Adam from Canada writes:
Rode Seymour for the first time yesterday. In a way it's a slightly strange mountain; as many others have noticed the biggest drawback is the lift setup. Aside from magic carpets, it has three actual lifts, all two-person non-express. Broadly, they kind of cover the entire vertical of the mountain in sections, but they're not set up to be ridden sequentially.
The top lift is Brockton, the middle is Mystery, and the bottom is Lodge. But to get from the top of Lodge to the bottom of Mystery is an extremely annoying (for a boarder) five-minute hike. Getting from the top of Mystery to the bottom of Brockton is just a short shuttle run which isn't so bad, but there's really only one run *out* from the Brockton area back to the Mystery area, and it can involve a hike on a board.
The way the lifts are set up makes it feel like a bonsai version of a much bigger resort, where each chair is a separate area, rather than say Grouse, where you can lap the peak to the lowest available elevation on a single chair (Olympic). Brockton in particular feels like a miniaturized version of an alpine bowl, which is kind of cool, but frustrating when each run lasts about 30 seconds and then you're back on a slow two-person chair. One of the best runs on the mountain is Unicorn, except it goes from the top of Mystery to the bottom of Lodge, so you're then stuck with that damn hike from Lodge to Mystery to get back on any decent runs. And, as everyone else pointed out, the chairs are very slow, even by non-express chair standards; even the Lodge lift, which only covers about 60m of vertical (if that), seems to take just forever.
Another reviewer has a point when he says they can't increase overall lift capacity too much without overwhelming the available space on the runs; but as well as increasing capacity and speed somewhat, it certainly feels like there could be substantial improvements made to the overall layout of the chairs and the runs such that the whole mountain would flow together, not feel like three separate, tiny areas.
The other problem with the two-person chairs is it's extremely annoying to be a single, as they don't run singles lines, so you just have to wade into the giant lift line zoo and try and find another single to partner up with.
On the plus side, it definitely has that friendly, small-town feel many other reviews described; despite the rather chaotic lift lines, everyone in them seems to be cheerful and infallibly polite. All the staff I talked to were very friendly, too. Although all the runs feel too short, the variety of styles and difficulties available is nice. It's odd the double black designation isn't used anywhere, though - there's a substantial gap in difficulty between, say, Unicorn and Cliff House, but they're both denoted single blacks. The terrain features available are impressive and well-maintained, they're available all over the mountain and there's a good variety of difficulties available.
The facilities available seemed mostly fine, and apparently have been upgraded somewhat lately. The only complaint I had in this area is that there's a small number of locking racks, and on half of them, the locking bar is rusted over or misaligned with the hole, so you can't actually use it. The rest of the few locking board slots are, as usual, full of (unlocked) skis left by idiots who don't understand what the hell a locking rack is for, or that some of the spots are not longer than others just to make it easier to stuff your skis into them any old way...so in the end I couldn't actually find anywhere to lock up my board, and bearing in mind another reviewer's note about theft, had to drag it inside to lunch with me. It would be nice if the staff could keep an eye on the racks, shift stuff about when necessary, and fix the broken ones. Cypress and Grouse both have substantially more locking racks, in better condition.
Overall, it was an interesting mountain with some good plus points. The drawbacks are probably less of an issue if you're on skis, and the parks probably are the best out of the three lower mainland mountains. But as an all-mountain boarder I'd probably rather be at either of the other two mountains, until the lift situation is sorted out.
2012-01-29 |
