Skiers want snow. We want it now, we want it tomorrow, we want it next week and next year. Let it snow anytime, all the time.
Ski resorts on the other hand, well they’re a little more particular. They want snow. But they want it on Wednesdays or Thursdays or Saturday afternoon.
The last thing they want is any kind of weather that prevents the hordes and hungry masses from gettin’ on the highway and headin’ to the mountains.
Hardcore skiers have an usual relationship with spring skiing. It’s a blast to ski when temperatures are warm and snow is soft and carvy. But in the back of a skier’s mind there’s the understanding that the base beneath us — and sport we love — is inevitably slipping away into summer.
Warm days in mid-winter can leave us feeling even more conflicted. In December of the 2012/13 ski season mother nature served up several days of spring skiing in New York and across the Northeast.
Temperatures warmed up well beyond seasonal levels and several mountains reported excellent spring conditions. We loved it, even if we knew that our thin early season bases were being eroded.
The early season should be a test of dedication. Weather is often marginal or questionable, conditions can be thin and firm. But skiers come to the mountains in greater numbers than in the spring.
Each year as we look back through our images from late November they’re often loaded with trails that feature thin strips of hardpack snow, death cookies, brown spots and barren woods.
In many ways the start of the 2012/13 ski season was typical in the east. A freak October storm delivered turns at the mountain du jour (or is it année?). Killington and Sunday River battled it out for a bragging rights on an official opening in early November. And a marginal opening weekend for many of the ski resorts in New York began the day after Thanksgiving.
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