The Catskills Blog

Belleayre Mtn, NY: 1/16/10

Posted on by Harvey

Jamesdeluxe and I were invited to attend the MLK day press event at Belleayre, in Highmount, NY. I’d never been to Belle and definitely wanted to ski New York’s mountain in the Catskills. We were hosted by the gregarious and energetic Tony Lanza, Belleayre’s Mountain Superintendent, the top guy on the hill.

Tony Lanza

The day started with breakfast in the Long House Lodge, which is situated at 2500 feet, strategically positioned between Bell’s lower mountain beginner terrain and the upper mountain. Tony is extremely proud of Bell’s lower mountain terrain and led about a dozen of us, through the gentle and well groomed terrain.

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Tagged: Belleayre, Catskills5 Comments

Hunter Mountain, NY: 12/20/09

Posted on by Harvey

Got up at a ridiculous hour, made coffee, and hit the road at 5am. It was still snowing fairly hard and it looked like 14-15″ had fallen at our place. The county roads were a disaster, but once I got on to the state and interstate roads things were fine.

I met up with Jamesdeluxe at 6:45 at an A&P in Northern NJ, and got to Hunter at about 8:30. There was no traffic on I87 and the mountain was not nearly as busy as I imagined it would be on a weekend.

We’d planned on Hunter because, it had been COLD and we wanted to take advantage of Hunter’s well-known snowmaking capacity. It felt odd to be driving out of a big storm to ski a mountain with no new snow.

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Tagged: Catskills, Hunter2 Comments

Serious Snowmaking at Hunter Mountain

Posted on by Harvey

I’ve been invited to ski Hunter. Last time I was there, I was definitely an intermediate, so it should be interesting to see what I can do on Hunter West.

This is a perfect time to go to Hunter. It’s been incredibly cold, and Hunter Mountain snowmaking capacity is legendary. Here’s an excerpt from a TR on AlpineZone:

“They are pounding the hell out of the mountain. Clairs has every single gun on, and then some. Highlands is on. Park had all the guns on all day. K27’s on, Belt, Broadway, Ike, Gun Hill and Minya all had guns randomly go on and off throughout the day. Racer’s needs snow, but I think the wind is probably the reason they aren’t making it there. The oscillating Super Polecat on Broadway looks nice, as do the other new Polecats…”

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Tagged: Catskills, Hunter1 Comment