The big Corona Virus Shutdown

[jamesdeluxe]

Anyone care to guess at what point we'll be travelling internationally to ski again? Realistically I'm thinking the 20/21 season will be a no go for me. With some good luck I might get some spring skiing in next Easter.

I suppose that the closest experience in our lifetime is September 11. I lived through the entire mess in NYC. They said that the WTC fire was extinguished in three months; however, I remember that it took much longer for the hideous acrid smell that drifted over our Brooklyn apartment to go away and probably five years to stop thinking about it literally every hour of every day (I'm sure people elsewhere moved on much faster).

Many at the time had written off the idea of international or long-distance domestic travel returning to normal for the foreseeable future; however, my 2001-02 season ski-day record shows separate fly-in visits to Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, and driving to northern NY, Vermont, and the Eastern Townships in Quebec -- clearly, I was single and without a kid back then -- so things apparently rebounded very quickly, albeit with enhanced security measures in airports and public spaces.

Obviously, comparing a global pandemic to an isolated terrorist action is apples and oranges; still, is it possible that we'll move on sooner than it appears right now?

 

[Patrick]

In the East the last closures I know about:
Smugglers Notch last day was March 17.
Waterville Valley last day was March 18.

Last Eastern ski area to might be Kamiskotia in Timmins (Shania Twain's hometown), Northern Ontario, March 19.

There were 3 ski areas in New Hampshire that closed on March 18. Cannon, Waterville and Gunstock. Sunapee closed on March 17.

McCauley and Greek Peak NY on March 17. I think I saw maybe other 1-2 other NY ski hills open on the 16th or/and 17th.

 

[Sbooker]

Anyone care to guess at what point we'll be travelling internationally to ski again? Realistically I'm thinking the 20/21 season will be a no go for me. With some good luck I might get some spring skiing in next Easter.

I suppose that the closest experience in our lifetime is September 11. I lived through the entire mess in NYC. They said that the WTC fire was extinguished in three months; however, I remember that it took much longer for the hideous acrid smell that drifted over our Brooklyn apartment to go away and probably five years to stop thinking about it literally every hour of every day (I'm sure people elsewhere moved on much faster).

Many at the time had written off the idea of international or long-distance domestic travel returning to normal for the foreseeable future; however, my 2001-02 season ski-day record shows separate fly-in visits to Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, and driving to northern NY, Vermont, and the Eastern Townships in Quebec -- clearly, I was single and without a kid back then -- so things apparently rebounded very quickly, albeit with enhanced security measures in airports and public spaces.

Obviously, comparing a global pandemic to an isolated terrorist action is apples and oranges; still, is it possible that we'll move on sooner than it appears right now?

Here's hoping. It certainly feels that we're a world away from a resumption of life prior to Covid at the moment.
It's apparent the whole travel landscape could change significantly even if restrictions are lifted. If carriers go under and competition is diminished I would think air travel will become more expensive. Not a good thing for those of us stuck on an island at the bottom of the globe.
I'm curious to know if anyone has made purchases of Ikon/Epic/Mountain Collective/Powder Alliance etc? I was thinking of heading to Canada so I had Mountain Collective on my radar again but I can't risk the purchase knowing that it's highly unlikely I'll be able to use it for our southern hemisphere season that is due to kick of in a few months. (Our National Parks are 'shut' for 6 months).

 

[tseeb]

There's a thread on pugski about holding off pass purchases. See https://www.pugski.com/threads/are-you- ... ass.19455/

Vail says closing early cost them $180-200 million and "we are deferring all auto-renew charges and all spring deadlines for Buddy Tickets into May." It will be interesting to see if Ikon and others announce extensions of best price and renewal discounts.

It would be nice (and motivating) to see more meaningful pass renewal discounts like 20-30% of the pass price since that is how much of the season was lost. I did OK on my Ikon pass with 15 days (for $629), but not as well on Tahoe Local with 8 days ($589). Even though she retired at end of January, my wife did worse with only 3 days in early Jan on her Tahoe Value ($509? - she would have been better off using Buddy tickets from my pass) and 5 days on her Ikon in UT. We planned trips to So. Tahoe in early Feb, but weather and me catching a bad cold kept us away. Before closures, we would have gone to Vail Tahoe resorts in March and April and to Squaw and Mammoth into at least May.

I'm not renewing anytime soon as we are under stay-at-home/social distancing orders until at least May 3. Worst case I can wait until Fall and get a Sierra-Tahoe pass. It's under 18 miles and 30 minutes from my family's cabin and has some good terrain and gets a lot of snow. Their full pass currently is only $449 and even their pass with some blackouts at $379 includes Powder Alliance.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I skied 19 days at 8 different areas on the Ikon base pass in 2019-20. I also skied 3 days on a $169 industry rate Mountain Collective. That doesn't quite measure up to the 37 days at 12 different areas on a full Ikon in 2018-19. However, given the lean Sierra snowpack I probably wasn't getting more than 4-5 more days at Mammoth anyway. My big loss was the planned 3 weeks in the Alps. I redeposited FF miles for no penalty on that but will need to use the Club Med week in Val Thorens next season.

Liz got 6 days on her base Ikon, and considering that 5 of them were at Mammoth that was still a worthwhile purchase.

Living where we do plus the Snowbird timeshare locks us into some form of Ikon. We'll wait for the spring deadline, which I suspect will be extended.

For those who understandably wait on the Ikon, if the price goes up more than you want, the Mountain Collective is a good backup plan IMHO.

I suppose that the closest experience in our lifetime is September 11. I lived through the entire mess in NYC.

So did Liz, and I know she too had a long psychological hangover.

In the US the travel recovery from 9/11 was very gradual. Many airlines went through bankruptcy/reorganization over the ensuing decade. I drove to one week of the Salt Lake Olympics; I did not want any part of airports or rental cars in the context of Olympic security requirements. My first air travel was a month later to Calgary for a week of skiing, fairly normal. The next trip was a big one, 3+ weeks to southern Africa in November/December 2002 including my second eclipse. There were almost no American tourists there; most foreigners were Brits and Germans.

I expect that global travel recovery will be gradual this time as it was for Americans in 2002. Perhaps that means that there will be good deals for awhile for travel junkies like Liz and me. I sympathize with sbooker as it seems that Aussies get the short end of the stick when it comes to travel costs. I expect some travel bargains, but can't say exactly where they might be.

 

[Sbooker]

^^^^^^^^^
There's some Singapore flights from BNE to ZRH in January for $1500 Aud per person return which is historically cheap. Vancouver same time frame is $2300 Aud with Air Canada. Seattle $2000 Aud with Air Canada (that stops in Vancouver for a couple of hours - why is it cheaper???).
I just can't responsibly pull the trigger though. As it is the travel insurance people will likely have Covid get out clauses on their cover even if the whole thing has blown over by then.
It has been many years since I've not had my next ski trip planned with flights booked. Oh the discomfort.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

the travel insurance people will likely have Covid get out clauses on their cover even if the whole thing has blown over by then.

Which brings me back to the general impression of travel insurance that I posited a few pages back -- hardly a front-page scoop but it seems like a preposterous racket, in which they have fine print addressing every possible eventuality/rendering it useless for everyone except experienced tort lawyers.

BNE to ZRH, $1500 Aud/$908 US: that's a deal. I looked it up; the SIngapore Airlines flight is 24.5 hours (!). The shortest flight time is Swiss Air at 22.5 hours with a stop in Hong Kong. Props once again to Sbooker: it ain't easy being a destination skier based down under. My seven-hour overnight nonstop to Zurich is comparatively small potatoes; you can get several hours of sleep and ski a half day after landing.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Which brings me back to the general impression of travel insurance that I posited a few pages back -- hardly a front-page scoop but it seems like a preposterous racket, in which they have fine print addressing every possible eventuality/rendering it useless for everyone except experienced tort lawyers.

+1 I booked the Club Med week late in the game when trouble was already brewing in Italy and so paid $80 for the insurance. But when I called Club Med March 13 to bail, they replied:
1) They offered and I agreed to take a full credit rain check good for 1 year.
2) I asked if I would get a refund by applying the insurance, and they said no, I would have to file paperwork with the insurance company, would still get a credit rather than refund and the credit would only be 90%.

We still have a Danube River cruise scheduled for Aug. 19 - Sep. 3. Final payment is due Apr. 20 so we will be having a discussion soon about our options.

I just talked to Garry, and he skied Baldy March 19-20. The March 11-12 and 15-16 storms dropped only 10 inches at Big Bear and Mt. High but Garry says 2-4 feet at Baldy. Thunder broke down 11AM Friday but he found some good lines down chair 1 on Bentley's though the road/traverse getting out there was sketchy.

 

[Sbooker]

the travel insurance people will likely have Covid get out clauses on their cover even if the whole thing has blown over by then.

Which brings me back to the general impression of travel insurance that I posited a few pages back -- hardly a front-page scoop but it seems like a preposterous racket, in which they have fine print addressing every possible eventuality/rendering it useless for everyone except experienced tort lawyers.

BNE to ZRH, $1500 Aud/$908 US: that's a deal. I looked it up; the SIngapore Airlines flight is 24.5 hours (!). The shortest flight time is Swiss Air at 22.5 hours with a stop in Hong Kong. Props once again to Sbooker: it ain't easy being a destination skier based down under. My seven-hour overnight nonstop to Zurich is comparatively small potatoes; you can get several hours of sleep and ski a half day after landing.

We had a small win in January 2017 with travel insurance. Hailey Airport (Sun Valley)* was closed due to too much snow and Air Alaska - from memory?? - changed the flight departure from Hailey to Boise but we had to make our own way to Boise. We had only a couple of hours notice of this. It was important we got to LA so we could make our connecting flight back to Brisbane. With no public transport available because of mountains of snow we had to get a taxi at 4am from Sun Valley to Boise. Only one taxi driver would take us due to the dumping snow and roads that were in terrible condition as the ploughs couldn't cope with the workload. The negotiated fee was understandably crazy. Once home we made a claim to our insurer and they coughed up quickly without any questions.
*We have vowed never to return to Sun Valley as we don't want to spoil the wonderful memories of those few days of powder skiing. The good people at bestsnow.net suggest that getting lucky like that at Sun Valley is a rarity so we won't push our luck again.

We have become pretty good at travelling long distance without great discomfort. Relatively speaking we are a family of small stature and that helps when trying to sleep on aircraft. Generally we can always get at least 6 hours unbroken sleep on a long haul flight. We've never attempted a ski day on landing. That would be pushing it. The excitement of getting to the destination and knowing that our second day will be on snow helps to mitigate the jetlag I think.

 

[tseeb]

I also had deep snow for my only trip to Sun Valley in January 1982 on San Jose State University annual trip. We had 4 buses and barely got through Donner Pass before it closed for a couple of days due to storm that hit both CA and continued to Sun Valley. We flew back. One of the guys I went with tore up his knee on first run in about 2 feet new. Our group also had other injuries from playing broom hockey when it was close to 0F. They told us to leave water dripping in condos at Dollar Mountain where we stayed to prevent freezing.

Vail is not sure about season down under and has put spending on hold among other cuts. See https://www.vaildaily.com/news/vail-res ... reholders/

 

[Tony Crocker]

...due to storm that hit both CA and continued to Sun Valley.

This is not a coincidence as Sun Valley's biggest dumps often come from SW after hitting Tahoe first. Sun Valley's chronic snow scarcity is due to being blocked out from the more frequent storms that track from the PNW to the Tetons.

My first trip to Sun Valley was late March 1983. The 9 inch powder day may have been modest by sbooker's and tseeb's standards, but the base was 100 inches and 1982-83 (huge El Nino in California) had Sun Valley's third highest snowfall of the past 40 years.

 

[Sbooker]

I also had deep snow for my only trip to Sun Valley in January 1982 on San Jose State University annual trip. We had 4 buses and barely got through Donner Pass before it closed for a couple of days due to storm that hit both CA and continued to Sun Valley. We flew back. One of the guys I went with tore up his knee on first run in about 2 feet new. Our group also had other injuries from playing broom hockey when it was close to 0F. They told us to leave water dripping in condos at Dollar Mountain where we stayed to prevent freezing.

Vail is not sure about season down under and has put spending on hold among other cuts. See https://www.vaildaily.com/news/vail-res ... reholders/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sun Valley delivers for others too! Love the retro story from back in 1982. Super long straight skinny skis I imagine. If you learnt on those it's no wonder you're a gun skier on the 'new' shaped skis. Big chance you were in a onesie in 1982 also?

Vail and Thredbo are being optimistic about our season but the NSW govt have closed the National Park for 6 months...........

I fully acknowledge my recent posts have been line ball off topic. But the real estate game is kinda quiet at the moment - and could be for some time. Despite that I'm still determined to get a ski trip in come next NH winter if there's any way possible. Go fund me?? Anyone willing to chip in?

A little more on topic.
The Aussie Covid 19 numbers are encouraging apparently. Most of my work mates are infectious disease experts now and they say the measures our pollies have put in place recently are excellent. I think they are also encouraged by the middle class welfare that our once conservative government has embarked on. They are paying every employee (via their employer) $750 per week for 6 months with no means test. This is from a government who has been extremely anti socialism. Go figure.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Sun Valley delivers for others too! Love the retro story from back in 1982. Super long straight skinny skis I imagine. If you learnt on those it's no wonder you're a gun skier on the 'new' shaped skis.

I was not a good powder skier in 1983.
http://www.firsttracksonline.com/boards ... 225#p79223
I only had two bell-to-bell powder days before buying the Volant Chubbs in 1996:
http://bestsnow.net/TRsFTO/19870313Kirkwood.html
http://bestsnow.net/TRsFTO/19910321mtbaldy.html

Big chance you were in a onesie in 1982 also?

If admin were still active on this forum, he would have been all over that query.

I used this North Face onesie (bought 1992) for cat/heli for many years. The above pic is from Baldface snowcat in 2012.

They are paying every employee (via their employer) $750 per week for 6 months with no means test.

My understanding is that many Euro countries are doing this also. The government tapping into payroll processing systems is probably the most efficient way to get cash to consumers fast. But what about the people who have been laid off, which is a big number here? The US is giving an extra $600/week for 4 months to those who are on unemployment. That's in addition to a one time payment of $1,200 to everyone making less than $75K/year with phaseout to zero above $100K.

 

[Sbooker]

The retro things are nice to look back on. You sure rock that onesie Tony. Would look better in lilac and lemon though.

The $750 per week payment is termed 'Jobkeeper'. The people that have been laid off are on 'Jobseeker' - a payment of $550 per week. This amount is paid to a person as long as their spouse doesn't earn over $79000 per year.
It is interesting that prior to Covid the Jobseeker payment was significantly less - about $370 per week I believe. The 'Covid 19 Bonus' is only a temporary measure we're told.
A side note. Our age pensioners have had no increase in their fortnightly payment whatsoever.
The demographic I really feel for right now is our self funded retirees. Investment returns are extremely low as it is but they are falling rapidly. They get no assistance whatsoever from our government. As it stands couples with less than $1 000 000 in their superannuation account (I think you call it 401K?) would easily be better off per week/fortnight/month if they hadn't made sacrifices and saved all their working life to earn their 'self funded' status. *I totally understand they have the advantage of their capital sum to fall back on.
Semi-rant over.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Looking back at the first few pages of this thread, there were discussions about what appeared to some as a hysterical overreaction from ski areas that were terminating operations along with some skiers trying to identify and travel to remaining holdout mountains. Seems kinda quaint now, huh? Also, this from Vermont's MRG/Sugarbush in the growing attempt to limit the virus spread, which is frequently becoming an us vs. them situation between urban and rural communities:

Dear Sugarbush and Mad River Glen Communities,
Over the last few difficult weeks, we know that many of you have enjoyed skinning, hiking, skiing, and riding at our mountains. While we fully embrace outdoor recreation, we have reluctantly made the decision to end uphill travel for the rest of this season at both Sugarbush and Mad River Glen, effective at dusk today. As we have become two of the last areas permitting this activity, we are concerned that this will now bring even more people into our community at a time when it is not in anyone’s best interest. Last weekend, both Sugarbush and Mad River Glen saw a large volume of visitors traveling here from around the state and beyond. Though most were practicing social distancing, we unfortunately understand that some may not have been following the proper guidelines. Given the favorable weather this weekend, we would anticipate even larger numbers if we don’t close uphill travel.

We know that outdoor exercise is something that we all enjoy; however, as the worst of the Coronavirus is still in front of us, we believe that this is the most appropriate action to take. Being good community members and looking out for the best interests of the community is a core value that we both hold. We look forward to the return of normalcy. In the meantime, stay healthy.

 

[snowave]

they're a little late to the game, if you ask me. I follow many ski mountains/towns on facebook, and most did this at least 2 weeks ago, including our local area/ McCall. We are a big snowmobile destination also, so they closed all the staging areas because people were still coming from all over to ride.

 

[Marc_C]

Looking back at the first few pages of this thread, there were discussions about what appeared to some as a hysterical overreaction from ski areas that were terminating operations along with some skiers trying to identify and travel to remaining holdout mountains. Seems kinda quaint now, huh?

There are a LOT of social media posts from 2 weeks ago that haven't aged well at all. Most from the right-wing denialists.

 

[flyover]

Dear Sugarbush and Mad River Glen Communities,...Last weekend, both Sugarbush and Mad River Glen saw a large volume of visitors traveling here from around the state and beyond.

Not surprisingly, Samuel L. Jackson is particularly eloquent on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0XDWO1liNo

There are a LOT of social media posts from 2 weeks ago that haven't aged well at all. Most from the right-wing denialists.

With the possible exception of the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, I suspect many of those characterized as "90% dead," and anyone who loves someone so characterized, are likely inclined to agree.

 

[Tony Crocker]

The best policy to deal with coronavirus is timely and aggressive testing combined with contact tracing, as demonstrated in South Korea and Singapore. Especially informative is the contrast between the provinces of Lombardy and Veneto in Italy: https://www.vox.com/covid-19-coronaviru ... ill-it-end

The US is mostly on the Lombardy track. We need those 15 minute Abbott Labs tests to be produced and used in the tens of millions. James' experience is sadly typical in the US; 12 days to get results from his test! Due to the colossal incompetence in US testing we have little choice but to continue the social isolation with its horrendous economic fallout for a longer period of time.

More entertainment for your day, Coronavirus Rhapsody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KPbJ0-DxTc

 

[snowave]

An interesting article about the of cases in the Sun Valley, ID area and also some other resort town mentions. As of yesterday, Blaine Co. has 352 cases.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-des ... the-nation