you all the way down to the Matterhorn, there’s a lot of terrain off the sides of those mountains. So with sidecountry I guess one could be talking in the 3,000 to 4,000 acre range for Stowe. Now to add on hiking terrain, if you go with Tony’s limit of 10 minutes for hiking, I wouldn’t change the sidecountry number at all. You’re just not going to get too much extra at Stowe with only 10 minutes of upward hiking. If you add in hiking all the way to the Mansfield summit ridge (30+ minutes?) you’re going to get some great terrain, but we’re not necessarily talking a ton of additional acreage over the sidecountry numbers. I guess I’d push it to the upper end of the range I used for sidecountry and call it 4,000 acres. I’m not sure how to incorporate Tony’s rule about controlled boundaries, since avalanches are only an occasional issue up on the Chin and in the Notch, and Stowe doesn’t do any control work that I’m aware of.

I forget, does Sugarbush claim the Slide Brook area, a sizable piece of real estate, as an official part of the resort?

As far as I know, Sugarbush considers the Slide Brook terrain outside their boundaries, but fortunately they do provide the number for their entire acreage including Slide Brook, and they report that as 4,300 acres. Again, based on visual inspection in Google Earth, and the feel of exploring and skiing the area extensively, that number makes sense. Also, it feels in line with the 4,000 acre number that I independently derived for Stowe. If I had to add in the terrain off the outer edges of Sugarbush’s boundaries like I did for Stowe, I would probably come up with a number in the range of 5,000 acres, and that makes sense as well because Sugarbush comes off as a bit more expansive than Stowe.

I’m not sure exactly what you wanted to encompass with regard to the hike-to terrain, but if you were also thinking about the back sides of the resorts (that type of back side backcountry is big at Bolton Valley) you would just roughly double the numbers I provided for each area, so that would put the terrain area somewhere in the 8,000 to 10,000 acre range for Stowe and Sugarbush respectively. Relative to the front sides, the back sides of the resorts don’t see as much skier traffic or maintenance in areas that might need it, so simply doubling the terrain is a little simplistic (see the final paragraph below) but there’s some great skiing in both cases. Relative to the back side of Sugarbush, I hear a lot more about Mt. Mansfield’s backside activity, such as this report from Jumpin’ Jimmy where he did what he called the “3 Towns Tour”. He wrote the report in a bit of a cryptic format, but if you know the area you can tell what he did, essentially heading from Underhill to Stowe to Smuggler’s Notch and back again. Some additional information can be found in the comments if you follow that thread He didn’t spend too much time doing front side laps on that day, but I almost think I’ve heard of him (or someone) doing something like that - hiking up from the back side at the beginning of the day, spending the day riding the lifts, and then heading back down the back side at the end of the day. If you live in the Champlain Valley and are willing to do one skin at the beginning of the day, you don’t have to drive all the way around to the east side of Mansfield if you take that approach. If you check out some of the SkiVT-L reports from Jim, Wes, and that crew, you can get an idea of what transpires on Manny’s backside. I’d argue the Mt. Mansfield backside gets a lot more activity with the Teardrop area, and the State Park access (along with the fact that we get to hear a lot of reports from there on SkiVT-L), but the backside of the Sugarbush area (as well as Mad River Glen) has a staggering amount of terrain, and plenty of great skiing too. You generally don’t hear much about it, and I think that’s partly because so few people ski back there. Even though I’ve drooled over the big vertical dropping off the back sides of Sugarbush and MRG on topo maps and in person, I’ve just barely poked my nose back there and have essentially no idea just how big and good it gets. The skiing is back there though; Bob Gifford spoke about it briefly in a SkiVT-L message from back in January.

Now what portion of all those thousands of in bounds and out of bounds acres is skiable? That is probably the biggest area for debate. I’d argue that for the typical advanced tree skier from around here, you’re talking 80-90% of it. The only areas that are really impassable, and the ones that make up the bulk of that remaining 10-20%, are the areas of dense evergreens just below tree line, and some of those have routes cut through them or portions that get buried with enough snow on places like Mansfield in a decent season. Mountains come to a peak, so those upper elevation areas with very thick evergreens don’t actually account for nearly as much of the total terrain as the flanks below. That’s why I went with the 10-20% number. Below the elevations with the dense evergreens, the vegetation is often mixed evergreens and hardwoods, or sometimes stands of more diffuse evergreens. Depending on the age/history of the various regions of the forest, some of these areas are skiable without any pruning attention. Then of course there are all the areas in which people have done extra work to thin out the vegetation even more. Now, is the typical intermediate skier from wherever going to be able to ski all the acreage that an advanced tree-skiing local from Northern Vermont is going to be able to ski? No. Is the typical advanced/expert skier from wherever going to be able to ski all the acreage that an advanced tree-skiing local from Northern Vermont is going to be able to ski? That’s probably still a no. That may leave resorts in a bit of a quandary as to how to tabulate their skiable terrain. But in general, ski areas that count acreage don’t rule out areas simply because they can’t be skied by everyone. I agree with what has been stated in this thread, that the whole concept of counting only “cut” trails at areas with boundary to boundary skiing is simply a vestige of days when areas didn’t condone skiing off piste. For those areas that now have boundary to boundary policies, I say report the entire acreage and let the skiers sort out what they can and can’t ski.

-J

 

[Marc_C]

I agree with what has been stated in this thread, that the whole concept of counting only “cut” trails at areas with boundary to boundary skiing is simply a vestige of days when areas didn’t condone skiing off piste. For those areas that now have boundary to boundary policies, I say report the entire acreage and let the skiers sort out what they can and can’t ski.

That is probably the best approach. It rapidly becomes intractable if OOB hike-to and side-country terrain is included. Jspin was on his way to including everything north of I-89 and west of 108 as being part of Stowe! The eventual limit of course would be an NP-complete problem.

 

[Mike Bernstein]

I forget, does Sugarbush claim the Slide Brook area, a sizable piece of real estate, as an official part of the resort?

As far as I know, Sugarbush considers the Slide Brook terrain outside their boundaries, but fortunately they do provide the number for their entire acreage including Slide Brook, and they report that as 4,300 acres. Again, based on visual inspection in Google Earth, and the feel of exploring and skiing the area extensively, that number makes sense. Also, it feels in line with the 4,000 acre number that I independently derived for Stowe. If I had to add in the terrain off the outer edges of Sugarbush’s boundaries like I did for Stowe, I would probably come up with a number in the range of 5,000 acres, and that makes sense as well because Sugarbush comes off as a bit more expansive than Stowe.
-J

J.Spin -

Fantastic post, as always. I'm curious about the 5000 acre number for SB you referenced above. This implies an additional 1000 acres for the "near beyond" at SB. I think the 4000 acres they reference includes everything from Jester over to Brambles and the Upper Inverness area up to Stark Mtn that they own as well. If that's the case, I'm not sure how you get to 1000 acres. There really isn't any room between Upper Inverness and the 20th Hole, and then on the other end of the spectrum, I'm not aware of much in the way of skiable terrain in the Bradley Brook drainage and down towards Lincoln Gap Rd. I mean, I guess it's technically skiable, but there's been very little work back there, so I don't know if it would be worth it. Then again, I could be completely off base with that.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Jspin was on his way to including everything north of I-89 and west of 108 as being part of Stowe!

You're just unwilling to come to terms with the immensity of northeastern ski areas.

Tony, we stopped talking about Moonlight Basin in post #2.

 

[Patrick]

Tony, we stopped talking about Moonlight Basin in post #2.

Tony is been to busy creating new threads with Harvey's initial discussion...this one caught him off guard as it was created by Admin.

 

[Tony Crocker]

IIRC, Stowe literature at some point said 1200 acres, boundary to boundary. The hike-to terrain above the lifts and the far side country off the gondola are all considered out of bounds and not included in their official acreage.

This is a number that feels reasonable to me, consistent with the way I rate/adjust acreage for other areas. Might bump it a touch for the "far side country off the gondola," much of which seems quite accessible with less than a 10 minute slog out at the bottom.

As JSpin notes, we did thoroughly explore the acreage/size issues here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1650 . I wonder now how he would compare Lost Trail to Bolton or Mad River?

I remember telling Tony that I never liked acreage as a number. The one that I prefer is vertical, it's simple and the numbers generally means the same thing everywhere. I know it's not perfect cause you might have a place like Whiteface than has about the same vert as Mammoth or Lake Louise, but nowhere near the same acreage. But that number tells you vertical top-to-bottom which is the same...unless you talk about places like Big Sky.

No. ](*,) ](*,) ](*,) Vertical is completely unworkable as a yardstick for comparing area size, with the examples Patrick mentions being illustrative. This is not an East/West issue. We have some tall but narrow mountains in the West, like Ajax and Highlands at Aspen. Anyone want to argue that each of these is bigger than Vail because of the vertical when in reality combined they are probably less than 1/3 of Vail?

Acreage is workable, and we have logical means to make appropriate adjustments. Acreage represents horizontal variety, while we want vertical variety. So adjust acreage if the area in question deviates significantly from the mainstream 4-1 length-to-vertical relationship. Often doable just by looking at a trail map as I did for Whiteface. And the adjustment is moderate (4/3 muliplier for steep areas like Jackson and AltaBird, 4/5 or even 4/6 for Keystone, Northstar or Okemo). Some, but IMHO just a conspicuous minority of areas need subjective adjustments. Big Sky/Moonlight is probably Exhibit A, less usable ski terrain than Mammoth, Squaw, Lake Louise. Ranking the latter 3 areas would be a useful exercise for those with experience at all of them (I think they are very close to equal, all 3). Acreage needs little adjustment in Colorado, and also for the majority of eastern areas that do not have naturally skiable trees between the runs.

With regard to the Vermont areas:
Stowe fits the western 4-1 benchmark well since Forerunner terrain is steeper than that but the gondola and Spruce terrain is flatter. MRG fits well on average too. I'm willing to accept that between trail skiing is mostly usable, though in somewhat lower proportion than Mt. Baldy due to much closer tree spacing. I still think Baldy fits between them in overall size.

Jay has a mild version of the Big Sky problem, a mix of flats and runouts with shorter good fall lines and limited routes through the steep cliffs under the tram. Even though raw acreage is probably closer to Stowe, I say usable ski terrain is closer to MRG.

Killington, aside from the immediate Killington Peak area, is way flatter than the 4-1 benchmark. That would cut adjusted trail acreage down to 1,000 or so. While there is tree skiing, I think it's also mostly near Killington Peak and not pervasive to the whole area as at Stowe, Jay, MRG. So I see an adjusted variety in the 1,500 to maybe 2,000 max range if you're generous with the trees. Bigger than Stowe, but not by a large margin.

 

[J.Spin]

Jspin was on his way to including everything north of I-89 and west of 108 as being part of Stowe!

You're just unwilling to come to terms with the immensity of northeastern ski areas.

I didn't get that impression, I figured Marc was commenting on the fact that one needs to draw the line on borders somewhere, or else it just get silly.

-J

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Jspin was on his way to including everything north of I-89 and west of 108 as being part of Stowe!

You're just unwilling to come to terms with the immensity of northeastern ski areas.

I didn't get that impression, I figured Marc was commenting on the fact that one needs to draw the line on borders somewhere, or else it just get silly.

The next time I make a joke, I'll raise my hand.
:-k

 

[J.Spin]

I've skied Stowe only one day, but I saw some of the between-trails terrain and the official 485 acres is ridiculously low. 1,000 seems about right for what's lift accessible, somewhat influenced by MRG which counts its between-trails terrain and claims 700 acres.

My subjective vote would say, if MRG claims 700, Stowe could claim twice that. There is a tremendous amount of terrain upvalley that is accessible with traverses. Just isnt on the map. Both on the mansfield and spruce side.

IIRC, Stowe literature at some point said 1200 acres, boundary to boundary. The hike-to terrain above the lifts and the far side country off the gondola are all considered out of bounds and not included in their official acreage.

Using Google Earth, I measured the approximate dimensions of Stowe’s in bounds terrain, and calculated the area to be roughly 2,000 acres. Since Mad River glen indicates that they have 800 acres within their boundaries according to that 2006 discussion with Tony, 2000 in bounds acres at Stowe seems reasonable to me based on extensive time spent at both areas. Also, if you simply pop onto Google Earth and take a look at both areas from the same eye altitude, it’s easy to see that Mad River Glen is fairly compact. Stowe’s Spruce Peak area alone is nearly as large as the entirety of Mad River Glen, and then Stowe has all the Mt. Mansfield terrain. Also, it’s difficult to tell from looking at Google Earth, since the Toll House trails are fairly narrow and all you see is the lift line unless you look very closely, but Stowe’s Toll House area goes quite a distance down the mountain road. That area certainly doesn’t feature very steep terrain, but there’s another good chunk of in bounds acreage heading all the way down to the base of the Toll Road. I’ve had many a fun day noodling around in the trees down there. So anyway, the 2,000 acres of in bounds terrain at Stowe seems reasonable to me based on Mad River Glen’s numbers, the feel of skiing both areas, and Google Earth estimates.

There was a good two-fold range in estimates for Stowe’s acreage in this thread, some more subjective than others. Since Stowe isn’t providing us with their boundary to boundary acreage, that’s all we’ve had up to this point. If someone had told me a year or two ago that Stowe was comprised of 1,200 acres of in-bounds terrain, I probably would have said, “Yeah, I’d buy that”. But now that I’ve been back skiing at Stowe with some frequency over the past year (in an era where, for better or worse, I’ve actually come to realize the concept of ski area acreage due to this discussion board), I can see that that number is way off. Try standing in the far end of the main Mansfield parking lot underneath the new Over Easy Gondola, and take in the enormity of Mansfield and Spruce. Obviously it can be difficult for a person to simply gauge acreage by eye, but for anyone familiar with both Mad River Glen and Stowe, it eventually becomes obvious that Stowe is far, far bigger than Mad River Glen. First off, let’s get rid of numbers like 1,000 acres or 1,200 acres of in-bounds terrain for Stowe, they are way off. Stowe’s in-bounds acreage is not some percentage larger than Mad River Glen’s, Stowe’s acreage is fold larger than Mad River Glen’s. I’m not sure where the 1,200 acres of terrain ever came from in the Stowe literature, but I’ll tell you right here and now that it is either omitting a huge amount of terrain within Stowe’s boundaries, or it’s flat out wrong. The proof is below. Salida is the most on track here with the idea of Stowe being twice the size of Mad River Glen, but it’s substantially more than that, even just considering the in-bounds terrain of both areas.

We’ll start out with some semi-objectivity to get the point across. As I mentioned in a previous post in this thread, the in-bounds terrain of Spruce Peak alone, is nearly the size of Mad River Glen’s in-bounds terrain. You can see this if you look at both the mountains on the same scale on Google Earth from directly above (but if you want a hard number from calculations below, the in-bounds area of Spruce Peak is 566 acres, or 71% of Mad River Glen’s in-bounds area). That piece of information right there should be a tip off that the in-bounds terrain on Mansfield is going to dwarf Mad River Glen. In fact, if you do the same comparison using the in-bounds terrain on Mansfield, you’ll see that you can fit the entirety of Mad River Glen’s in-bounds terrain within just Mt. Mansfield’s in-bounds terrain twice… and that’s not even including the Toll House terrain on Mansfield. That should set up a bit of perspective with some degree of objectivity, but now let’s get to the hard numbers.

Since I don’t have the fancy version of Google Earth that will calculate areas of terrain for you, I used a classic, old school technique for chromatography peak integration to get some very accurate numbers for the acreage of Stowe’s in-bounds terrain. I printed out Google Earth maps of the Mad River Glen and Stowe areas at exactly the same scale, very carefully cut out the in-bounds terrain from those sheets according to the exact exterior lines of the perimeter trails, and when I had a chance, I very accurately measured the masses of the papers in the laboratory. Our good Mettler balance is accurate down to 1/10,000 of a gram with about 1% error, and since the masses of the paper I cut out are in the tenths of grams, they are well above the range where there should be any concern about sensitivity of the instrument.

Some notes about what was/wasn’t included for in-bounds terrain:
For the Mad River Glen cut, the Paradise area was included, since that is now on the map and is presumably in-bounds terrain. However, nothing outside the regular boundaries (20th hole etc.) was included.
For the Mt. Mansfield cut, the Kitchen Wall area was not included, all that was included was the extent of in-bounds terrain up to Cliff Trail and Nosedive Bypass.

So, if we trust the 800 acres number that Mad River Glen is providing for their in-bounds area, and they do cite it at least twice on their website, Stowe’s in-bounds area comes out as follows:

Mt. Mansfield: 1,842 acres
Spruce Peak: 566 acres
Total: 2,408 acres

So there you have it, Stowe’s in-bounds terrain is actually about 2,400 acres by objective measurement, even higher than the 2,000 acres that I obtained from rough linear measurements.

There’s not much to argue about with regard to that number, but for the heck of it, let’s pick at it a bit. Since it’s difficult to assess exactly where the trails are for the Toll House area as they may be narrow and don’t show well through the foliage, let’s play Devil’s advocate and say I included too much terrain there when I cut the Stowe outline. Heck, let’s lop off the whole Toll House area altogether (0.0480 g, 188 acres) just to be sure. That still leaves us with 2220 acres of in-bounds terrain. Then, despite the fact that it’s right in the center of the Mansfield terrain and I know for a fact that there is some great skiing in there, let’s cut out the entire area beneath Lower Cliff Trail and Lower Rimrock (0.0481 g, 188 acres) because I think it might have been considered out of bounds at one time. That still leaves over 2,000 acres of in-bounds terrain at the resort, even in the pickiest sense.

So, the two most objective assessments of Stowe’s in-bounds acreage that I’ve seen in this thread are the (less accurate) 2,000 acres derived from linear measurements on Google Earth, and the (more accurate) 2,400 acres derived from the area by mass approach.

I’ll finish by saying that with the actual physical cuts of paper in hand, it’s possible to fit two entire copies of Mad River Glen’s 800 acres of in-bounds terrain into Stowe’s main in-bounds Mansfield terrain alone (not even including the Toll House area). Since that alone is already more than 1,600 acres (1,842 acres by mass), not even including the Toll House area or Spruce Peak, I am very curious to hear how Stowe’s boundary to boundary in-bounds terrain can be anything shy of 2,000 acres.

-J

 

[Admin]

Holy $hit! :shock: And I thought I needed a hobby!

 

[Tony Crocker]

Now I really know I have to tread carefully having skied Stowe one day. I'm sure JSpin has done an accurate job of measuring boundary-to-boundary. I've checked the chair ratios from trail maps and Stowe is indeed near the mainstream 4-1 ratio while Mad River is somewhat steeper. So that would narrow the gap a little bit. In both cases the real issue is how much of the terrain between trails is skiable. I know JSpin with his skills is going to say nearly all of it, but I'd like a bit more elaboration.
1) Are Stowe and MRG essentially the same in how much of the woods are skiable?
2) Am I right in assuming that proportion would be considerably lower at Killington?
3) I would also like JSpin to compare to Lost Trail or maybe some western area that I might have skied. Whitefish/Big Mountain perhaps we have in common. That's one of the elite tree skiing areas IMHO, which even amateurs like myself would consider boundary to boundary skiable. I would contend that 1000 wooded acres at Stowe/MRG probably contain at least twice as many trees at 1000 acres at Whitefish. Thus usable ski terrain is lower in Vermont, and I would invite JSpin to speculate in what proportion.

 

[Admin]

Tony, skiable woods are in the eye of the beholder. You and I have a different definition. I'd imagine that J and I would have a different definition. Regardless, I'd say that the vast majority of Stowe's trees are skiable by my definition other than those areas near the Notch that cliff out. You probably wouldn't. That's not an arrogant comment regarding skill, as I'll be the first to admit that there are many, many Eastern tree skiers who put me to shame, but rather a reflection of the reality that it's all about what you're used to.

As others have said here before, some things just don't fit a quantifiable model. It's like jamming a square peg into a round hole.

 

[Patrick]

As others have said here before, some things just don't fit a quantifiable model. It's like jamming a square peg into a round hole.

Acres by ski area A only counts actually trail network.
Acres by ski area B counts boundary-to-boundary. Some of it is rarely skied due to skills or crazyness.
Acres in ski area C is much greater that number reported regardless of method...beyond ski area boundary like places similar to Jay, Stowe, Smuggs, MRG, Cannon, etc.
Kms of trails in France although most of it is in the Alpine.

That is why I always prefered vertical. That is the only constant number that is easily measurable (if the ski area likes to fudge this stats).

Vertical at place A and B = same thing is measured.