Belleayre Swan Song

If having condescending thoughts like “youth is wasted on the young” makes you a grownup, then I think I might be more mature than Matthew McConaughey’s seminal character in Dazed and Confused. Maybe the 90s movie reference makes me even older.

Belleayre-View

Regardless, more than a lack of money or energy, what I miss most about that golden era is the amount of free time I used to have. It seems everyone I know is always busy. I’m not the only one who didn’t get 50 ski days this year.

After watching the last month slip away without adding one ski day to my 2013-2014 ski season, the weather and my life finally aligned for me to enjoy the world away from the cold glow of my computer screen.

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Shockingly Good Times at the ‘Linez

Making the transition from ski-mode to warm-weather activities has never been easy for me, but it gets better every year as I learn more about climbing.

Powerlinez-Crack

What started out as a summer fling has bloomed into a year round activity with the help of the local gyms, but nothing can ever beat the thrill of going outside, at least for me.

There’s no shortage of opportunity to recreate in New York but there really is something special about participating in a sport that exists in such a stellar form in my own backyard.

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Bearpen Mountain: Going the Distance

Change is a constant in New York and exceptions will only prove that rule. Through the foggy goggles of memory, we skiers like to reminisce about the past, but someone else will always remember the story differently from a time before we lived it.

Bearpen-Climb

Bearpen is like that for me, as I can play “remember when.”  Still, I learned about the mountain from NELSAP, but that was well after the halcyon era for the bygone resort.

I suppose my own glory days at Bearpen were spent assisting the owners and the caretaker, Russ LaChapelle in maintaining the property and learning of its storied past.

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