The Ski Season in Photos #3
Hardcore skiers have an usual relationship with spring skiing. It’s a blast to ski when temperatures are warm and snow is soft and carvy. But in the back of a skier’s mind there’s the understanding that the base beneath us — and sport we love — is inevitably slipping away into summer.
Warm days in mid-winter can leave us feeling even more conflicted. In December of the 2012/13 ski season mother nature served up several days of spring skiing in New York and across the Northeast.
Temperatures warmed up well beyond seasonal levels and several mountains reported excellent spring conditions. We loved it, even if we knew that our thin early season bases were being eroded.
Greek Peak Press Conference: June 13, 2013
At a press conference today in the Hope Lake Lodge, the new owners of Greek Peak announced that the resort is getting a fixed-grip quad lift with conveyor loading to replace its frontside lift 1A. The $2 million Doppelmayr is to be installed by next winter on an ambitious schedule, John Meier and Marc Stemerman announced at press conference at the resort’s Hope Lake Lodge. It represents the bulk of $3 million in improvements they plan for next season.
Other upgrades include improvements to snowmaking plumbing along the Illiad trail mainly to fix leaks; a new grooming machine; a new bar, outdoor deck and pizza oven at Orion’s Pub, the main tavern in the resort’s base lodge; and a gear tuning center with state-of-the-art equipment in conjunction with a new rental fleet of skis and snowboards from Rossignol.
More is coming, said Stemerman and Meier, but they want to be sure to not overextend their investments. They bought the resort out of bankruptcy court reorganization proceedings in April for $7.6 million, after previous owner Peak Resorts’ lender failed, and are financing the improvements as they are the purchase.
The new Doppelmayr’s uphill capacity is rated up to 2,400 passengers per hour, but the plan is to remove about a quarter of the chairs to space out loading while running the lift faster, Meier said. Chairs could be added back later.
Backcountry Skiing on State Land
New York’s acquisition of Lyon Mountain has spurred yet another land use debate in the Adirondacks. Like many other discussions of this nature, the conflict is between established traditional uses of the land and the letter of the law as written into the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan.
Ron Konowitz on Saddleback by Rachel Wood
For years backcountry skiers have maintained and skied glades on Lyon Mountain, but initial indications are that the DEC may choose to take a hard line regarding this practice. According to a recent article by Adirondack Almanack, Tom Martin, the DEC’s regional forester considers glade maintenance on Lyon Mountain illegal and stated “it may violate Article 14 of the state constitution.”
Lyon Mountain is now classified as Wild Forest. According to the DEC “Wild forest areas are managed to provide opportunities for a greater variety of recreational activities and a higher intensity of recreational use.” Beyond this broad definition, there is precedent for an interpretation of the law that would deem glade skiing a compatible use of the Forest Preserve.
The Ski Season in Photos #2
The early season should be a test of dedication. Weather is often marginal or questionable, conditions can be thin and firm. But skiers come to the mountains in greater numbers than in the spring.
Each year as we look back through our images from late November they’re often loaded with trails that feature thin strips of hardpack snow, death cookies, brown spots and barren woods.
In many ways the start of the 2012/13 ski season was typical in the east. A freak October storm delivered turns at the mountain du jour (or is it année?). Killington and Sunday River battled it out for a bragging rights on an official opening in early November. And a marginal opening weekend for many of the ski resorts in New York began the day after Thanksgiving.