Decisions, Decisions: Skiing Spring Snow

Among the many things skiers like to rhapsodize about from “back in the old days” is that winters were far colder and stuck around longer than they do today.

Windham-Summit-View

Growing up in Central New York in the early/mid-1970s, I still remember traipsing through shoulder-deep snow to deliver the Syracuse Post-Standard at 5 am every morning while walking backwards for most of my route to avoid getting blasted in the face by sub-zero wind gusts.

While 2013-14 hasn’t been a record breaker for snow, it’s been noticeably colder than recent seasons and has delayed the arrival of spring skiing.

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Bearpen Mountain: Going the Distance

Change is a constant in New York and exceptions will only prove that rule. Through the foggy goggles of memory, we skiers like to reminisce about the past, but someone else will always remember the story differently from a time before we lived it.

Bearpen-Climb

Bearpen is like that for me, as I can play “remember when.”  Still, I learned about the mountain from NELSAP, but that was well after the halcyon era for the bygone resort.

I suppose my own glory days at Bearpen were spent assisting the owners and the caretaker, Russ LaChapelle in maintaining the property and learning of its storied past.

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Another Hickory Believer

The sticker is modeled after one of the most iconic images in skiing: a rectangle with two lines of elegant, efficient text offset by white and red: “Mad River Glen: Ski It If You Can’t Ski Hickory.”

Winfall Poma-2

When I first saw one, I chuckled at the different possible meanings presented by both the original and the parody. Like too many New York State skiers, though, I continued driving right past Hickory Ski Center on my way to Gore for years without much consideration for the mysterious mountain in Warrensburg.

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