Windham vs. Hercules

In 2014, the stars have aligned early for skiers in New York. The Catskills are in the bullseye for winter storm Hercules, and no one should miss out on turns tomorrow, let alone over the weekend.

Instructor-Mike-Powder

Not wanting to get snowed out, I left the city late last night, GF in tow, to make sure that we would arrive at Windham bright and early.

I’d seen their trail count increasing pretty quickly since the thaw and I had been dying to check out some of their summer improvements, which include new terrain features in the form of a blue square called Windfall and a very tasty looking gladed area just off of it.

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Hunter: Mid-December or Mid-Winter?

After two weeks of good cold temperatures and a couple of decent storms, Hunter’s ski report was touting midwinter conditions.

Hunter-Mountain-View

And it was all true.

I met up with NYSB’s Meteorologist JasonWx and daughter Zoey. We spent the morning cranking out high speed, packed powder turns all over the main face of Hunter.

Hunter-Base-Lodge

Despite the number of cars in the parking lot, the trails were empty. There was no line for the Kaatskill Flyer 6-pack, although it seemed every chair had four riders. The Zephyr Express Quad on Hunter West was also ski-on.

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Belleayre Opens in 2013

Saturday afternoon I received a text from Harvey asking if I could join him at Belleayre on Sunday. This season’s early cold has allowed aggressive snowmaking and the mountain has made good progress opening terrain, so I jumped on it.

Belleayre opens top to bottom.

Belleayre’s trail report had two lifts and 11 trails open, including a mix of green, blue and black terrain. Conditions were reported as machine groomed loose granular, loose granular with moguls, hard pack and thin cover. Both the Discovery Lodge and the mid-mountain Overlook Lodge were open.

We could see a snowmaking cloud on the hill as we approached from Route 28. We parked at the Overlook Lodge and were on the Super Chief Quad in just a few minutes.

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