Gore Mountain: 01/28/2012

Sunny skies and grooming helped to make Saturday a surprisingly good ski day, despite two rain / thaw events last week. The snowmaking and grooming crews must have been working overtime following Thursday night's rain, because there was plenty of good skiing just about everywhere on the mountain except for the summit black diamond trails.

Grooming made all the difference on Wild Air

NELSAP’s Jeremy Davis to Speak at Alpine Sport Shop, 02/01/2012

On Wednesday night, February 1 at 7pm, the Alpine Sport Shop will host a presentation by local author and founder of the New England Lost Ski Areas Project, Jeremy Davis. Davis will talk about his past books and give a sneak peak of his third book, “Lost Ski Areas of the Southern Adirondacks,” due to be published in August.

West Mountain: 01/25/2012

In “you don’t know if you don’t go” fashion, conditions last night at West Mountain turned out to be better than I had expected. To be sure, I hadn’t expected much: recent rain and warm weather killed any hope for great conditions. But coverage is fine, and surfaces last night were reasonably edgeable and soft enough for a couple hours of fun skiing with friends.

Gore Mtn: 01/21/2012

The level of excitement at our house over the couple inches of snow that recently fell is testament not only to how much our family loves snow, but also to how meager the offerings from Ullr have been this winter.

Since we hadn't skied at Gore Mountain since two weekends ago, we were curious to see current conditions first hand. The big news for skiers this weekend was the opening of the Burnt Ridge trail pod, with Echo and Sagamore now online.

Sagamore and the Burnt Ridge Quad

World Cup Moguls Competition Results from Whiteface Mountain: 01/19/2012

Whiteface Mountain hosted the FIS Freestyle World Cup moguls event yesterday, Thursday. I was particularly interested in this year’s competition since we had just skied Whiteface on Sunday and Monday and observed preparations underway on the Wilderness Trail, the site of yesterday’s competition. In typical rollercoaster fashion for this winter, the arctic temperatures we had during our days on the mountain were followed by rain Tuesday night. Then, returning cold temperatures turned the trails to boilerplate and high winds knocked out power and forced the closure of all lifts on Wednesday. Course workers must have put forth a monumental effort to restore the course to safe, competition-ready condition for Thursday’s events.

I was a bit surprised to find no coverage of the competition in this morning’s Times Union, Saratogian or Post Star. I guess that just means I’ll have to go up next year and cover the event myself. Following is the press release from ORDA / USSA.