Icecoast

I really enjoyed catamount, Berkshire East, and even little Bosquet. What the Schaefers have done to those places is impressive. But I still cannot get down with how they clear cut both catamount and bosquet and never replanted. Its like the Anti-Elk.

I guess I meant some sort of pass that would work. There’s no way there wasn’t something that could be done.

So it seems like they know it should work…wouldn’t any competent employee get a manager to just get you a day pass? I went to a resort a few years back and reloaded my rfid card online. It didn’t work when I got there and couldn’t get the sale to show on their end. I showed them my email receipt and they just gave me a day pass.

I asked for the tea, waiting on response.

The timberline trail used to be a bit longer with a bunch of twists and turns in it, but then they just made it a boring flat trail.

I was there one day, I think back in like 07 or 08 in early December. They had the usual Main Street vista and chute areas open and were making snow on lazy all morning. They pushed out the piles, groomed, and had lazy open by the afternoon. Those piles sat for zero minutes after the guns went off.

I’ve also noticed that when it’s cold and the weather cooperates, the snow quality at bear was always much better than blue. JFBB used to be similar. I’ve heard that not using snow max as an additive can cause the product to be wetter and denser (aside from just air/water ratio). Also, the quicker a pile is pushed out and groomed the crappier the snow. If the piles are allowed to drain for a bit its a drier product when groomed.

They do. The two north peaks (Vernon and Granite) were one ski area and south and bear peaks were another. When it combined into Vernon valley/great gorge a connector lift and trail was installed. There’s a lodge at each area so you can chose were to park. It’s not that big an issue, if you get tired of lapping south and bear peak, you have one long lift ride to get back to granite and Vernon. It’s not lift meant to lap, its there so you dont have to get in your car and drive to the other base. When intrawest bought the area and turned it into mountain creek, there was a massive master plan. The open lift was supposed to be for mountain biking and to get people to a mountain top development/resort center built around the lakes up top. There was always supposed to be a second high speed lift but it never happened. The actual master plan made the place massive. See attached for that. The missing bottom trail that looks to cut across the condos is still there but needs to be reopened. They have stated this is in works with the condo association for when the triple is replaced with the six pack. I assume one other route down to that area will open too. The missing trails in the top left were abandoned because they kinda sucked and you had to traverse to get to them. The trails on the center peak were abandoned because because the longer trail that wraps around was really flat, and the steep pipeline trail had issues with their being an actual pipeline underneath it, and that right at the bottom of the steepest part it turned 90 degrees and was quite an issue for the Jersey Jerry. The pipeline trail used to go full top top bottom before the condos went in. Basically, intrawest wanted to make the place stratton south, started a bunch of small things but never finished. Then the few owners between them and the ownership group now kinda let the place go. New owners are on it and are addressing things bit by bit.

It’s a slow day at work and i just read through this thread. Im a current season pass holder at mountain creek. I have ridden there in the past and their super cheat 270 dollar season pass was cheap enough that I completely forgot that it sucks. The good: Their snowmaking investments have paid off big time. Conditions have been fantastic. The allow for uphill and open an hour early for season pass holders on weekends and holidays. The bad: The steep stuff is the last to open, despite only having 3 trails i would consider steep. 2 of them are on the main peak and have a green trail cutting each route down in half. Despite them claiming a new six pack is coming to replace the triple lift, we are still stuck riding that stupid gondola. The triple serves as backup on weekends. And there’s one narrow trail down to the triple so it’s always a clusterf*ck getting to it. They have removed more than one trail. Attached is a screenshot of the trails removed. The removal of those trails absolutely ruins any flow of the mountain. They claim they are bringing 2 back on Vernon when the six pack goes in. Marked in red on the attached photo are the removed trails. Will I be back? This season, yes for uphill and some early weekends, but I’ve already broken even on my pass and will most likely do some midweek days at the ‘Tage for 40 bucks, and go ikon or ‘tage next season unless this elk mountain rumored sale happens.

Honestly, their snowmaking improvement is impressive, the snow under the new guns is fantastic. Just the layout of the mountain sucks, the lifts suck, the clientele sucks. I can’t complaint for 270 bucks though, having the mountain open for an hour for season pass holders only each weekend for first tracks is nice.

And that’s why I’m thinking next year I’m going with a montage pass, unless something wild happens with these elk rumors. Sure they don’t have a high speed lift but they have good vert, good snowmaking, and easy to get to. I screwed up and got a mountain creek pass this season. Never again.

I would go a step ahead and say that Vail has negatively impacted PA skiing as a whole. If you’re in the DC area or southern/central PA your options are Vail. If your out by Pittsburg, your options are vail (including the Ohio areas). I believe in competition in business, but what vail has done in PA should not have been allowed. They own so many ski areas in one state (8 to be exact) with those areas properly positioned to all but force people to buy an epic pass unless they want to go to blue knob or Boyce park, that all they have to do is the bare minimum to exist. That does not spur competition when all you have to do to be better than them is 1% more. I mean, what are you going to do if you live in central PA and don’t want to ski vail? Hoof it for hours to get to the poconos? Hope that blue knob hasn’t blown their miniscule snowmaking budget on that sweet Altoona meth? I think the poconos have it slightly better than the rest of the state as you can go to blue, camelback, or Shawnee which other than camelback the rest seem to have stepped up their operations a bit as they have to compete with each other.

Wildcat apparently still only has one route open down the mountain. It’s unbelievable, especially since it’s been cold for almost an entire month.

I went to whitetail the year before it was sold to vail (RIP peaks). It was cold for weeks leading up to my visit and with peak resorts snowmaking efforts, conditions were some of the best I’ve ridden in PA. That being said, I’ve heard rumors that vail does not use snowmax in their water like peaks did, so they make a wetter denser product now. Not sure if true or not, but having ridden hunter pre and post vail, I can say the snow is definitely worse under vail. The mountain layout is really genius. The trail map makes it look kind of boring, but even though the trails are straight down the fall line, there is some really fun character to them. The blues are steeper than most blues elsewhere, which is really fun. I really enjoyed my day there. the only downside I can see is if anyone your going with is a park rider. Like what vail did to boulder, they did to whitetail. They removed the park lift, and moved the park over to this super tiny side trail with room for like 2 features. This move isn’t shown on their map yet, but its happened. I posted a trip report from back then