Holiday Valley: It Snowed Out West

Like the rest of the northeast, we’ve been patiently waiting for winter to arrive here in Western New York. We received our typical early season dump that puts a foot on the ground only to take it away a week or so later. Then we had a slow start with limited snow-making windows.

Firecracker

There have been moments where we thought it was on, a few small storms with a couple inches here and there. There was also the recent storm that dropped 20” in the Buffalo metro area but left the ski areas to the south high and dry. We were all waiting for the weather to send some classic WNY lake effect to the hills.

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The Ski Wing Murders

I learned about the Ski Wing Murders in a roundabout way. This summer we’ve been working on the NYSkiBlog Guide, our directory of all kinds of historical data. One goal is to make progress on our Western NY Ski Areas section during this offseason.

In the process, we’ve come across information about some great looking NY ski areas that are now gone. Places with Holiday Valley vertical and more than 100 inches of snow in an average year. This peaked our curiosity.

This story is about a NY ski area that was best known as Ski Wing, even though the area had three different names from 1958 to 1993. The story is both tragic and incredible.
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Hunt Hollow: Berms, Bruises and Brews

I walked through the early morning fog into Hunt Hollows main lodge with a six pack in hand. The beer was part of the registration fee for “Berms, Bruises and Brews” an all snowboard banked race event.

first chair

The divisions were separated by decades and the top 3 fastest of each division took home a portion of the beer. Part of the money raised was also being donated to upgrade the park at Hunt Hollow.

After registering I caught up with Alex who had already taken a few runs. The visibility was not great, as fog eclipsed the upper 3/4 of the mountain. We rode down Fox run and dipped onto the course to check it out.

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