West Mountain: Wing It and Ring It

If you’re a New York skier, I don’t need to tell you that winter has been uninspiring so far. In spite of the valiant efforts of snowmakers across the northeast, there is a pitifully small amount of terrain open for us to slide on. We have been reminded once again that weather is destiny for skiers.

West Mountain Welcome Bear
The West Mountain Welcome Bear

To make matters worse, I don’t have a ton of flexibility, schedule wise. Most of the time I can only do day trips and I need to fit them in whenever I have the time to go.

By the end of December I was getting desperate. When a window opened for me and both my boys to go skiing on the last day of the year, there was no question that we would take advantage of it. I researched our Indy Pass options.

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Oak Mountain: One Way or Another

When we were younger, Conor and I would build a jump in the back yard and hit it with our cheap kick in strap snowboards. It’s been a long time since then, but our love for snowboarding lives on. We only had a one opportunity to ride together before year end. On Saturday night, we made plans to ski Oak Mountain after a sweet little storm dropped some new snow on the mountain.

Oak Mountain base area

We were up early for the 3 hour trek from our family homes in the Finger Lakes. The mountain was shining in the sunlight when we pulled in around 9:30. We quickly suited up and walked on to the empty chair. The evergreens were covered in snow and the mountain was underneath a 6-inch blanket.

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Gore Mountain: The Dog Wags Back

At NYSkiBlog, there’s no question that at times, the tail wags the dog. Yes, we’re looking for great conditions and interesting terrain. But we’re also looking for stories from New York and Vermont, at hills we haven’t covered recently, with bonus points for anything old school. It does complicate the search for snow.

Gore's Saddle Lodge

When I’m looking at ski options for the days ahead, I start my research on our NY Weather page. From there, I drill down into any one of our specific National Weather Service Office pages. Information from each of seven NWS eastern offices is the basis for these pages in our weather center.

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