The Belleayre Blog

You may or may not know that Jamesdeluxe is actually a writer by trade. He’s also a Belleayre regular and is very interested in the future of the hill.

Linked below is his interview with avid Belleayre supporter Joe Kelly, about the future of the mountain in the Catskills. Even if you’ve never skied Bell, it’s a compelling look at an passionate group of Belleayre advocates that has worked hard to keep the mountain alive over the decades. It should be interesting for NY skiers to note the differences between Belleayre and the other two ski state-run mountains.

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Jamesdeluxe, Mrs. Deluxe, Miyoko and I arrived at Belleayre after dealing with a variety of obligations… driving, daycare, ski rental, carpooling, and an involuntary contribution to the Town of Kingston Highway Fund.

Twas a cold, bluebird day in the Catskills when we arrived at 10:30. The ladies and I got on the lifts to see how the mountain had recovered from the devastating NCP event on Monday. James hurried off to interview Belleayre Advocate Extraordinaire Joe Kelly. More from James on that later this week.

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With Jason e-mailing all sorts of gloom and doom prognostications for our upcoming NCP event (he seems to LOVE to convey bad meteorological news), I felt that I should get in one more trip before our day of reckoning arrived. So up I went to the Catskills, which are still in the same weather mode as the last time I was there one week ago: dry, sunny, seasonal temperatures.

Belleayre got five inches on Monday, but it didn’t do much to improve things — any trails that hadn’t been snow-gunned recently were hard and fast. It was especially disappointing to head down Cathedral Brook, which was so beautiful last Saturday, and find that the snow had stiffened considerably. But on the positive side, Belleayre Run was in perfect shape and the bumps on Upper Seneca were soft and succulent.

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