West Mountain: 01/29/2014

Staying home because it’s too cold to ski would have been the wrong call to make last night. Yes, it was cold (upper single digits), but conditions at West Mountain were excellent. Snowmaking and grooming operations have produced nice packed powder surfaces on all open trails. With the exception of a few times that I skied West during or right after a storm, the conditions were about the nicest they’ve been in several years. The good skiing is not just the result of the cold weather we’ve been enjoying, it’s obvious that a lot more care and attention is being given to creating and maintaining quality skiing surfaces. Granted, I’ve only logged two evenings of skiing at West so far this winter, but last night’s conditions weren’t the result of getting lucky and hitting a good night. Snowmaking, grooming and contouring all seem to be head-and-shoulders above what we’ve seen the past few seasons.

Gore Mountain: 01/25/2014

Chatiemac

Consistently cold - make that frigid - temperatures have really improved the ski conditions at Gore over the past week despite minimal new snow. We lucked out with Saturday being the warmest (we cracked into the low teens) day out of the last 5 or 6, and some light snow (an inch or two) kept the skiing nice and the mountain looking wintery.

Beth and the kids on Chati

Whiteface Mountain: 01/19 & 01/20/2014

A quick trip up to Whiteface is the easiest way for our family to log some ski days away from Gore. It’s closer than most of the Vermont areas, Lake Placid is a great town for an overnight stay, we ski for free with our Gore passes, and Whiteface is the King of Eastern skiing, the Olympic Mountain.

Gore Mountain: 01/18/2014

Conditions at Gore today were much improved over last weekend, with snowmaking and grooming crews doing a nice job re-surfacing the open trails and the mountain looking a lot more wintery. The forecasted 1 to 2 inches of snow for today never materialized – instead we had mostly overcast skies with occasional breaks of blue, temps in the 20s, and no wind.

Beth skiing Uncas this morning

Gore Mountain: 01/12/2014

Carousel. Yo-yo. Call it what you want, the up-and-down weather cycles we've had so far this winter have been playing havoc with ski conditions in the Northeast. We've had some good ski conditions, but right now... not so much.

Mid-day gondola non-line

The good news is that bases have held up well on snowmaking trails following Saturday's Big Thaw (aka Thaw #3). The bad news is that the natural snow trails are shot, the woods are shot, and surfaces are coarse frozen granular with some icy patches. If that sounds pretty grim, it is. But with a gradual return to more seasonable weather over the coming week, snowmaking and grooming crews should at least be able to restore the surfaces of many of the currently open trails in time for the MLK weekend.

West Mountain: 01/08/2014

Not only was last night my first visit to West Mountain this winter, it was also my first visit under the mountain’s new management. The Post-Star has done an excellent job covering Apex Capital’s plans for managing the mountain out of bankruptcy, you can read about it here, here, and here. I was anxious to see whatever sprucing up has been done so far at the mountain, and to see what the skiing would be like after rain and warm temperatures Sunday night and Monday followed by the arrival of the over-hyped polar vortex.

14 Deals and Discounts for 2014

If you have flexibility in your schedule, there’s no need to pay full rate for lift tickets. Listed below are the top deals and discounts I’ve found for 2014. All information is accurate at the time of publication, but be sure to check each ski area’s website for additional details. One more tip: “like” each ski area’s Facebook page to stay up to date on additional promotions that may be announced during the season.

#14 – Price Chopper Ski Any 3 coupon books – The $149 Big Mountain passbook gets you 3 full day lift tickets good at Gore, Whiteface, Bromley, Smuggler’s Notch, Jiminy Peak and Windham. There’s also a $119 Family Mountain passbook for West Mountain, Plattekill, Belleayre and several others. These coupons are good Sunday through Friday, non-holiday.

#13 – Take Your Kids to Gore Weeks - Kids 19 and under ski and ride free with a full paying parent all week, Tuesday, January 21 through Sunday, January 26. If you miss that, there’s a second week scheduled for Monday, March 17 through Sunday, March 23. A family of 4 can ski for $150 on the weekend, $120 mid-week (note: Thursdays and Fridays are weekend rate). This is one of the very few ski discounts available on a Saturday.

Gore Mountain: 01/04/2014

With a foot of cold, dry powder from Thursday's storm, conditions were virtually guaranteed to be superb at Gore this weekend. I spent a good part of Thursday at work thinking about how I could be "sick" the next day, but the boss knows there's no such thing as me being legitimately ill the day after a storm. So I had to settle for the day after the day after, which turned out to be pretty good anyway.

Straightbrook looking a lot better than a week ago

Gore Mountain: New Year's Day 01/01/2014

What a surprise to arrive at Gore late (10am) on a holiday and find the main parking lot still half empty. Actually that shouldn’t have been much of a surprise because New Year’s Day hardly ever brings out the crowds. That’s too bad because it happened to be one of the nicest ski days so far this year.

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