About 33-degrees and snowing kinda heavy here ..... no kidding! ....
www.waterville.com/cams ....
Exactly, what is this white stuff and what the h... happened to summer? .....
Doesn't that web cam shot, just off to the left there, look like a great location for a new luxurious hotel or what! ... a great big welcome to Hotel Waterville! ...
... in partnership with the White Mountain National Forest.
... build a road! ...
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So, what's new at Waterville Valley?
Well, this item about removing the staircase in the main base lodge caught my eye. The November 1, 2021 Waterville Valley Wig Wag, a local monthly newspaper, has two paragraphs talking about the lodges in its front page report 'What will skiing look like this year?'
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Lodges
"The base lodge is going through another renovation this year. The stairs to the second floor have been removed due to their age, but also to make more room on the bottom floor. This year the bottom floor can be used to boot up and place belongings into one of the 200 new lockers. Additionally, the resort is installing 100 day-use lockers into Top Dog Rental Shop. You rent a locker for a day and can open it several times a day. Seasonal locker rentals will be available again this season and can be found on the lower level of Top Dog Rental Shop. If all the lockers are full, belongings can be stored at a bag-check in guest services. Both of these are for-fee services.
Once booted up, you return outside to access the ski lifts. Second floor access is only via the courtyard doors or by the carpet lifts. There is no storage space on the second and third floor and all the cubbies have been removed. These two floors are for warmup and food service only."
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So, what the heck does this all mean and how will it be different from last year? I do not really get it, especially about removing the staircase, and "Second floor access is only via the courtyard doors or by carpet lifts." ..... like, what is up with this? This removing a staircase seems at least a wee bit unusual? It sounds like maybe they removed the staircase to get additional room for PAY rental lockers on the first floor of the main base lodge, and the FREEBIE, open cubby wooden storage cubes in the second floor table eating area have been REMOVED.
If this staircase is the one that I think it is, then it was a very wide, large, and central staircase going from the bottom level to the second main level, and removing it will definitely change the functionality of the base lodge. Removing the main entry staircase is/was, has to be a major change to the base lodge so this is a big change.
On October 20, 2019, McDude posted a message with two photographs showing the old Waterville Valley base lodge, and the newer renovated base lodge in a general discussion thread titled "Turning something that was once nice into ..."
Say ....... hey ....... bring back all the old wood-working and lumber-jack tools of 125-years ago that used to be displayed on the walls of the second floor eating area. .....
So ....... after 55-years of use from November 1966 to November 2021 the free storage cubbies on the side wall of the second floor dining room have been removed and replaced with pay storage on the floor below, the first floor. These plywood bins got a lot of use as storage drops for shoes, extra clothes, and brown bag lunches and snacks and they were right there, close to the dining room/cafeteria tables. Must have been one of Tom Corcoran's ideas for storage from 1966 and they got a lot of good use over the years.
Me-thinks the numbers-cruncher upstairs at Team Sununu maybe saw a problem with the 2nd floor cafeteria free storage bins facilitating all those brown bag lunches and skiers enjoying their peanut butter and jam on whole wheat bread as opposed to paying for a nine-dollar cheeseburger. This was a problem-o that needed to get fixed so the staircase was removed! ...