SAM Magazine - West Dover, Vt., November 21, 2008 - Mount Snow has announced that the resort is tweaking its snow reporting methods and will no longer list "runs open", focusing instead on acreage available for skiing. The ski area says that the move will increase snow and condition reporting accuracy, and give guests a better feel for exactly what the skiing experience is at the mountain. Skiable acres open reporting has long been used by western resorts to reflect the amount of terrain available for skiing on a given day.

"The bottom line is that a trail count does not tell the whole story," says Tim Boyd, president of Mount Snow's parent company, Peak Resorts.

"An acre is an acre. There's no gray area," adds Boyd.

According to Boyd, "In the past, we could report 28 open trails, but in reality there were only 4 top to bottom runs made up of connectors and 'lower' and 'upper' portions of trails. Then, if we reported 54 out of 107 trails it gave the impression that our mountain was 50% open, when in fact, only about 25% of our terrain was skiable."

"New England has a credibility problem when it comes to reporting open terrain," adds Boyd." We're trying to overcome that and be more transparent."

Boyd cited Snowdance, a popular intermediate trail on the Main Face of the mountain, as an example of the misleading nature of high trail counts. "Snowdance has 24 skiable acres. On the other hand, Upper Lodge, Lodge, Choke, Charlie's Chase, Yard Sale, Uncle's and Launch Pad, added all together, comprise just 19 acres. In this case, one trail has more acreage than seven trails combined," says Boyd.

All other statistics, such as open mileage, new snowfall, base depth, etc., will be reported as usual. Guests will still be able to see exactly which trails are open, and if they've seen grooming or snowmaking in the past 24 hours, by visiting Mount Snow's website or referring to on-site snow reports.

Tree skiing will also see a major change, as all nine of the mountain's glades will be open at all times, from opening day to closing day. Tree skiing will not be included in open acreage statistics.

Boyd adds that, by next season, he plans on restructuring the trail names at Mount Snow. He would eliminate "upper" and "lower" portions of trails and designate summit to base trails as one unit. "This 'name game' is misleading, and we're no longer going to hide behind it," says Boyd.

A full explanation of the new snow reporting philosophy can be found on Mount Snow's website, www.mountsnow.com.

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