Gore Mountain: 02/10/2018

With something like 18 inches of new snow in the preceding week, we knew skiers would be out in force on Saturday. Sure enough, we had hardly left the house before we started getting text messages from friends who had arrived before us that the lots were full and the lodge mobbed. Our strategy on days like this: head for the Ski Bowl.

Gore Mountain: 02/03/2018

Quick update from Gore as of Saturday. Obviously things have changed with the 7 inches of snow reported the next day and another storm bearing down on us as I type.

Gore Mountain: 12/30/2017

You know it's been cold when a 10 degree day is considered a heat wave. No complaints from the Saratoga Skier crew though. We got in a prime day at Gore in some of the best Christmas Week conditions we've seen since 2012. Between the sun, calm winds and some great skiing it was easy to forget we were right in the middle of a Polar Vortex.

Gore Mountain: 12/09/2017

The second weekend in December is pretty late in the season for us to log our first day at Gore (it's already their fourth weekend of operation), but we've been making the rounds with our MaxPasses. Gore's been our home mountain for years, and we were saying hi to old friends before we even had our skis on.

Gore Mountain: 04/09/2017

If you like spring skiing - and who doesn't? - Sunday was a day not to be missed. Not a cloud in the sky, temperatures warming into the upper 50s (my car said 65 pulling out of Gore's lot around 3:30) and deep snow above mid-mountain thanks to a string of late season storms.

Gore Mountain: 03/11/2017

Cold, empty, firm & fast. Saturday at Gore was almost a carbon copy of the previous weekend. If anything, conditions were just a bit better than last weekend thanks to an inch or two of snow Friday night and a solid effort from the grooming crews.

Gore Mountain: 03/04/2017

After a great stretch of conditions from late January through Presidents' Day Weekend, mother nature seems bent on punishing east coast skiers. We arrived home from Montana last week at the tail end of the multi-day stretch of blowtorch temperatures that vaporized the Adirondacks' snowpack. To add insult to injury, the meltdown was followed by some of the coldest temperatures of the winter, with highs barely cracking the 10-degree mark on Saturday.

Gore Mountain: 02/11/2017

Quick update from Gore on Saturday. Rain earlier in the week put an end to the nice 2+ week stretch of great ski conditions. 4 inches of snow on Thursday followed by 2 more Friday night helped bring conditions back, although the icy crust lurked below the surface at all times to remind skiers that this is the east.

Gore, Mt. VanHo, Whiteface: New Year's weekend 12/30/2016 - 1/01/2017

We had a nice stretch of skiing over the New Year holiday, leveraging our ORDA passes for maximum variety over the three days.

Like most working Americans, I was scheduled to work on Friday and be off on Monday, but with the incoming storm Thursday night I quickly swapped out Monday for Friday. Apparently I wasn't the only one to come up with that idea as we arrived Friday morning to a rapidly filling parking lot, probably the busiest day we've seen at Gore in two years.

Gore Mountain: Christmas Eve, 12/24/2016

It may have been raining down in the lowlands, but Santa showed up a day early at Gore, bringing a couple inches of new snow with him. It didn't matter if you were naughty or nice (we had skiers from both lists in our group), everyone was treated to one of the best early season days so far this winter.

Gore Mountain: 12/17/2016

A nice snowfall arrived with perfect timing Friday night and Saturday morning, setting up one of the best ski days so far this season. We left Saratoga intending to head up to Whiteface, but after being stuck behind snowplows for 10 miles with no sign they were going to pull over, we bailed at Warrensburg and headed up to Gore instead. I guess that's one of the benefits of our dual-mountain ORDA passes.

Gore Mountain: 12/10/2016

If you spend any time at all in the lodge, on a chairlift or in line to buy a lift ticket, you can't avoid the conversations comparing the ski season to previous years. It's a topic that comes up most frequently in the early weeks of the season, when every bit of progress is measured against the snowfall and trail counts of winters gone by. Every skier has a slightly different take on how 2016-17 is shaping up, but one thing is unanimous: we're off to a way better start than last year.

Gore and Whiteface, opening weekend: 11/26 & 11/27/2016

Thanksgiving weekend is the traditional start of the ski season, and after visiting family and stuffing ourselves with turkey on Thursday and Friday, we headed north to our dual home mountains, skiing Gore on Saturday and Whiteface on Sunday.

Adirondack ski areas by the numbers: 2015-16 season

Most eastern skiers would probably prefer to forget about the winter of 2015-16, also known as The Winter That Wasn't. Besieged by mild temperatures, lack of snowfall and one rain event after another, ski areas throughout the northeast pushed the limits of their snowmaking plants and crews to salvage what they could of the season. But you can fight mother nature only so much, and skiers suffered through limited terrain, event cancellations and a shortened season. Skier visits in the northeast were down a whopping 28% from the previous winter. Whiteface and Gore followed that trend, with significant decreases in both skier visits (down 21% and 44%, respectively) and revenue (down 21% and 37%, respectively). Here are the numbers:

2015-16 ski season wrap-up and highlights

Ask just about any avid east coast skier and they’ll likely tell you the best thing about the winter of 2015-16 is that it’s over. I’m not going to disagree with that, but instead of complaining about the limited terrain, the lack of snowfall, discouragingly warm temperatures and repeated rain events that characterized the season, I want to send out a big THANK YOU to the snowmakers and groomers at Gore and Whiteface. Without their hard work, we wouldn’t have had a ski season at all. So…. THANKS!!

Whiteface and Gore: 03/25 and 03/26/2016

Looking to get a few more days on our passes before the season's over, the kids and I headed up to Whiteface on Friday and Gore on Saturday.

Gray skies and a socked-in summit up at Whiteface made Friday a lousy day for taking pictures, but we enjoyed mild temperatures and hero snow anyway. Getting one more chance to ski favorites like Mountain Run and Skyward in the final few days of the season somehow brings at least a measure of redemption to a disappointing season.

Gore Mountain: 03/12/2016

One thing you can count on, even in a lousy winter like we've had this year, is spring skiing. The trick is to catch a sunny day with warm temperatures that turn the slopes into the next best thing to powder: spring corn. This weekend delivered the blue skies and warm temps in spades.

Gore Mountain: 03/05/2016

You've really got to hand it to the snowmaking and grooming crews this season for doing everything they can to give skiers the most terrain and the best possible conditions. Here we are in early March and the snowmaking crews are still at it, 3 to 4 weeks after the traditional end to snowmaking in early to mid-February.

Gore Mountain: 02/06/2016

A quick update from skiing Gore last weekend.

There’s no sugarcoating the fact that warm temperatures and rain during the January 30 – February 3 period were a significant setback in what has been a tenuous winter all along. Snowmaking and grooming crews were focusing their efforts over the weekend on repairing and re-surfacing the open trails, and by sticking to the trails that had received the most attention we were able to put together a respectable day of skiing, all things considered.

Gore Mountain: 01/16 & 01/17/2016

News flash: It’s been a lousy winter for skiers. No significant natural snow and record warmth in December. Thin cover and limited terrain have been the name of the game Day 1. Temperatures have gotten closer to seasonal norms since the first of the year, but we’ve still had thaws and rain on what seems like a weekly basis. But finally we’ve officially crossed over from “early season” to “mid-winter” with the opening of much of Gore’s summit terrain, opening the door to the best skiing so far this year.