by Albert Neubert
It was the best weekend of the season for local ski areas in the Hudson Valley, Catskills, and southern Berkshires. We went into the snow zone last week with constant snow squalls and two minor storms that wound up dumping anywhere from four to eight inches of light and fluffy powder on the slopes. Temperatures stayed well below freezing for almost a week and that allowed snowmaking operations to go virtually non-stop at all ski areas throughout the Northeast right up until this week when it finally started to go above the freezing mark.
It was cold enough for the Victor Constant Ski Slopes at West Point to finally open for the season last Saturday. The ski area opened with the Rod Smith trail from the summit and the learning area terrain. The area has a decent vertical drop of over 500 feet and a consistent intermediate pitch from the top. Novices should not ride the triple chair to the summit because there is no green circle terrain available from the top.
I skied at Hunter last Thursday and I experienced the best conditions of the season, by far. Hunter’s management was blowing snow on a number of trails with a particular focus on opening all of the slopes on the Hunter North portion of the Resort. The Way In and Way Out trails of Hunter West were also getting blasted and ultimately, these runs can get that part of the ski area open. It will take some heavy duty snowmaking on Colonel’s Alternate and Claire’s Run for Hunter West to open and they are served by the high speed Zephyr express quad chairlift.
I was able to ski the two open runs at Hunter North, including Sleepy Hollow and the very challenging Overlook slope. Note that all of the terrain at Hunter North sits in the shade until around 10:30 at this time of the year so you will experience flat light and that will make it even more challenging.
I skied at the Windham Mountain Club, in the northern Catskills on Sunday afternoon for the last couple of hours of the session. The good news is that the daytime crowd was pretty much gone by that point and I had the lifts and trails pretty much to myself. The bad news was that I got the “leftovers” in terms of conditions. The snow surfaces were very scraped off with hard pack bases exposed. This meant having to bring my skis up on edge and carving to get a grip on the slick surfaces.
Windham’s management was blowing snow on the super steep Wheelchair trail, which you might be able to guess from the name, is a very serious run. I stayed on the Wonderama high speed quad side of the ski area since the afternoon sun hits those trails until about 3 p.m. Once those trails went into the shade, I dialed back my speed since the surface visibility was much reduced. Base depths had recovered nicely from the thaw of a couple weeks earlier. Another reason you might find newly opened snowmaking trails with hard and slick surfaces is that the freshly made snow tends to be a much wetter consistency and when it freezes and dries out it can become rock hard. This is done on purpose by ski area operators to create a durable base that will better withstand a thaw.
When I skied on some of those icy bases I was thinking about how my edges were holding because I keep them razor sharp. If you are having trouble holding an edge or keeping your skis from sliding uncontrollably, there may be two causes. One is that you aren’t using your edges properly but the more likely cause is that you have dull or worn edges. This season, in particular, has seen a lot of rocks mixed into the snow surfaces because of the constant freeze and thaw cycles. These rocks are nasty edge removers and if you hit enough of them over time, your edges will become dull and even serrated like a hack saw blade, meaning you will have control issues.
While I do my own tuning and edge sharpening, I would highly recommended taking your skis to a shop where they can do a complete tune for anywhere from $50 to $100 depending on the extent of the work that’s needed. If you ski five to ten times a season a tune-up at the start of the season should keep your skis working properly throughout the winter. However, take a look at your ski bottoms and edges after each ski session. You can use a rag to rub the length of your edges and you will be able to tell quickly if the rag catches in places. A good edge is one that is smooth from tip to tail and has no serrations or burrs from hitting rocks.
The great conditions last weekend brought out capacity crowds to all ski areas in our area. Ever since the COVID lockdowns, some ski areas have continued to keep in place capacity restrictions to limit crowding. It reminded me that you should be very cognizant of ski area alerts that say they have sold out for a weekend day. That happened at Belleayre, in the southern Catskills, last weekend. I’m sure some unlucky visitors found out the hard way by going to Belleayre only to learn that there were no more tickets available for the day.
Think sharp edges and happy skiing and riding! You can contact me at asneubert@aol.com or you can visit my Instagram page @asneubert
