The new signs are up at the Downhill Supply Company, and the countdown is on to Friday’s grand opening.

Be there at 4pm on Friday afternoon and one of the first to experience the new shop!

With all of the prep work done, and all of our new snow guns here at the mountain, installation is now well underway. All of Tote Road is now lined with the new guns, and the crew has been at work on Candyside for the past two days. Kings Landing and Hayburner are up next.

It won’t be long before all of these guns are burying trails in beautiful snow…

All of our new low-e snowguns have now arrived, and many have already been installed up on Tote Road (stay tuned for pictures of those next week).

Here’s a closer look at the guns, including one that we’ve set up outside of the Base Lodge for people to check out during Homecoming Weekend.

With low lying areas seeing the first frost of the season last night, it looks like our new snowguns are arriving right on time.

The snowmaking crew has been busy prepping Tote Road, King’s Landing, Hayburner, and Candyside for the new guns, and now the installation begins. When all is said and done, we’ll have 300 of these new guns installed this fall.

Crews are making steady progress on our new $1.4 million irrigation system at the Sugarloaf Golf Club, and with work wrapped up on the back nine, they’ve now shifted to the front.

Our irrigation crew demonstrated some of the new functionality for us yesterday on the tenth hole, and it was impressive. The entire system can be operated remotely using radios, and can be programmed to specific areas at specific times (the crew could water the entire back nine overnight, for instance).

It’s a drastic improvement over the old irrigation system, and the results are strikingly noticeable already. The tenth hole (which was the first hole completed) is already looking healthier than it has in years.

Construction crews (led by bootfitter extraordinaire Jerrod Dicentes) have been making steady progress on renovations to the new Downhill Supply Company in recent weeks, and they’re nearing the final push before the grand opening at Homecoming.

The new counters have been installed, and they’re pretty spectacular. New windows and paint are going in next, and crews have start on the renovations to the exterior of the building now as well.

If you consulted the Sugarloaf trail map last winter, you more than likely found yourself drooling over the prospect of the vaguely and enticingly named “Eastern Territory.”

While it wasn’t ready for skier traffic last winter, our glade crew is busy right now cutting brush and extending the Golden Road to this as-yet untracked area to take you further into the Burnt Mountain wilderness than ever before come wintertime.

As its name implies, the Eastern Territory encompasses a pretty massive area on the eastern side of Brackett Brook (Brackett Basin’s namesake). Much of it has been mechanically logged over the past two winters, making it a mix of gladed areas and skidder roads on moderate to low angle terrain. The area itself is huge, meaning fresh tracks will last for days. Add to that the fact that it’s located over a mile away from Sugarloaf-proper, and the Eastern Territory may never get skied out. Also as the name suggests, the Eastern Territory is wild and untamed; Sugarloafers who make the journey out there are in for an adventure.

To access the Eastern Territory, you’ll enter Brackett Basin at the gate, traverse out to the Golden Road, and then follow it until you encounter the current Burnt Mt hiking trail, which will take you directly into the heart of the new territory. At the bottom, the terrain will funnel you out to Snowbrook, and the base of the Snubber lift. Along the way, you’ll be treated to views of the mountain that few Sugarloafers have seen before, like this one:

The glade crew will be working over the coming months to knock down brush and improve terrain in the Eastern Territory, extending and widening the Golden Road, and improving the entrance and and initial traverse into Brackett Basin.

We’ll be headed up with them at various times to check out the progress, so be sure to follow along for updates.

Like we told you back in June, the big push this summer, in terms of 2020 investment, is in snowmaking. $1 million in new low-energy snowguns, to be precise. That works out to a total of 300 new guns, and the first of them arrived here at the mountain yesterday.

Crews are already busy relocating existing snowmaking infrastructure, and they’ll begin installing the new equipment in the next few weeks, once the rest of it arrives.

As we first announced in an email yesterday (and if you didn’t receive an email, you can sign up here: http://www.sugarloaf.com/Email_Lists.html), the Sugarloaf Ski Shop is in the midst of a dramatic makeover this summer, and starting this season it will officially be known as the “Downhill Supply Company.”

This is far more than a name change. The entire shop has been remodeled, re imagined, and reinvented. Much like a general store back in the days of the loggers who first ventured into the Sugarloaf wilderness, the Downhill Supply Co. will be a one-stop-shop for every mountain adventurer. The store will feature skis, snowboards, helmets, gloves, goggles, jackets, boots, and the finest tuning equipment, along with the dedicated and knowledgeable staff you’ve come to trust over the years.

The walls of the old shop have been torn down, providing a huge new space for merchandise, and the tuning area has been moved downstairs to provide easier access and a more convenient experience.

The shop will feature decor that harkens back to the days of the log drives, with reclaimed wood, re-purposed steel roofing, and vintage lighting. Even the counter tops will be made from slices of a single, massive tree.

The end result is a completely reinvented shop, perfectly designed to outfit you for whatever the mountain decides to throw at you.

As you can see from the photos, construction is in progress as we speak, and the new Downhill Supply Co. will open for business during Homecoming Weekend.

Work is underway on our new $1.4 million irrigation system, and has been progressing as scheduled, one hole at a time. Crews are nearly finished with the tenth hole, and will be moving on to the eleventh next week.

As you can see in the first image here, once the crew has finished digging, installing the new pipe, and recovering the affected area with sod, the impact to the hole is quite minimal.The new system will turn on hole-by-hole as it is completed, allowing our course crew to continue watering the entire course throughout the project.

Though construction is happening on just one hole at a time, leaving 17 holes open and unaffected, the work has proven to be more disruptive to the overall golfing experience than we had originally anticipated. As a result, we’ve lowered greens fees to just $59 until disruptions are reduced to a more acceptable level.

Check out our latest Course Report for the details.