Bald said the state is excited about the prospects of moving forward with a land swap with the federal government that would double the terrain at Cannon Mountain by incorporating the now-defunct Mittersill trails into the ski area.
Double? That is laughable. Maybe a 35% increase at best.
"But it's a question of looking at Cannon and seeing what capital investment needs there are and how a lift on Mittersill fits into the overall management plan," Bald said.
As skier90 suggested, expanding the base lodge area should certainly be a bigger capital investment than expansion. I have to believe that the decision to eliminate the cafe at the Tram must have increased skier/ride capacity at the Peabody Slopes. While discussing the issue with a local Cannon skier this past weekend, the notion that the state would pony up the money for the two lifts required to make the expansion and connection seems suspect.
The part about that article that indicates how much less revenue Cannon makes has some omissions such as the residents day and lower costs for NH residents and other such deals that make the mountain affordable. Cannon may generate less money than other comparable resorts but perhaps that is because it is not trying to gouge consumers but rather run an affordable mountain.
While it excels in operations efficiency, the Dartmouth-Tuck study concluded the state is investing far less in marketing and snowmaking and deferring maintenance.
I can not speak for deferring maintenance, but Cannon significantly stepped up its game on snowmaking and marketing this season. Let us not forget that Cannon often has to abide by people upstairs pulling financial strings. Maybe if mountain managers were given more lee way in decision making then those areas would continue to improve?
Adjacent to Cannon is the private and now defunct Mittersill Mountain ski area. About 100 acres at the summit of Mittersill is owned by the U.S. Forest Service and the surrounding land is owned by the state.
Was this sentence written as a joke? How can Mittersill be both private and USFS landed and the rest owned by the state? Does not compute!
It would include increasing snowmaking to allow 30 to 40 percent more output; a retrofit of the old Mittersill double chair; a 500-foot-long handle tow on Cannon's Taft trail to get skiers and riders up over the Mittersill saddle; more trail and lodge improvements; and the purchase of an additional grooming machine.
A retrofit of the old double chair? They must be joking. It would be cheaper to buy a new lift that thing is in such a sorry state of affairs. A handle tow up the Taft is pointless if a lift is going up to the top any ways. How are they going to handle the increased traffic down the Taft? Widen it?!?! Goodness. The only good thing about a Mittersill expansion is it will practically eliminate any one hiking up the saddle! Those are some very financially intensive plans... and Bald did not include money for creating the plan, clearing the trails, waterbaring the trails, putting snow making into Mittersill, etc. Show me da money, that is what I say. If Bald thinks the expansion to Mittersill will save Cannon from being leased, he is dreaming. Quite the opposite, with the amount of financial investment required, I would suspect NH would be even more interested in finding someone else to pay for the improvements. I am sure the expansion will require lift tickets start heading upwards approaching resort levels... $60 probably isn't high enough to pay for this type of infrastructure plan.
Unless they cleaned up and widened some of that stuff, I suspect many sliders are going to learn to respect glade skiing the hard way. Sure ain't open VT birch skiing fo' sho'.
