Gore Mtn, NY: 12/12/08

Ski Day 5: It was snowing last night when I got to the cabin. It snowed pretty hard most of the night.

I’d say we got about 8 or 9 inches by morning. I couldn’t sleep. I was constantly waking up and shining a headlamp out side to see if it was still snowing. It was. All snow up until 5:00 am which was when I finally just got up.

At 7:30 I walked down the path. A little crunch. In the last hour or so some sleet had fallen. I drove down the road towards the mountain. There were some turkeys in the road. When I got to the mountain, I got a parking spot valued at $10. The Lodge was empty.

Gore base lodge

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Gore Mountain, NY: 12/7/08

Gore Mountain Ski PatrolThe clipper I’d hoped would provide some fresh snow for Sunday got underway too late to do me any good. When I got up this morning it was snowing lightly, but had only amounted to a dusting at the cabin. As it turned out, the mountain reported 2 inches for the whole day.

When I arrived this morning the crowd was very light.  Snow was falling at a semi-reasonable clip and it continued all morning. Visibility was nil.

I had some breakfast and got on the Gondi line around 8am. Folks were chatting and wondering if the days of early openings were over, at least for now. Someone mentioned that ski patrol is no longer allowed to punch in before 8am to eliminate any overtime. Again the dreaded budget cuts.

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Gore Mountain, NY: 12/6/08

It was cold this morning, for December. The cabin’s weather station is out of commission, but the CRV has an exterior temp gauge that showed 13 degrees F when I started the car at 7:15 am. It’s usually reads a few degrees warm, so let’s say it was 10F. Down in the river valley at 1000′ it was even colder, I’m estimating about 5F. When I got to the mountain at 7:45 there were maybe 50 cars in the lot. The Gondi started loading “on time” at 8:30.

Foxlair

The trail report showed 4 lifts and 14 trails. Basically there were 4 or 5 distinct runs depending on how you count. Since last weekend, Foxlair had been added.

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