Windham Mtn, NY: 2/7/11

After my last four destination trips ended up hitting the powder jackpot in one form or another, I finally got my karmic comeuppance this weekend at Windham in the northern Catskills, where we had booked two days of lessons for our son.

Jason called me from Hunter Saturday morning and said that the snow was nice, so I figured that the 3-5 inches predicted for that afternoon would only help conditions at Windham.

The problem was that a sneaky warm front also showed up, sending temps from 8 degrees to 40 in a few hours, which resulted in a deluge that froze everything solid overnight.

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Skaneateles Ski Club, NY

It’s become a cliché for downhill skiers to bemoan how their beloved sport has become increasingly corporatized over the past two decades, and how there are fewer and fewer local feeder hills — places where, as the Cheers theme song intoned, “everybody knows your name.”

Skaneateles Ski Club entrance

The not-for-profit Skaneateles Ski Club, located on the eastern perimeter of Central New York’s Finger Lakes region, is one of those increasingly rare ski areas that transports you back to a time before the words “bottom line” became paramount in the industry.

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