(One of the great things about electonic media, it can be changed and updated)
WOW what a face lift and it’s never too late to get in some powder turns. Looks like the base spiked up around 62”! Groomers on the hand will have to wait until tomorrow. I rode the lift today with numerous guest that had been very disappointed in our lack of grooming, something that we have become noted for and very proud of.
After about a 6 minute lift ride, center around the logistic of grooming when its snowing 2-3” an hour for 10 hours and it takes two to three hours to groom a trail, simple math says that the groomed trail could have up to 6” of new snow on it.
I thought I would take this opportunity to let you know that it is too dangerous to groom into the day. We will occasionally be out a little longer in the mornings, but usually not much more than a few minutes
On the more morbid side, hardly a season goes by in our industry, when someone is seriously injured or killed by an encounter with a snowcat. Our business has enough risk every single day and as for grooming when we are in full skier/rider operations is a risk I am not willing to take. For you safety if you see or encounter a snow cat on the mountain please give it a wide clearance, and if y ou can’t see the operator he probably can’t see either.
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19 Responses to Winter finally gets here! (03/17/12)
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Even though I find the information about grooming and such contained in this blog entry helpful, I’m very surprised the GM would write it in such a”grating” tone, especially on the same weekend the season passes went on sale!
I do not make my purchasing decisions based on the GM’s blog entry. However, if the staff I deal with(ticket both, lift etc) interacted with me in such manner, I’d be a very unhappy customer. Especially considering BV markets itself as the “Friendliest Mountain In the West”
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Hey Campo,
Please keep it civil. Why the personal attacks? I’m just providing feedback, content and comment. Jim & crew, do an excellent job – I always give kudos where deserved. I will give criticism where it deserved also. I feel his condescension was unprofessional. In Jim’s rules for the blog he states, “You got a great idea, or if you are aware of something we do that could be done much better – we’d love to hear it! I know together we can make Bear Valley a great place for all, and your feedback is critical to our success.”
Bob
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With all due respect, I have to disagree with Mr. Campo as I certainly would not have done the same as Mr. Gentling posted on his own company web site blog.
General managers of a ski resort should be held to a higher standard of professional conduct in all daily press releases to the public and social media.
I am sure Mr. Gentling is a nice fellow and very well liked but if I was the owner of a corporation and saw my general manager making these comments to potential customers, it would be cause for concern.
Not only is it not practicing common courtesy, blog postings like Mr. Gentling’s will certainly have a negative business impact on potential skiers who may very well decide to go to other, more customer-friendly resorts elsewhere because of it.
And God knows Bear Valley needs all the business it can get in these tough economic times and it should not have the face of the franchise possibly alienating people with polarizing and controversial comments best left private.
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OK now, is everybody over power outage?
Anyone in Mr Gentling’s shoes would have had to have done the same.
The lifts were closed with all customers and employees’ safety in mind. Stop the crying, and stop trying to tell the boss how he is supposed to talk to people. You all must be perfect?
Let the man do his job. Go out and ski, he works his whole year so that you can do just that. Get over it, Bob. What you tell your customer service people isn’t the issue here, nor is your expertise on customer service. You want to self promote? Put a sign up in your yard telling people how awesome you have become. -
Any chance the lower mountain will open this season? Soon?
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Jim, Right now I’m just glad we got all this snow. I was initially critical of the closing but after a cup of coffee and time to reflect, it was probably the only thing you could do. Ski area business is tough and without information to base a decision on; well I think you guys made the right decision and released in proper time. As far as grooming of the trails, I don’t have a dog in that fight, as I don’t care of the trails are groomed or not, but anyone that thinks they go ski in a huge snowstorm and find groom trails may be disappointed.
I would agree with Richard in your blog post; “I just think it is professionally inappropriate for a general manager of a ski resort to comment in such a condescending manner to the public at large on its own forum.” Customers are why you are there:
What I spread to my Customer Service people:
OUR CUSTOMERS• ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE IN ANY BUSINESS
• ARE NOT DEPENDANT ON US… WE ARE DEPENDANT ON THEM
• ARE NOT AN INTERUPTION OR OUR WORK… THEY ARE THE PURPOSE OF IT.
• DO US A FAVOR WHEN THEY CALL… WE ARE NOT DOING THEM A FAVOR BY SERVING THEM
• ARE A PART OF OUR BUSINESS, THEY ARE NOT OUTSIDERS.
• ARE NOT PEOPLE TO ARGUE OR MATCH WITS WITH
• ARE INDIVIDUALS WHO BRING US THEIR WANTS… IT IS OUR JOB TO FILL THOSE WANTS
• ARE DESERVING OF THE MOST COURTEOUS AND ATTENTIVE TREATMENT WE CAN GIVE THEM
• ARE THE LIFEBLOOD OF THIS AND EVERY OTHER BUSINESS.
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Ever thought about attending charm school Jim?
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With the new snow, is there any chance the lower mountain will open this season?
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Ditto to some of the comments above, we drove up Saturday ready for some fresh Sunday Powder. I am a bit taken aback that the backup power was not used on such a fresh day.
Disappointed season pass holder. -
Jim- Personally, I have no problem with anyone venting frustrations in private but in my opinion, your PR team was spot on.
I just think it is professionally inappropriate for a general manager of a ski resort to comment in such a condescending manner to the public at large on its own forum.
Having said that, I should add that I was not offended and realize there are certainly some unwise people out there that could benefit from such a blunt message.
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the news i got was that pg&e hadn’t even figured out what had caused the outage yet, which is why i thought the decisions should have been made earlier. i understand it is a tough call. if they were estimating it might come back on in a few hours, that would be different.
and i am not pretending to have all the answers. i realize it is impossible to make everyone happy (or less unhappy!) in this kind of situation.
i think i get emails as i am a season pass holder. why not at least send a note out to the pass holders early next time (as you know there are a lot of early-rising-powder-hounds in the season ticket bunch) if it looks iffy on opening and let them decide if they want to take the risk on driving up or waiting for the next update. they’ve already paid you for the year so there is less loss of income potential if a few don’t show up and then you do open. but you keep them happier they are more likely to buy a pass the next year!
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Hi Gus – The power has recently been restored, however we will remain closed for the day. Barring any other power loss events, we should be alive and well on Monday. The mtce teams will spend the remainder of the day analyzing the integrity of the lift electrical components as power outages/surges with preceeding “flickers” are definately not our friend – jim
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Always a difficult decision, its almost a no win situation for us both. Making that decision too early can be misleading as well, being eternal optimists we try to wait as long as we can before annoucing a full closure, always hoping that the PG&E team who had been working thru the night to restore power would have some good news for us before we finally pulled the plug. I’m not saying we can’t do better, so we’ll keep trying. In your opinion whats the best way to reach out?
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Well put, Grunt!
You know, for a guy with all of that responsibility of running the show up there, you still have a sense of humor.
You should have NOT groomed runs on your sign boards. That’ll get em good and confused.
Good luck with the power outage.
Colorado is skiing fast right now. Need snow. Please send zonal flow along with the fifty bucks you owe me. -
For the guests complaining about the grooming. 6″ of powder over a groomed trail is chance to relive days of younger fresher legs. I only wish I could of been there.
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I appreciate the reasons that the resort closed on Sunday, but it would have been better to have decided that and posted it by 7am or so so that people didn’t drive up just to drive back again. Notice would have allowed people to make alternate plans such as going to another resort rather than just going home. I hope that if the situation is unchanged on monday that you post the information sooner in respect for your season pass holders.
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Well said, Jim. I’m glad you could get that off your chest!
Any update on your present power outage will be appreciated by those of us wanting to ski next week. -
it was a powder day–who wants that beautiful stuff groomed?! you should wait a day or two after a storm if you like to ski on groomers.
the biggest problem yesterday was not the grooming, which was perfect, but the fact that it took almost 1.5 hours to have any other chair than kuma open, and that kuma ran at 1/2 speed for the first 30 minutes.
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Saturday was the best day all year! Grooming was great and the powder even better!