Holiday Mountain Jeep Tour 2024

It occurred to me that we were overdue for an update on what’s happening at Holiday Mountain. The ongoing resurrection marches on. Watching the steady progress made by staff and community is almost as much fun as skiing. I resolved to get myself up to Holiday and catch up with owner Mike Taylor. Then I completely forgot about it for three weeks. Late summer is a busy time, with beach vacations, family events and college drop-offs.

On my way back home from one of those college drop offs last Saturday, I crossed into Sullivan County on Route 17 and I reached out to Mike. On short notice, he offered to meet me at the hill and give me a tour of recent work in his jeep.

My wife was gracious about it too. She was in the car with me, of course. I tried to convince her to come up the hill with us. It’s gonna be fun, I insisted. She said she would wait in the car and read a book. A few minutes later, Mike showed up. I made one more attempt to convince my wife that bouncing around a ski hill in a jeep and looking at snowmaking equipment would be fun. She still wasn’t buying it, so I left her with her book and jumped in Mike’s jeep.

Our first stop was in the new pump house next to the Neversink River, where three 250 horsepower pumps are lined up. A fourth will be installed soon. All together that adds up to 3,500 gallons per minute of water being moved up the hill. Good stuff. Next we checked out the footings that are in place for new-to-them quad chairlift. Partek, in nearby Pine Island, is refurbishing the Borvig quad which came from Massanutten in Virginia.

Reusing ski lifts is a pretty common practice in the industry but you cant just drop an old lift into place after shipping it from three states away. By the time Holiday skiers start loading, it will be essentially a new lift, customized to the topography specific to skiers’s left of Turkey Trot.

We got back in the Jeep and headed up Turkey Trot. Coming over a lip, we encountered a newly opened ditch that might have gotten us stuck. Mike put it in reverse and eased us back down to the base area. “Here, I’ll show you one of the new trails,” Mike said and steered around the back of the base lodge to turn up what was obviously a freshly cut trail.

“We’re calling this one Mambo Night,” explaining that it was to honor the Catskills’ resorts history. At their heyday, Mike explained, all the old school resorts embraced Cuban dancing and had Mambo nights. The trail looks like it’ll be fun, following a bit of a switchback route through the trees above the base lodge. Riding up it in a jeep, in and out of the ruts and up and over countless bumps and rocks, was like an amusement park ride.

Next we checked out another new trail, Independence Run, which is more of a down-the-fall-line intermediate pitch. At the top we checked out where the new quad unloading area at the top of Turkey Trot. Everywhere I looked there was freshly turned dirt, rebar and concrete footings or electrical wires coming out of the ground.

Mike never stopped talking the whole time. In between, pointing where new electrical transformers or light poles were going to go, he shared stories of the area and his own family’s history, going back to 1957 when his grandfather sold the land Holiday is located on to the town.

Then we got to the best part: Hackledam is the name of the new trail the Holiday guys started cutting last year, soon after the Taylor family took over. The name came from a former logging community down river, from the era when the tanning industry consumed copious amounts of tree bark. It is on terrain to lookers’ right of Roman Candle and the triple chair lift line. Every time I rode that lift last year, Hackledam beckoned. Even from far away, it looks steep and gnarly.

Mike drove his jeep up around the top of the triple, past where the racing shack used to be and we disembarked to check out the new trail from above. Up close it is even more impressive. We picked our way around near vertical headwall. Mike pointed out where he planned to push more earth into the runout below, and which boulders would need a jack-hammer or dynamite. This was why I was here. Looking down at what could one of the steepest run in the region made my mouth water.

We climbed back up to the jeep and Mike took us down Roman Candle to look at another concrete pad where more electrical was going in near the bottom of the triple chair. Then it was back out to the gate where my infinitely patient wife was waiting. Even though it’s still summer and we’re still months away from our first snowfall, I’m excited for the upcoming ski season. Seeing all the progress they’re making at Holiday just makes me that much more stoked.