West Mountain: Wing It and Ring It

If you’re a New York skier, I don’t need to tell you that winter has been uninspiring so far. In spite of the valiant efforts of snowmakers across the northeast, there is a pitifully small amount of terrain open for us to slide on. We have been reminded once again that weather is destiny for skiers.

West Mountain Welcome Bear
The West Mountain Welcome Bear

To make matters worse, I don’t have a ton of flexibility, schedule wise. Most of the time I can only do day trips and I need to fit them in whenever I have the time to go.

By the end of December I was getting desperate. When a window opened for me and both my boys to go skiing on the last day of the year, there was no question that we would take advantage of it. I researched our Indy Pass options.

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Owl’s Head with a Wingman

The last couple of seasons have been anything but predictable. With that in mind, I decided to mix things up and go for a new pass. Last Spring, Owl’s Head offered a midweek pass for a limited time. If you signed up with three of your friends, It worked out to about 450/4 ways.

Cheap, and it entitled the bearer to ski the rest of the season and then daily until next Christmas when it would convert to midweek and non-holiday. I figured that the closest I might get to Jay was seeing it from the couple of south-west facing slopes of Kaboul. With a group of us committing, it meant that we’d always have someone to carpool with too.

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Oak Mountain: One Way or Another

When we were younger, Conor and I would build a jump in the back yard and hit it with our cheap kick in strap snowboards. It’s been a long time since then, but our love for snowboarding lives on. We only had a one opportunity to ride together before year end. On Saturday night, we made plans to ski Oak Mountain after a sweet little storm dropped some new snow on the mountain.

Oak Mountain base area

We were up early for the 3 hour trek from our family homes in the Finger Lakes. The mountain was shining in the sunlight when we pulled in around 9:30. We quickly suited up and walked on to the empty chair. The evergreens were covered in snow and the mountain was underneath a 6-inch blanket.

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