Went back over this morning and took a few more runs. It's still pretty hard to get too excited about it, and most of the people I know, and have talked to, feel the same way. The "it's just not worth the effort" feeling seems to be more contagious than COVID.
In what may be the first bright spot of the season, however, conditions were a little bit better today than they've been, though there were some areas that were still pretty bad.
They opened Lower Northway, which if nothing else, at least spreads a little bit of the load coming off of Little Whiteface. It was frozen granular, and there were some "narrow" sections that you had to be mindful of. Maybe with a little snow and some more grooming, they'll be able to even things out a bit. It would have been nice if Essex had been blown at the same time to spread things out even more. The first part of Excelsior is still getting WAY too much traffic.
They widened the snow on the first pitch of Boreen ... yesterday, it was insanely narrow, particularly given the ability level of most of the people on it. Overall, the surface was also better than it was yesterday, but there were still some parts that need better grooming.
They're finally blowing what I would call a decent amount of snow on Mountain Run, and they're also blowing on Thruway. No doubt, Thruway is being blown so that the racers have a place to go. From the looks of it, I would think Mountain Run could be open tomorrow, though there may only be enough snow to open the skier's left side of the lift line. At this point, anything would be an improvement!
Paron's Run is also getting some snowmaking. It's hard to judge how close that it to being skiable ... maybe this weekend ... I guess we'll have to wait and see.
If we get some snow from tonight's storm, that would go a long way towards helping out with "resurfacing" on some of the trails that have been completely over-used for weeks now.
Finally ... the mountain is a ghost town ... I can't believe how few people there are. The only place there's a wait is at the gondola, and I don't bother with that, so I don't know how long the wait is. The Face Lift and Little Whiteface chairs have been essentially "ski on" for the past two days. At most, you might wait 3 or 4 chairs.
For those concerned about COVID precautions, overall, from what I've seen, it's been pretty good. Most people do seem to be wearing masks and following the rules. A big part of that may be due to this being a black out period for locals. In the earlier part of the season, when there were more problems, it was pretty apparent that a lot of the people who were not following the rules were local people. It will be interesting to see how things go once the black out period ends, which I'm assuming is on Sunday.
