The Snow Centre, Hemel Hempstead

A snowHead

sherlock235, are there no bus routes serving the Centre? I'm surprised a contribution towards public transport was not part of the s. 106, normally you would expect it with this type of construction project.

A snowHead

Boredsurfing,

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

beanie1, homphomp and I on Saturday decided to be lazy and jump into a taxi from the station which cost us £5.40 We were really pleased that we did when later I spoke to skisimon who said that the bus had cost him £7.00 Shocked

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The pomas themselves seemed OK to me but for some reason the uplift tracks became rather bumpy which seemed to make the lifts more jerky. The dismount areas were a bit narrow and awkward, the one on the left easier than the one on the right where I kept nearly thwacking myself into the wall, but poma lifts are miles better than the weird travelator things at Tamworth.

Overall, I thought it was a great place, friendly and attentive staff, good ambience, decent snow. The bar felt a bit airport lounge-ish but very well designed to view the slope, and very reasonable prices (I was expecting the usual 'down south rip-off').

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Frosty the Snowman, thanks for that. I just put my almost failures into the category of 'operator error'.

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I rode up behind Frosty the Snowman on the poma...he has previous in this area wink

..and I can say they worked very well on the whole on saturday night, IMV

Had a great evening and I really couldn't fault the place at all....altho I take the point about bar shifts....

I feel the slope is more expansive than MK as it doesn't have those pillars in the middle... and it coped well with about 100 people using it for 4 hours...

No probs with it at all... would use it again.

If I lived closer I would be a regular visitor..

After all it is free

beanie1, there are buses that run from both apsley- and hemel hempstead rail stations to the town centre, after which you have to get another bus to the snowcentre. i'm not a very patient person and am quite happy to walk to the snowcentre cos i know how to get there. however, i tend to end up with bruises after my numerous wipeouts and am a bit tired after a session, so getting a cab at @ 2230 in the evening isn't that much of a big deal. i don't think the busses run at that time of night, let alone getting a connection in the centre of town.

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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

Iski, did he really say that or are you putting words into his mouth? Puzzled

I have often skied past people between the exit of the tow (past the deep rut) and the top of the slope as I can maintain my speed off the tow and slowing down or stopping would cause a pile-up but I make sure the person in front has plenty of room and I would not hit them in case they fell over. I certainly haven't overtaken anyone before they're well clear of the exit from the tow.

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Sideshow_Bob, Rumour has it your washing up skills are just as speedy... wink

Schuss in Boots, there certainly was a massive pile-up that I couldn't avoid that evening Smile

You know it makes sense.

Sideshow_Bob, He really did say that! I was between the return at the top of the tow and the wall when he overtook me, so not clear of the exit. Waiting for the couple of seconds it would have taken me to clear the exit would not have caused a pile-up. I don't have an issue with someone overtaking me in the manner you describe yourself doing but I don't think the place he chose was suitable and it showed lack of consideration.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Pretty much agree with everything being said here and it seems the food has improved since the preview weekend which is great to hear (I didn't manage to grab any myself so am just going on comments from others) Smile

The lifts at the weekend were markedly better than the last time too and they've sorted out the unloading area so there's no chance of whacking heads with hangers which is good. I noticed the narrowness of the area just before getting onto the slope though, worse as others have said on the right hand lift, and quite a few people seemed to be quite slow getting up the slight, but narrow, slope away from the lift. This potentially could cause a pile up although I didn't see any actually happening. There were a couple of points when I was almost piled into from behind though so for the rest of the night rather than waiting I chose, rightly I feel, to go up the bank of snow as you got off the hanger and head round the side of whichever person was in front of me if they were making slow progress. I make no apologies for this because at no point did I make contact with or get in the way of anyone who was initially in front of me and I didn't see anyone else doing the same thing causing problems either, rather they were doing the same to avoid problems with too many people backing onto the lift unloading area. Oh and I certainly didn't say anything silly like "I rocket off the top of the lift so that I can ski past the person in front and on to the top of the slope without stopping" so it wasnae me! Toofy Grin

Potentially controversial bit now:
Once on the slope proper though progress was sometimes slow due to the number of skiers standing across the top of the slope chatting (a phenomenon we usually moan at snowboarders about, although they sit rather than stand Wink

) ... and sometimes setting off was slightly hairy due to the propensity of some people to launch themselves (usually unsteadily so they may have been in the bar beforehand Wink

) without even a glance to see if anyone else was around!

All in all though the slope coped admirably and given the number of people there everything went pretty smoothly IMHO.

A snowHead

the top of the right hand poma is a bit too tight and is tough especially for Boarders to negotiate. other than building up the snow base to eliminate the slight uphill bit im not sure what they can do..

I did see at one experienced snowhead on the night come a cropper on the top of the poma and get dragged into the tuna nets Laughing

A snowHead

2nd visit update: this time the drag on the left looking up the hill was the bumpy stop-start one, and the other was fine. Weird. Still got embroiled in a massive pile-up in the unloading area though (100% not my fault, some hapless skier a couple of buttons ahead snapped out of her skis somehow) and got clouted in the back of the head by one of the Poma seats whilst trying to disentangle from the Katamari Damacy-esque ball of bodies that resulted.

Although the bit where I tried to ride the lift goofy, and fell off, was 100% my fault. Thankfully the only person to come a cropper as a consequence of this, was me.

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Yeah, the "crenelations" are obviously from 1000 skiers going over the uptrack and terraforming it. Not much you can do about that except maintain it regularly. The stoppy-starty-ness was the spring on the poma's handle reaching full extension and then giving a nasty yank. It's related to the crenalating, clearly, but might indicate a problem with the tension in the springs? I dunno, I'm no more a lift engineer than I'm a snowboarder Smile

The one on the left as you look up the hill, on both my visits, broke down. I think in both cases it had been stopped with the red button due to an incident, but then the lifties couldn't switch it back on again.

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Just to be clear though, I've been twice, and I'm coming again. It's a great place!

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Thinking about it logically, wouldn't it be most likely to happen when the ups and downs are deepest? As you slide down it gives a big yank on the spring, that then jerks you back up again.

After all it is free

rob@rar, it happened constantly, yes, due to the shape of the uptrack. I can tell you don't believe me though. Maybe it's not as noticeable on skis.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

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I'm the clown who caused a shutdown on my first ever trip up the poma there due mainly to my day dreaming and partially due to the fact that the left hand poma seemed to be on the bullwheel while the track was still going up. It may not be an issue at the moment but I'd suggest it would be worth fixing the unload before winter to prevent problems as first time users get snarled up.

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Thought I'd give this a bump as my visit yesterday gave me a chance to see how they cope with things getting busy:

Sat morning was potentially a bit of a mare including:

The GB paralympian team running gates
Ramp up of kids' ski classes
A couple of jokers in red jackets getting their students to ski along on just one inside ski
Some idiots whose binding heels were broken
A mass of snowboarders (possibly another coaching day?)
At least 3 other visiting instructors running classes (I counted BASS x2 plus some guy with a St Motitz jacket

1 Top marks to all the staff who still seem to on the ball and respond quicly to any problem
2 Tireless work by the guys with shovels

Some suggestions, I'm sure that Pete is all over these but my observations:

1 The fence funnel at the bottom doesn't really work too well. Leave a narrow gap and snowboarders get stuck in it unclipping while skiers who naturally want to ski round to the lift have to squeeze through gaps. Even when this was spotted and the skier's left fence removed, leaving the fence to the right still causes the odd issue. I'm not sure there is any definitive solution here.

2 Leaving the SCUK box at the top of the slope didn't seem very smart for a busy day.

3 The left hand lift alwys breaks down due to some derailment at pylon 1. This has happened at least twice every time I visit and ssems to be caused by undulating track from the bottom. Any chance of an engineering solution which would make it more robust?

4 Clearly the slope can resemble the "homerun" at times, not really a problem to me but quite frightening for some of the kids groups, again this is possibly not solvable.

5 The sound system/speakers are shocking. There seems to be no treble and the bass sounds like the speakers are underwater. Relatively upbeat tracks sound like pub singer dirges. Sounds like something cheap in the Argos catalogue and renders many songs unrecognisable. A definite minus in teh customer experience.

6 I assume the number of external coaches will have to be limited at times to allow freeskiing.

7 Ski racks by the bar seem to have gone AWOL possibly temporary to accomodate wheelchair traffic?

snow reports

fatbob,

It got more interesting in the afternoon - the fencing round the box at the top of the slope was taken further out into the main slope to accommodate actual use of the box, which also meant you couldn't ski between the box and the lift line.

Slalom little thingies were put out in the afternoon on the other side meaning there really was a pretty small section to ski down for about the top 1/4. As a consequence of course it got very bumped up.

Some members of the Telford ski club needed to learn how to queue for the drag lift.

There were a few people who clearly weren't in control and could barely manage a turn without falling over - very dangerous when it's so busy as well

You know it makes sense.

Thanks Rob

The box now makes sense, & I wasn't suggesting that classes were a bad thing, I was just surprised that they let so many external coaches in at the same time.

The lefthand (looking up slope) does seem to shut longer on each stoppage when the pylon is involved and it seesm to be a known issue because its the first thing the operators check. Not that this is any more frequent than any other indoor snow place.

Another plus:

Receptionists seme to be on the ball, I was happy to see them rejecting a woman who had one member of her group booked in for a 1 hr intro taster lesson who then wanted a rec pass for the subsequent hour. Receptionist was very firm that the beginner would not be able to ski the main slope after 1 hour.

The only thing that really annoyed me was the soundsystem.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Personally, I don't think it's the number of people on the slope that affects its usability - it's primarily driven by the number of people who can barely ski / board.

40 people on the slope with 20 beginners is a nightmare.

100+ snowHead

s was fine in comparison.

One thing that does annoy me is the couple of instructors who seem to be completely insensitive to the appropriateness of the exercises they're giving their groups with respect to slope size and crowding. About three Thursday's ago they had freestyle furniture out on both sides of the slope - reducing the tope of the slope to about a third - and some numpty of an instructor decided to do a drill with his group where they linked ski poles and skied down in sort of rough circles around each other.

Guess what happened? Yep. Three people trying to free ski got knocked down by the instructor's group. FFS rolling eyes

I completely agree with fatbob on the fence funnel. The biggest problem is that the gap is too narrow and it reduces the effective length of the slope as people cut into the funnel.

A snowHead

A snowHead

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To be honest the coaches thing is not really an issue, it was more the number of them surprised me - although snowboard coaching of necessity causes a crowd at the top of the slope. I also agree that you can get more coached students than freeskiers of varying ability on the slope.

& I say annoyed about the sound system maybe its more like disappointed that its not all that clear.

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it was an interesting stress test... lots of rec skiers ( a few were dubious of rec std) paralympic race lane, snowboard box and multiple coaching groups. in addtional to the external instructors there was also 12 people on a mountain leader refresher course in addtion to our 12, parallel dreams 9 and a dozen on the definition snowboard day.

It was a tough day to teach our content. my only beefs were that the snowboard freestyle trainees should have been at the bottom of the slope. the box at the top needed a big run out cause they were just starting out and it took way too much of the slope up. last week they ran the same camp from the bottom near the fencing and it worked out fine. 2nd was those who set courses didnt get their trainees to slip after they pulled the gates and carrots leaving big rut lines. Fair dues the adaptive athletes cant slip but the coaches should have done a bit more.....

overall it worked out pretty well, i was curious how many were on the main slope as it was the first time i saw queues forming...

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fatbob,

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

And am hoping the cafe staff have had a rethink about coping with the numbers they had - hot drinks were paid for at the bar then you waited - in my case up to 15 minutes on both occasions - for the drinks to finally appear. Also if you order a drink before sitting down the potential for chaos is immense and drinks tend to go astray. If we are going for the Austrian influence the waiters speed round the tables and deliver back - or you can get a drink at the bar straightaway often. This seems a hotchpotch due I think to a lack of capacity in the drinks machines and a lack of cups too. Nothing that can't be sorted but I would hope they will learn from this. And the food ordering at lunchtime got held up by confusion in one large party order which tied up 2 or 3 staff for a while. The staff remained friendly and served well but it seems the system needs a review and revamp.

After all it is free

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It's also a bit weird if you're a solo skiier and fancy something from the bar.

You order a coffee and then they ask you for a table number. You pick one that's basically within your field of vision, (unless you're the type of individual who enjoys memorising table numbers!), and then it's a flat out race to see if the young lad or lass on the coffee machine can get you payed up and moving again, before someone else comes along and plonks themselves at 'your table'!

I swear - panic attack!! Laughing

Just as many problems are caused by park monkeys on non-freestyle nights, who can certainly ski, but who are practicing moves and stacking it. It's fair enough in one sense as that's what practice is for, but piling in at speed halfway down the middle of the main slope causes its own problems.

At least you can generally spot a nervous beginner and steer clear because you can see the disaster coming.

Fundamentally they do OK with a small slope which will always struggle, for any number of reasons, and never be able to please everyone. (Predominantly because people want to be on a mountain, not in a small, crowded fridge). Smile

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The Snow Centre, Hemel Hempstead

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