How do beginners get down the mountain then (I'm not a beginner but was just curious)?
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.