jamesdeluxe
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2020
Sharon joined me for a three-hour visit to The Artist Formerly Known As Greek Peak before the Xmas Deluge came through the region. Some things have changed:
The big boondoggle across the street is now open and everyone is curious to see if it’ll transform Virgil, NY into a four-season vacation destination, with promises of family fun and hot-stone treatments. In all fairness, I didn’t have time to go check things out and ask the hard questions, but based on Sharon’s anecdotes, it sounds like the salespeople may have their work cut out for them. That said, while booting up in the lodge, a nearby couple was going on about how much fun they had at the indoor water park, which is supposed to be the big value-added for Hope Lake.
Others things haven’t changed:
They still have the same old lifts and low-budget lodge like the old days. So far, they’ve put no visible resources into the hill, which is understandable considering the size of the leveraged investment across the street, but still, they’ll eventually have to update the infrastructure sometime soon so things don’t look so incongruous.
Considering how little natural snow GP has received so far this year, conditions were excellent. In front of the rain, it was gloomy and really humid with temps in the low 30s, which softened the trails to a quasi-springlike perfection — not corn snow, but *really* smooth, carvable, and not one patch of ice literally anywhere. How often can you say that about an East Coast ski area without a foot of fresh snow the night before? Way better than I was expecting.
Apologies for the godawful pix. I was working with a new (to me) camera and couldn’t get my act together. Maybe Sharon has better pix with her iPhone.
There was even a nice shot with soft, loose powder and weeds (for pre-season character) that we lapped a bunch of times. Amazing how you can ski on such a thin base without touching bottom.
It’s raining like hell right now; could be a bloodbath for the region.
Fresh corduroy on Stoic:
Iliad
Trojan:
The big boondoggle across the street is now open and everyone is curious to see if it’ll transform Virgil, NY into a four-season vacation destination, with promises of family fun and hot-stone treatments. In all fairness, I didn’t have time to go check things out and ask the hard questions, but based on Sharon’s anecdotes, it sounds like the salespeople may have their work cut out for them. That said, while booting up in the lodge, a nearby couple was going on about how much fun they had at the indoor water park, which is supposed to be the big value-added for Hope Lake.
Others things haven’t changed:
They still have the same old lifts and low-budget lodge like the old days. So far, they’ve put no visible resources into the hill, which is understandable considering the size of the leveraged investment across the street, but still, they’ll eventually have to update the infrastructure sometime soon so things don’t look so incongruous.
Considering how little natural snow GP has received so far this year, conditions were excellent. In front of the rain, it was gloomy and really humid with temps in the low 30s, which softened the trails to a quasi-springlike perfection — not corn snow, but *really* smooth, carvable, and not one patch of ice literally anywhere. How often can you say that about an East Coast ski area without a foot of fresh snow the night before? Way better than I was expecting.
Apologies for the godawful pix. I was working with a new (to me) camera and couldn’t get my act together. Maybe Sharon has better pix with her iPhone.
There was even a nice shot with soft, loose powder and weeds (for pre-season character) that we lapped a bunch of times. Amazing how you can ski on such a thin base without touching bottom.
It’s raining like hell right now; could be a bloodbath for the region.
Fresh corduroy on Stoic:
Iliad
Trojan:
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