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Whiteface TR - 1/28 thru 1/29


guitar73

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Tinymoose and I arrived in lake placid today (1/27) for a couple days skiing at whiteface for 2018 ski diva east meet up. Currently, we are chilling at the lake placid brewery with some suds and relaxing from a rather uneventful road trip. Weather upon arrival was less than optimal...low 40's and a drizzle. There appears to be some snow on the ground, but I suspect the off trail is out of play for our time here.

 

I'll use this thread to post updates. Won't be as epic as the Jackson Hole PASR invasion currently underway. Oh well, such is life.

 

On tap for tomorrow is warm and soft conditions, with a chance of light snow later in the day and for tomorrow. Hopefully ulllr will come thru.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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back from a nice long day out on the mtn. just got done with some fried pickles and some suds at the restaurant in our hotel. i am now enjoying a nice cup of dark magic, writing this TR on our bed, with a view of the backside of white face. we're meeting up with our crew tonite for some drinks at the cottage (love that place!). 

anyhow, today was our lazy day since the official gathering doesn't start until tomorrow. so we took our time this morning and got breakfast at the hotel. breakfast was just OK...standard buffet offerings. got to the mtn about 9-ish AM and paid for the baller parking lot near the base lodge...b/c that's how we roll. booted-up and did a warm-up run down the main valley area. from the get-go i could i would have to be spot-on with my edging skillz, as even at the base area the snow surface was quite firm. the first lap down confirmed my suspicions.

next up was the cloud splitter gondola, approx 2300 vert in one go....not to shabby, especially for the east. we had hear ppl were headed up to the summit and slay some tasty lines down upper skyward, so we headed up. made the game-day decision to ski down pharon's run instead of upper skyward. best snow of the day, hands down, was on pharon. since whiteface is  not a very large (expansive) mtn, a lot of the main trails got substantial traffic, and any soft areas were quickly scraped down to boiler plate. for other areas, it was full on bullet-proof hard pack and ice.

keeping that traffic in mind, we decided to take a detour and headed down to the bear den area. this was a good call since basically no-one was down there, other than never-ever's getting lessons and such. by then breakfast had worn off and we decided to get an early lunch there at the bear den base lodge. around noon, friends of ours from MA had arrived, so we headed over to the main base lodge and skied with them for the afternoon. we took them to all the "good" spots to be had, and even by then temps had risen, and the snow was starting to turn buttery over that firm boiler plate ice. other spots remained firm and i swear they got firmer. we called it quits about 2:30-ish and then headed back to town.

the wilderness lift area looked closed off b/c of a collegiate GS race that was taking place. those kids def had the appropriate ski for this mtn, lol. def saw some good turns made by them as they were free-skiing on the hill. we didn't hit up anything along the little whiteface ridge line, probably will do those tomorrow. lookout mtn was completely bare. slides had maybe 6" to 12" of snow in them....rest was ice from groundwater. pretty much any trail that did not have snowmaking on it was bare.

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day 2 the mtn skiied much better as snowmaking resumed, descent grooming efforts, and an inch or so of natural snow on the upper mtn. it also helped that traffic on the hill was much less than yesterday.

so we rolled in the baller lot about 8:30-ish to meet up with the ski diva group at the main lodge. orda is dumping a lot of money into the renovation of the whiteface and gore base lodges....and to be quite honest, long overdue. however, it appears that construction on these facilities is slow-going since both base lodges at whiteface were a little disheveled in appearance. i bet the lodges will look $$$ once they are done.

the face lift was first batter up this AM for a group photo op and smooth warm-up run. almost 20 ppl were in our group, and a wide range of skiing abilities were represented. the group split up after the warm-up run. most of the group took the cloudsplitter gondola up and headed straight for the summit quad. snow guns were torching most of the highly trafficked routes, and the man-made product was soft, but quite sticky. there was very little wind at the top (which was nice) and visibility was pretty good for most of the day.  once we got up there, one lady in our group asked us what that noise was that she heard.....it was all the snow guns below, lol! she was from whistler, so she got a pass on that one, lol.  we lapped the summit quad a few times, doing paron's, follies, and upper skyward. paron's had the best snow up top once again. skyward was OK, a bit scraped in places but it was manageable. victoria was skiing very nicely, and started to bump up a little bit as the day progressed.

lunch was had down at the main base lodge. most of the food options were closed since it was a monday, but i was able to score a nice bowl of new england clam chowder and some corn bread.

the afternoon was spent lapping cloudsplitter. upper northway was full-on blizzard riding, but the conditions there were probably ROTD for me. approach also had some nice snow remaining, since very few ppl were skiing that area. it became apparent to us why: upper wilderness was a literal sheet of ice. full attention had to be given to each turn. halfway down the conditions improved greatly. mtn ops was in the process of building the competition bump course, so i stopped to snag a photo of that for y'all.

apres was in the wine bar in the main lodge. beer selection there was limited, but the room was nice and cozy and overlooked the mixing bowl area. dinner was had at smoke signals back in town. you must have their wings there....absolutely fabulous. i had their dry rub and the habanero hot wings (not hot at all, but full of great flavor). tinymoose and i closed their bar down as we had been chatting it up with the bartender, the servers, and the manager.

this time we stayed at the hotel northwoods, which is located in the middle of the main drag. rooms are of average rating, but the location is killer. just park your car and walk to everything. that's fortunate b/c the parking situation is almost non-existent. the lot behind the building is *very* small and availability is first-come-first-serve. our first nite here we had to park in the municipal lot a few hundred yards away. not ideal.

whiteface skiing about the same as i remembered from our last time here 8 yrs ago....a very tall mountain that skis small. i felt like i had to be "on" every turn due to the prevailing very hard and slick trail conditions. glad our skis had been tuned recently. if you want to rack up tons of vertical and work on your mad carving/edging technical skillz, whiteface is the place for you.

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