i was at Hunter this weekend!
Re: no power at Hunter - we had no idea until we got there and noticed the traffic lights were out among other regular lights. it was dark, but darker than usual and then i pointed it out to my husband and he was like oh...
Re: the drive up, it had snowed in northern NJ like 1.5 ft and then all of a sudden it cleared out. there wasn't any snow, except maybe a dusting here and there. i would say 3 inches or so b/c some parts of the ground were covered. we were getting really worried. then we crossed the gorge from I-87 and then we started to see snow. then more snow. then more. it was a completely different world than say Saugerties.
Re: Saturday morning, we did our usual routine of waking up at 5:30 am to be on hill to skin up (AT) at 6 am. except we used our headlamps to get ready before sunrise. luckily we had daylight when starting to go uphill so we didn't have to use our headlamps on the walk up. we went up and did hellgate to upper crossover. i think we took minya down. it was a pillow DREAM. there were several others walking uphill. with skins and people straight up walking up with their downhill equipment. what's nice is at the top there is a lodge. there's no light, but there are bathrooms and water.
early-morning Saturday (8:30 am), picked up the LO, went to find breakfast bc our stove is not gas range, it's electric and we couldn't cook. we had a big breakfast at Selina's diner. It was such a weird morning. so much powder, and not a soul to be found. Hubs didn't have to report to work b/c of the outage (he's a ski instructor at Hunter) so he essentially had the day off. They didn't get the word out to employees that the power was down and they didn't have to come to work b/c they had no official way of communicating.
by 10 am we were starting our next skin uphill / alpine touring skiing. we did Cliff to racer's edge. it was another pillow dream. what turns! i was psyched.
we got home by 12 noon and we couldn't shower (there was water, but no hot water, and it was super frigid). changed out of our clothes and huddled in the covers in the bed where our daughter was hiding out. she had made us lots of coloring messages and such while we were gone. it was super cute. i figured out how to turn on the gas fireplace. we had it, but never used it b/c it dried out the air so much. it was tough figuring it out in the dark so i just gave up. but with the daylight i did it. then we took a nap. an hour later hubs says "the power's back on! they're running the lifts starting at 2:30! that's now! LET'S GO!"
so we hurried to get our stuff on, walk out the door - one of the shuttles picked us up and took us to the flyer which is the 6-pack. we were on the lifts by 3:10 or so. they were going to run the lifts til 5 pm, so we had to do our best.
we got on, and we did upperK to lowerK (another AT skier told us he did that earlier and it was amazing). All 3 of us had spills in the powder. it was marvelous. i was never so happy to get stuck. People helped each other out when they were stuck. It was so nice. There weren't many people out at all. Then we did hellgate to upper crossover again. we did a tree run at some point. Then we did Cliff to Dropoff. we did a run thru the terrain park i think and it was one of the lower runs that wasn't groomed yet, so it was still pillowy.
that evening we ate quite a bit since we didn't have lunch. we had dinner at one of the few places that was open was macgregor's pub. even tho power was restored, most establishments weren't up and running.
we cooked some food and packed it for the next day as we figured the mountain would be packed and it would be hard to get lunch, so we just brought our own for the day.
Sunday:
normal day. LO had seasonals, as did i. those start at 9:30 - we got up early and got to the lifts by 8:36. they had already been running the lifts with people since 8:15-20 or so. huge lines already. LO and i did Jimmy Heuga, she wanted to show me something that one of her old instructors did. then we did the terrain park at her request. then we separated to our groups. with the group, we worked on platform-skiing or two-footed skiing. then hunter west opened for the first time. we did way out. 2nd time we did claire's way to westway. westway never openes b/c they never blow snow on it. but it had a lot of natural snow. i was very early getting to it and i got to ski down freshies, it was quite good. i got to practice my powder skiing and it was challenging but fun.
in any case. we stopped for lunch at 11:30 and by 12 noon, LO was like, let's go up! that was a benefit of packing lunch, just eating and going immediately - so we went up to do a glade run and then the terrain park (again at her request).
in the afternoon we broke off into our seasonal groups again and got to do a lot of trees/glade runs that weren't marked but the locals know (our instructor knew). so we did a glade run to white out and a few others. we did so much mogul skiing. all i did was hit bumps all day. it was marvelous. even the groomed trails were amazing b/c of the snow. we also worked on smearing our turns. no edging whatsoever. all in all it was amazing.
we didn't have demo day obviously on 3/3 - and they won't reschedule it either. that's okay, i'll take a powder day over demo day every single time!
on Sunday I also saw several people with Loon jackets on. so a bunch of people from New Hampshire came down from Loon to ski Hunter! i love that.