Sunday, January 5, 2014

Gore Mountain: 01/04/2014

Daniel skiing the Uncas trail at Gore on Saturday, Jan. 4, 2014.

The Saratoga Skier and Hiker, first-hand accounts of adventures in the Adirondacks and beyond, and Gore Mountain ski blog.

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

I have to thank the media for doing a good job of hyping the cold: it kept the crowds away. Sure, it was chilly (minus 15 along River Road in Warrensburgh on our drive up), but the sun was bright, winds were light (except for at the top of the gondi) and it warmed to a balmy 12 or 15 above by late afternoon.

Darkside

Chilly ride up the Darkside lift

Line-up for Sylvie's Mountain Adventure program.  That snow on Twin Fawns looks pretty nice!

The Saratoga Skier and Hiker, first-hand accounts of adventures in the Adirondacks and beyond, and Gore Mountain ski blog.
Beth opted for a cross-country workout at Garnet Hill (Loppett training) and it was Sylvie's first day of Mountain Adventure (plug: great learning program!), so that left just Daniel and me for the morning. One benefit of Mountain Adventure is that it forces us to get to the mountain early, and we headed straight for the top to catch the summit black diamonds before they got too skied off.

Cloud view: nice to see the High Peaks today

Darkside speed demon

The light crowds kept the snow nice on the trails we skied. Chatiemac was in excellent condition, Lies could use a groom, Darkside had nice snow. As I had suspected, the new snow (12 inches on Thursday, 20 in the last week) wasn't enough to open the glades. Darby Woods was open, and we skied it, but the new snow is light and there simply isn't enough of a base in yet for good tree skiing.

Looks great, but there's not enough base yet

We picked up Sylvie at lunch time and spent the rest of the day on the lower mountain. The lower angled terrain of the lower mountain held great packed powder on everything we skied: Showcase, Sleighride, Wild Air. We took a spin down the North Side and found excellent snow there too. Powder Pass - the trail directly under the North quad chairlift - looked just like it's name and would have been beautiful to ski, too bad it wasn't open.

Our kids like to play on the J-bar slope at the end of the day

Gore is skiing great right now: lots of terrain open and nice snow conditions. Hopefully we'll see the remaining trails coming online soon (Rumor, Sagamore, Topridge, Ski Bowl) and get enough snow to put the woods in play.

8 comments:

  1. We were wondering how they actually groom Rumor and Lies, is there an attachment point for a winch? If so we haven't noticed it do you know?

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  2. Yes, there are winch anchors at the top of both trails, each anchor is a loop of heavy-duty steel cable.

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  3. I was randomly reading your ski blog and saw my brother and I made it into two of your photos haha...picture on the quad, yellow jacket and picture on cloud yellow jacket followed by grey/black jacket

    I'm a regular on NYskiblog and WF/GORE
    -Mike

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  4. Ha! Hope I didn't blow your cover if you were "sick" from work! Saturday sure was nice... what I wouldn't give to have those conditions back now. Thanks for reading!

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  5. Maybe you mentioned it in one of your reviews, but the Adirondack Express has been down now since 12/29. This has been causing some long lines at the Gondy. In fairness, the lines look worse than they are...20 mins is the most I have waited, but this isn't Vermont, so I've gotten spoiled. The word is the Gore people drove to Utah for a part last Friday and were supposed to be back with it Wednesday and try to get it running yesterday. But the snow report shows it still down, so who knows.

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    1. We've skied at Gore twice since the triple went down, Jan 1 and Jan 4. Crowds were quite light both of those days, so the triple wasn't really missed. The gondi wait was maybe 5 minutes at the most on those days, but it probably should have been walk-on. But you're right, it will cause problems on a crowded day. And it leaves Gore vulnerable if there's a mechanical issue with the gondi as there's no other practical way to access the rest of the mountain from the base area.

      I've heard a various accounts of the repair timeline, ranging from in time for MLK weekend to never. Your version, which I hadn't heard, sounds like it would be running quite soon. Hopefully that's correct.

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  6. No update today on the triple. The Straightbrook was also closed today (1/11), and the sand truck is also broken resulting in a parking lot that was downright dangerous. Then lightning closed the whole mountain around 1100am, canceling the race and the bumps contest. And the rain has the base down to nothing again....bare spots everywhere. Gore can't seem to catch a break this year.

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    1. Yikes! I had to work today, and for the first time in my life, spending the day in the office may have been better than spending the day on the slopes! Thanks for the update.

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