East Coast skiing Christmas week

[abc]

I've never done BW during Christmas. But I did it on President's day weekend and managed to somehow avoided the crowd for the last couple of years.

The key is to get away from the base lift as early as you can manage and NEVER come back till you're done for the day!

BW is kind of short and wide. So the further away you go, the thinner the crowd. Ride as many lifts and as quickly as you can till you hit the end of the resort in the east in the morning. It'll take a couple hrs before the crowd work their way to where you're. Eat mid-mountain but before noon so you're ahead of the hungry masses. By the time the crowd jam into the lodges for lunch at noon, you're ready to ski again, and can explore the main mountain at peace. By 1:30-2, head all the way to the west to again escape the crowd...

 

[Stowski]

Still haven't booked. Probably too late now. I'm nervous about a lack of snow. I do LOVE Okemo, so maybe with their high % of snowmaking, it might make the most sense.

 

[Mom of Redheads]

@Stowsk

A quick phone call will tell you if there's still accommodations anywhere near where you want to ski. There wasn't much left at BW, but we choose not to drive in the mornings if we can help it... so we didn't look further afield where there might have been plenty of choice and/or cheaper options.

As far as snow goes, I'm not too worried. There might not be a ton of natural stuff, but if this cold weather holds (and most forecasts seem to suggest it might), I'd be surprised if snowmaking is an issue anywhere that has snowmaking... I guess I'm banking on man made snow if Mother Nature doesn't provide the good stuff. Or Ullr, or whomever you sacrifice to for snow...

 

[Serafina]

Stowski - I ski every Christmas at Mount Snow, and they have a good enough snowmaking system that there's plenty of it - even last year, when we hadn't really had much in the way of snow from the sky. Day-after-Xmas starts the blackout on my pass, runs through New Years' Eve, but I always get in a bunch of run on Christmas day itself. Timing is key: I strongly, strongly suggest a Ski First, Presents Later approach. I've always had great elbow room on the runs - even with manmade-only years - up until about 11am, 11:30am. After that it starts to pick up pretty fast.

Okemo, Mount Snow, and Stratton all have very solid investments in snowmaking, and should all be completely fine to ski that week. Or go a bit north - from what I remember you saying in the past, I think you'd really enjoy Loon, and it's got terrific family terrain, and a very family-friendly ski town attached to it. I was at Loon during one of the worst period of that wretched Polar Vortex last winter: it was 45 and raining cats and dogs on Monday, and on Monday night the temperature dropped to zero. I skied Loon on Wednesday, I think, and while the conditions weren't "great" in any absolute sense of the term, they were stupendous given what the mountain had just been through. One of the peaks was closed, and the black runs weren't in the kind of shape that made me want to go check them out, but for the most part, the runs were completely skiable (without having to slalom around ice balls, bare spots, icy patches, you know...), a very high percentage of them were open, and I would go back to that mountain in a flat second. The runs there are really PRETTY. Bretton Woods, too, but I liked Loon a little more. Better variety of terrain than BW, IMO. Anyway, cleaning up after that PV mess requires 1) good investment in snowmaking; 2) good snowmaking team; and 3) major dedication to quality grooming...and Loon obviously had all of those. I should think that under normal conditions it would be pretty incredible.