From my observation of the photographs, I would say as a civil engineer, that the 1st photo shows the pond dam, then remaining photos of soil piles are nothing more than soil stockpiles from the pond excavation. I also saw survey stakes in the photos indicating that a suveyor has staked out the grading plan for the pond meaning that there is a plan for the pond. Thirdly, there is always a pump used during pond construction to keep the area of construction dewatered, thus what you are seeing is a trash pump, not fountain. I would also say from the photos that the dam looks engineered. not just some random pile of dirt that the Masher contends it is. In my opinion, that mound of rocky soil is probably going to disappear or be spread out outside the pond. If the pond has insufficient drainage area or groundwater to maintain a wet pool, then water would have to be directed to the pond via diversion swales or if provided from a local surface water source such as a stream, by pumping. However, you need to get a permit to withdraw water from a stream. Once the pond is full and used for snowmaking, snowmelt could also be used to maintain a wet pool. I would also like to say that the Park Service employees (and certainly an architect) probably have little understanding with the engineering involved in the pond construction.

Well I hope they are following the rules and doing things above board. On some level I definately agree with Mtn masher on several points - it would be good of they left the forest alone for a while if for no other reason than to improve its appearance!

Having a degree in ski area management and also snowmaking manager at Sugarbush VT(and JAY peak before that) before moving back south. The biggest problem 90% of the time is there is simply not enough water available to supply these "monster Systems" now being used. We could literally run the streams dry at sugarbush if we wanted and that was before all the huge upgrades. Alot of times this is a multi year, stepped project than most would see. For instance i know of a few resorts that were in the same boat and were able to talk the state and gov officials into creating a holding pond or lake because they see that as less obstructive than draining a native trout stream or doing major contruction in a stream to add a new pumphouse. These ponds are filler ponds 90%of the time. the streams that flow into them usually could not supply enough water during actual pumping. However the pond fills during the down time (non snowmaking weather) and allow the ponds to be sucked down during times of snowmaking.
If this doesn't work they will ask the state for the next step, a different stream or water source. In my history with snowmaking you take EVERYTHING you can get from the state even if it isnt the ideal thing at the time because EVERYTHING is so hard to get.
What always pissed me off were Gapers wanting to complain about the system or the impact on hte environment then complain that they only have 4 slopes open. Well you cant have both.

POwPOW - do they generally try to recapture their melt off?

PowPow- Is there some rule of thumb for how many millions of gallons of water it takes to cover a ski area? For instance- how much it would take to cover 100 acres in a foot of snow or something like that. It's probably dependent on the climate, but is there any general rule about it?

No place i have ever heard of reclaims runnoff. If it is warm enough to have runnoff then the streams that supply your holding ponds will be raging enough to fill them on thier own. At Jay if the weather was really wacky like a long cold spell where we drained the pond down substantially then we would still pump up to the pond during down time to refill quicker.
some calculations for snowmaking
3.2 Gallons = 1 FT of Snow
1 Gallon = 8.342#
1 FT Water = 7.48 Gallons
1 Acre = 43,560 FT
1 Acre Foot of Snow = 139,322 Gallons of Water

3.2 Gallons of water to make 7.48 Gallons of snow. That's just over 2:1. Is that the "fluffiest" snow can be made by man? No wonder people prefer the real stuff.

That's not much different than the snizzle we kept getting this winter in B-burg. But wow... to cover 100 acres of terrain with a foot of snow (a very, very thin base down here) you need 13.9 million gallons of water. If I wasn't at work, I'd do the conversion into cubic feet to figure out the size of the holding pond you'd need for that. Then there's compression pumps, and the piping systems... this is the world's most complicated plumbing system is what it is!

Thats all the easy stuff though. The hard stuff is getting a bunch of guys to show up to work at midnight and not hiding out smoking weed all night in the valve houses, Then there are the 3 am phone calls from Les Otten (prev. owner ASC) wanting to know why we werent able to open 3 more slopes overnight when the temps only got down to 28 degrees.After you push it all night, systems,people,etc to make as much as possible you had 10 min to scale back your kw power usage by 9am to avoid fines and charges from vermont power during mandated low usage periods. Now i am remembering why i left the industry.

The one winter I worked at a ski area, snowmaking was my favorite job. Cool, down to earth guys, gloves freezing to water pipes pumping 1200 psi, barreling down the mountain on a snowmobile at 40 mph or more, sliding on trash bags down the steepest slope to "check on the equipment," etc. Way, way better than working the food line, I tell ya.

OK, so as much as I hate to bring this one up again I am. The wife was out of town this weekend and I thought some good old male bonding was in store for me and the dog so we headed to blue knob for some hiking. I've never been there before but I've been dying to try it out and I figured a good pre-season scope out was in store following all the controversy over the place.

Let me start by saying what I expected. I love Snowshoe because of the awesome views from the top and the excitement of driving up the windy road to the summit. I just love that experience. This being said, I expected Blue Knob to have that going for it but without the commercialization of it. Timberline as an upside down resort was what I was invisioning I guess so I was pretty psyched about it.

When I got there the place looked like a ghost town which is understandable since its summer and everything going on was at the bottom at the condos. I drove down to the condos to get a drink and then headed back up to the summit to hike around. I got out and walked around the lodge to start off. If a lodge can become this delapidated while still being "managed" then I can only imagine how fast a lodge would turn to crap if abandoned. The deck had boken boards in it, window framing was falling off, and on and on. The place seriously looked like it had been out of business for 10 years. Seriously depressing to say the least. I kind of expected something to be going on up top since they have mountain biking but I guess without shuttle service nobody is going to bike up there.

Me and the pup started heading down what I found out later to be Upper Expressway. Its a blue and looks very much so. We switch over to Upper High Hopes through the woods where we actually find some pretty neat looking marked Mt Bike trails. Again, no shuttle, no bikers. Upper High Hopes was rediculously rocky and had treetops laying to the side of the trail. You could see where they had tried to seed some grass but this certainly isn't the best summer for that so it was just dirt and rock with a little hay mixed in. Definitely not looking good at this point. I'm starting to really doubt I'll ever come back at this point. I look off to Upper Route 66 and its looking much the same but with slightly better attempts at grass growing helping cover the rocks slightly. Again, pretty depressing at this point. We wound around Mambo Alley I think and then Burma Road (I'm not really sure about this since its not marked very good). What I think was Deer Run looked pretty steep for a Blue in this neck of the woods and lower shortway seemed pretty neat although I couldn't really get a good look at it due to the tall weeds. Mine Shaft Glades looked pretty rediculous like expected with plenty of underbrush and rocks. Nothing I'd be excited about doing unless there was plenty of snow...and then it'd probably be awesome, potentially Cherry Bowl esque. Again, it was really hard to get a feel for its pitch due to weeds and such.

We hike over to the mid station and started across the East Wall Traverse. When we got to Extrovert I couldn't believe it. It had a steeper drop in rather than a rolling one so I could see the pitch better than Lower Shortway and boy did it look steep. It seemed much shorter than I expected though. We walked through another Mt. Bike path I found to the right of Extrovert and found a really neat single track Mt Bike feature that someone had made out of a fallen tree and some sticks. They basically took a chainsaw and flattened the top of the fallen tree and then made a slightly banked transition off of it. Pretty neat looking. Anyway, this took us down to where edgeset cut away from extrovert. Now THIS is where Extrovert impressed me. What seemed fairly short from the top now looked like it went on forever. It dropped down steeply to Lower Route 66 where it flattened for the crossing and then looked dropped steeply again to Lower High Hopes and then seemed to just drop off into oblivion...you could then see the runout WAY down there. Pretty impressive looking. The only problem I could see with it was that the cross traffic could limit your enjoyment a bit until you dropped past High Hopes. The soil here was covered in moss which was a little odd. I didn't really see many rocks at all. Now I was starting to get excited again about trying this place out.

We went across Edgeset to the East Wall Glades which again looked iffy but I'm sure enjoyable with a good amount of snow and a good line. From here over to Stemboggen where we climbed back up the bowl. The bowl looked pretty neat but despite the appearance of being grass covered, it was pretty rocky with weeds disguising them. We went up the East Wall Traverse which was a dirt/rock road essentially and up Upper Route 66 which again was rocky.

So, what does this all mean? It means if you thought Timberline had potential out the wazu you ain't seen nothing yet. This place basically has Cherry Bowls all over the place just waiting to be cleaned up. And Extrovert, I can only imagine how great that trail can be. If this place cleaned up the glades, put some top soil back over a couple of the trails, and had 7 springs' snowmaking it'd be without a doubt the best skiing in the mid atlantic. The trails look interesting and not super wide and just straight down the fall line like some places, the views, especially from the top of Extrovert, are spectacular (I can only imagine what its like when its not 90 degrees, 97% humidity, and hazy as L.A.) and you have the anticipating drive to the top I hope we have a great snow year so the lack of snowmaking and rocks don't play a part in it.

In conclusion, I can't wait to try it out this winter.

Oh, and about the old pond that was dry or drained or whatever, they had a dozer beside of it and had obviously been pushing dirt around inside of it so conclude what you will. An odd thing that I noticed was that they had dug a ditch all around the lip of the pond about 2 feet deep or so. What would that be for I wonder? Its probably obvious but I'm not seeing it.

JR, follow the weather and snow reports this winter, check the forum here for corroboration and get thee to Blue Knob sometime when natural conditions are most cooperative, probably in early February. There's an "edge" to the skiing there that is rather unique for our region.