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Where to Ski From Northern Jersey
- Thread starter yogiskier
- Start date
Lmk92
Angel Diva
No! One of our best days at Belleayre was in the rain! It wasn't this late in the season, though.Am I the only one who likes skiing in the rain?The snow was fantastic today and the mountain was literally empty. Yesterday was a fabulous sunny spring skiing day. It was a great weekend for sure! I’ve never regretted it when I venture out in rainy weather.
ilovepugs
Angel Diva
If it wasn’t so windy out I’d have gone out, but it just sounds unpleasant outside!Am I the only one who likes skiing in the rain?
MissySki
Angel Diva
Our wind wasn’t too bad today for the most part. I think at Sunday River that’s coming more tonight/tomorrow.
newboots
Angel Diva
Isn't this weather the worst? It's gray and rainy here, 50s. I was longing for hot chocolate, but have settled for green tea and making red lentil dal.
newboots
Angel Diva
Maybe I'll try it 2023! But who knows? It's also further from my house by about 45 minutes over the other Catskill resorts.
marzNC
Angel Diva
As with all ski areas that have advanced skiers who are vocal fans, Plattekill also has good intermediate trails. Fair to say that the kids who learn there move up to blues pretty quickly. The green/blue trails go around the edges of the ski area while the trails that go more or less straight down from the summit to the base are in the middle. What's unusual is not how steep those trails are, but that there is relatively run-out so that it's possible to ski almost all of the 1000 feet of vertical within dealing with flat sections.
Having checked out Belleayre, Hunter, and Plattekill, the only place I would consider skiing on a weekend again would be Plattekill.
I skied af Plattekill as an advanced beginner. I skied mostly the perimeter trails @marzNC mentioned, but I also skied something right under a lift that was probably a blue trail. Looking at the trail map, it was most likely Lower Face.
Re: the old-fashioned vibe -- We arrived and went to the ticket window. No one there. So we went to the lodge to get coffee while we waited. Drank our coffee and went back to buy lift tickets. The woman that helped us in the lodge ... was now manning the ticket window. We joked that the lift hadn't started running because she was busy with our coffee and lift tickets!
Re: the old-fashioned vibe -- We arrived and went to the ticket window. No one there. So we went to the lodge to get coffee while we waited. Drank our coffee and went back to buy lift tickets. The woman that helped us in the lodge ... was now manning the ticket window. We joked that the lift hadn't started running because she was busy with our coffee and lift tickets!
newboots
Angel Diva
Oh! I love it!
I was spoiled forever by learning to ski at Berkshire East. They have since expanded, but it was such a happy, informal place. I discovered that I had friends who skied (who knew?), I had a couple of terrific lessons, and there was such a wonderful family feeling. Sure, the food was lousy, the lodge way too crowded on race days (can you say, "there's no place to sit to put on my boots!"), and the kids ran around the lodge when not skiing. But I really liked it.
tinymoose
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
We ski at Montage (near Scranton) and can recommend it. Unlike other mountains, the lift lines aren't usually too bad on weekends, and we personally like the terrain. The upper part of the mountain isn't super interesting... just a row of green and blue runs, but the lower half, The North Face, is where all the black terrain is and it's really nice. You can also ski from top to bottom via Long Haul (although it's a LONG, SLOW lift) via blues and then blacks, and it gets you close to 1,000 vertical. They also do a really nice job with their snow.
yogiskier
Angel Diva
Thanks for the rec @tinymoose! How do beginners get down the mountain then (I'm not a beginner but was just curious)?
SallyCat
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Montage has lifts that only serve the top (beginner/intermediate) trails. Iirc, the lodge/parking area is at about mid-slope, so the expert trails are below the lodge and the blue and green trails are above it.
As someone who moved from the Poconos to Vermont, I have to agree with the Divas here about Poconos skiing being decidedly underwhelming compared to New England. Blue mountain is really nice on weekdays if you can swing that, and the night skiing in PA can be a boon if you just want time on snow. But for ski weekends, I would head north every time, because it's not just the lift lines that are a problem. If you have a high-speed 6-pack and a high-speed 4-pack churning skiers onto 70 acres, it makes for dangerously crowded and unpleasant trails.
There's also a slightly different culture around skiing in the Poconos, at least the way I sensed it. Beginner and intermediate skiers and riders straight-lining as fast as they can down trails and through merge areas seems to be a normalized practice. Obviously I'm generalizing, but in northern New England the people going really fast tend to be ex-racers who are very much in control and skiing beautifully, with big GS turns, for example. The rest of us are making our turns at whatever speed and style suits us, and being in control and reasonably attentive to trail traffic.
This came to mind two weekends ago when I went to a very-crowded Okemo on a Saturday, which I hardly ever do. A whole lot of people were from the NY/NJ area, and holy cow were people straight-lining like human torpedoes and shooting through merge and slow areas. I was buzzed very closely a few times from people screaming down past me as I approach the lift line. It struck me just how different the mountain feels between weekdays and weekends, and it wasn't just the number of people, but the culture of how people ski.
Again, I'm definitely generalizing and I may not be articulating it as well as possible, but I spent 12 years in the Poconos and have been in Vermont for 3 years now, so I hope my description doesn't come across as glib or mean-spirited; it's just that to me there's a distinctly different feel to the two regions.
Lmk92
Angel Diva
Agree, @SallyCat. We haven't had too much trouble at Elk or JFBB, but we'll likely never return to Camelback due to the rudeness of the skiers. I don't think you were being mean-spirited. Honestly, I'd hesitate to return to Hunter because of the issues you raised. Both times we visited, we ended up leaving early because it was full of out of control skiers, and the last time was on a Wednesday!
tinymoose
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I haven't been to Elk in some time, mostly b/c of its distance from Philly, but I've always felt the vibe at JFBB and Montage is different than what you get at Blue and Camelback. Camelback pulls heavily from the NYC metro area, and Blue pulls heavily from Philly, and sometimes you just get some yahoos from those areas. It's not that JFBB and Montage don't get some of this crowd also, it just feels like it's to a lesser degree. Hunter has the same sort of thing going on too. Because of that, we've never tried to ski there on a weekend.
marzNC
Angel Diva
If you go farther south, there are a few "upside down" ski resorts where the lodge is at the top of mountain (Wintergreen, Blue Knob, Snowshoe). Like Plattekill (and Wildcat in NH), there are also ski areas with a green that starts at the top (Timberline in WV).
SallyCat
Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Jack Frost's lodge is at the top, and Blue has lodges at the base and the summit. I think that set-up is common in areas where you're skiing a ridge more than a mountain. The Poconos, e.g. are less a mountain range and more the edge/escarpment of a big plateau.
