rgrwilco

I feel like the area that size in south jersey could make it nowadays. Tons of small Midwest hills still in business. A couple cold nights with fan guns could bury a hill that size for the season. The location for holly is too far out, but you used to be able to see ski mountain from the Walt Whitman bridge. Especially with terrain parks being popular. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The wissahickon club got hit by a tornado a couple years ago and some trees fell onto the lift. I don’t think they did any repairs. As for holly mountain, its just a few miles from Salem. I checked the place out a few years ago, but you can barely tell anything was there. Even flew a drone over the place and the trails are barely visible. The top terminal for the lift is still there. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

With the crowds they get you don’t need to rent it out. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Saw ticket on Liftopia for 30 bucks, so I bought it. My usual day trips have been to hunter, so i figured whats an extra 20 minutes. It was completely worth it, and If I’m riding the Catskills in the future, I’m going here. The Catskills always seemed to have winter, even when the poconos did not. There wasn’t any snow on the ride up, except for higher elevations in the Catskills. I’m always wowed by the view of the Catskills when they first come into sight on the thruway. There only a coating of snow on the ground as i got near Belleayre, but cover looked good up high. After Belleayre, its super rural and i barely saw any cars on the road. As i got closer to Plattekill, there was more and more snow on the ground. When you get to the mountain, you realize its pretty much the perfect place to have a ski area, geographically speaking. In terms of getting customers there, thats a challenge. But it’s sheltered front he wind, and holds snow super well. It looked a bit smaller than the 1000ft vert, but the ski tracks app supports the 1k, and the lack of runout is amazing. to me it felt the perfect size. Conditions were great. The main face trails were half groomed with fresh snow on the sides. There was plenty of untracked pow on the intermediate trails as I don’t think the locals give them much traffic. Blockbuster was my favorite trail of the day. The expert trails from afar may look boring and straight, but the terrain is very interesting. I could easily spend an entire day here and not get bored. The lifts don’t even feel that slow as the ride time isn’t too long since its steeper. If anyone is going to the Catskills, I recommend passing all the other hills and check this place out. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Greek peak is great and western ny can get some good snow when it’s bare at other spots Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Campgaw also has some longer windier trails off the side and from the YouTube videos I looked up a pretty good park. I might have to stop on the way home from hunter one day for a few turns just in case. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I wonder how much longer campgaw will stay open. Their demographic is people in the city and urban nj areas looking for an easy place to learn, and big snow seems poised to capture those people.

Since this will be my last year on a super pass situation, I figured I would try and hit some hills I’d never go and pay a day price for. Last time out I went to Liberty and roundtop. This time I’d go to whitetail. Watching the weather and their webcams, they were basically brought back to nothing and had to close. Before today they had about a solid week of snowmaking temps. I also noticed the weather at whitetail is pretty much the same as my home in south jersey save for a few degrees here and there, so today was my chance to hit them with good conditions this year. I left early and made my way three hours across southern pa through china level smog. There was also a terrible chemical/fecal smell the entire way from KOP to just past Harrisburg. Made me miss the somewhat decent environment up in the pokes. I checked whitetail out on google earth and watched some videos, and thought I had an idea of the area and what to expect but I would say the area exceeded my expectations. From google earth you cant really tell its nestled in a valley. The trails also make full use of the almost 1000 feet of vert as there is barely any runout. Some of the trails actually have a pretty steep head wall right before getting back to the lift. The snowmaking power was impressive, and even the blue trails rode like black trails you would see at other places. As there are three main lifts with three sort of peaks, we worked left to right and started on the beginner side. They were making snow on all the trails and it was a bit sticky so I could never really get that much speed. The beginner hill was about 500 ft of vert per my tracks app, and had a carpet loading triple. Pretty impressive. Two options were open from the triple, including one almost mile long trail that wraps around the side. Decent warm up. Base area with beginner triple to the left and high speed quad to the right. Looking up the triple. View the blue trails from the beginner triple. View of the rest of the resort from the top of one of the beginner trails. We moved to the intermediated pod, serviced by a high speed lift. Really fast with tight spacing. Snowmaking on all trails served, and they were pretty steep and used the full vert of the mountain. View of the beginner area from the quad. After quite a few runs we moved to the expert lift. only two trails were open out of the three, and the vert is a little shorter here at 7-800, but the trails use absolutely all of it without any runout whatsoever. Didn’t get any photos from over there are since I stopped pulling my phone out due the snowmaking. Nothing crazy steep but sustained and fun. Overall I was really impressed with the area. The snowmaking power was insane, and everything was really nice and well kept. It is interesting that they built a resort like this south facing, in an area with high temps and low snow, considering the north side of the mountain was undeveloped and would hold snow much better. If it was an hour closer I would even consider it for a home mountain pre-vail. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Looks like the buildings are gone. Report says other resorts are risk. Pretty crazy situation down there. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Roundtop Took what seemed like 45 minutes to get from liberty to Roundtop. Roundtop reminds me of spring mountain, it’s lame and there’s houses nearby. You can see the strange looking bump quite a while before you get there I got a a spot right at the lift. The snow was some of the iciest snow I’ve ridden in years. The layout it very boring and nothing steep was open. The crowds were crappy too. They would always stop right at the bottom of an icy headwall and Wonder why someone almost hit them. So that was that. I’m glad I went but these bills are way smaller than advertised, ski tracks showed around 500 vert. Both resorts reminded me of skiing in the Midwest. Conditions aside, the terrain in the Poconos does seem light years better. If it gets cold soon I’ll definitely head out to whitetail as that place looks legitimately fun. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Since peak bought snowtime, I wanted to check out some resorts that I’ve never been to, and probably won’t have the chance to get to again. The original plan was to drive to whitetail, then hit liberty, then Roundtop on the way home. Whitetail is by far the biggest of the three but only had one trail off the top open so I figured I would just check out liberty and Roundtop. The weather didn’t help things, but these hills are so boring and lame great conditions wouldn’t help. Liberty is super weird. You can see if for a while driving up to it, and it’s just a small bump sticking out of farmland. As you drive around to the front side, the roads change from moderately maintained backroads to perfectly paved two lane. The actual resort at liberty is insanely impressive, the lots are paved and marked. Multiple sit down restaurants and a hotel slope side. I just can’t fathom why all this was built on this tiny hill. The park is serviced by a j bar. Super cool. It looks like this was a trail at one point. Shame it’s gone, one of only a few short steep pitches. At the top you sitting on a ridge maybe 50 feet wide. And you have quite a few trails to try. The front side (lodge and park side) looked boring so I tried the back. Conditions were soft and fun but if it doesn’t get cold soon, they area gonna have to close I hit each open trail twice and got bored so headed to Roundtop. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They said today totaled 27. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Saw they were in the jackpot zone for the storm, so I set my alarm for 4am, checked the thruway cams to see the road conditions, and headed up. No traffic at all on the way up and roads where clear until you entered the Catskills themselves. I gave myself more time than needed to get up there so I hung around in the car and listened to a few podcasts once I arrived. It was puking snow at the mountain The 6 pack was down. So you had to take B lift to F lift to get to the summit. The lifts didn’t open right on time but I got pretty close to first chair. There were some skinners coming down too. I realized I should get a split board if I’m gonna keep up with storm chasing. This is the base of f lift. The snow was heavy but extremely deep. Never bottomed out. Poached some closed trails with some people, it was great. No photos or video because I’ll probably not ride pow this deep again for a long time. The crowds were pretty big for a weekday. Lots of people saying they have epic passes from Vermont or nyc that followed the storm. It got tracked out pretty quick and with the heavy nature of the snow it made for some interesting conditions later on. I bailed a bit before noon. The snow came down hard until I got to the six flags exit. The Catskills are nice. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Surprising and I had to check the date to make sure It wasn’t 4/1. I would have to assume this purchase was for mount snow and hunter mostly. The infrastructure at jfbb and places like attitash is pretty non-vail so I wonder if there’s gonna be some big investments to bring them up to speed.

the holdouts are very vocal. its also surpising who they are.