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Wintergreen's Downhill Lift Running Sat, Sun, Mon, & Wed week of the 4th

Nasty Nick

Nasty Nick

Chimp
May 15, 2007
15
0
Covesville, Virginia
Note: I made some corrections since I posted yesterday morning, mainly that the lift will not be running Monday.

This schedule is for the downhill trails serviced by the Acorn lift.

4th of July Holliday week: Saturday June 30, Sunday July 1, Wed July 4, Saturday July 7, and Sunday July 8.

For the remainder of July and the entire month of August the Acorn lift will run on Saturdays and Sundays.

It will go back to Saturdays only for September and October.
 
skatetokil

skatetokil

Turbo Monkey
Jan 2, 2005
2,383
-1
DC/Bluemont VA
I made it down to WG for the first time this weekend and had a great day riding with all the Richmond monkeys. I would definitely recommend a trip down for any mid-atlantic riders. The mountain is much less punishing than snowshoe or Diablo but it still had some pucker inducing steep/loose/rocky stuff. I would estimate that I got in 20+ runs riding for about 5 hours, and a significant portion of that was spent getting lost and generally scoping the place out. The weather was perfect, the lift was very fast, and everybody was wearing big grins all day.

That said, there were only 8 people riding on sunday, and at one point there were like 4 manning the lift operation, so I'm not exactly sure how the numbers work out but it can't be good for the resort. Also, the lift people didn't seem to understand how to treat a dh bike. I let them do mine for precisely 1 run before I noticed that they hung it from a poorly padded hook on the stanchion and banged it all over the place taking it off.

DISCLAIMER: I only say the following because I enjoyed my visit and I want to see the program survive.

If you compare it to a place like Wisp where families come rent bikes and putter around the mountain, you can see a clear difference. At wintergreen several trails and stunt sections were outright abandoned, and the trail network in general seemed dilapidated. At wisp everything was fresh and new looking. Pretty. They had bikes on display and signs pushing the program. At wintergreen the office was not obvious, and if I weren't looking for trails I would have never seen them. Everything at WG is just a little bit overgrown, a little bit eroded, a little bit sketchy. It was fun to ride for those who enjoy sliding though corners and bouncing the fillings out of our teeth, but every trail there would benefit from a date with a rake and a pickaxe.

Besides, wicked gnar dh riders cant be the core of the wintergreen mtb program. We're not going to buy houses up there, we're not going to spend money drinking fancy wine at the restaurants. We're going to sleep in our cars and drink miller high life out of a cooler. Thats just the way it is.

To have a friendly and inviting (and more important profitable) trail system, you need to have some lines at least that are groomed. Even the beginner/intermediate trails up there had poor sight lines, no grade reversals, and a disturbing abundance of baby heads and such just waiting to put little Timmy on his ass when the family goes out for a ride.
 
Peete

Peete

Turbo Monkey
May 5, 2002
1,054
0
just south of the ATL
I haven't had a chance to call yet, but does anyone know if WG will run the lift sat and sun over Labor day weekend?

We're trying to work up a small group from GA to ride that weekend.
 
urbaindk

urbaindk

The Real Dr. Science
Jul 12, 2004
4,819
0
Sleepy Hollar
Peete said:
I haven't had a chance to call yet, but does anyone know if WG will run the lift sat and sun over Labor day weekend?

We're trying to work up a small group from GA to ride that weekend.
Click to expand...
I would expect so but you might want to email nicknich@leys.com and ask for sure, then going to only Saturdays after that. I was up there this weekend and they are shorthanded staffwise because all the kids that work there for the summer have gone back to school.

The trails were in great shape btw. Conditions were very dry and loose. Driftalicious and driftacular. Once I got used to letting the back end of the bike find it's own path, it was on. I only rode about 3 hours but got around 12 runs in, mostly on the intermediate side. That's a pretty good turn around for the lifts considering, I'm a hardtail rider and I'm not super fast down the mountain.

My wife and I did a nice hike Friday up on the parkway, a 2.5 hour xc ride in Sherando Saturday, and I rode DH on Sunday. All and all, an excellent weekend at Wintergreen. That's what it's all about.
 
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