TR January 30

[Ride Delaware ?]

I went to Belleayre last April 10th for some spring skiing and was thoroughly impressed by the state owned and operated Catskill Mountain. I wished to go back this year, and my father, who skis, had not been on the snow yet this year and decided to tag along. We left Delaware about 2:15 on Thursday, and arrived around 8 or so... There was some traffic at the I-287 and I-87 interchange mostly attributed to rush hour traffic... We stayed at the Northland Motel... It is in Fleischmans and is only about 1.4 miles from the mountain... The room was discounted for the week and was only $59 per night... The rooms are your basic 70's style room and the rooms probably had not been upgraded since... If your looking for a close cheap place to stay, this is your place... If you want some more class, look elsewhere... The beds are strengthened by plywood, the carpet is coming up, and the shades appeared to be mostly homemade... However, the bathrooms were in excellent shape and I found the use of the room to be rather enjoyable also lol... The motel had a restaurant, but it was privately operated and was moving, so it wasn't open... The owner of the motel told us La Cabana, a mexican restaurant in town, was within walking distance and would be open... The walk would be quite enjoyable if it wasn't close to 10 blocks away and it wasn't 8 degrees out lol... It was pretty cool being able to walk on the road in town without seeing a single car... Unfortunately, the town seems to be economically depressed and has many vacant stores... After enjoying some enchiladas, we went back and went to sleep ready to wake up and hit the slopes...

 

We arrived at the mountain at about 8:30 and parked at the Overlook lodge about 75 yards from the lodge... I was surprised to see so many people there, but it was Winterfest, and all lift tickets were only $20. My dad headed inside to grab some coffee and a sandwich, but I stuck true to man law and booted up in the parking lot... I found my dad, bought our lift tickets, and hit the slopes... My dad wanted to warm up on the beginner slopes, all of which are located below the overlook lodge, so we decided to meet at the double lift that serviced that terrain... Well, I lost my dad and he ended up at the Super Chief quad and went to the top... I on the other hand ended up lapping some slow beginner terrain for about an hour while I looked for him... After realizing he clearly wasn't going to meet me, I decided to hit the Quad... There was actually a slight line, but getting in the single line made the wait about 15 seconds... The longest I waited all day was maybe 2 minutes because the entire day seemed to be dedicated to amateur hour, and seriously, 3 people fell off the lift trying to get on... I lapped almost all of the terrain not dedicated to the moguls for the next two hours before finding my dad at the lodge enjoying a cup of hot cocoa... The snow was excellent east coast cord... The 6 inches they received from the last winter storm were groomed in nicely... At the end of the day there were some icy spots, but in reality, there were very few and they were small... The areas that weren't groomed were a little crusty from the freezing rain, but not too bad at all... After lunch I finally got to the slow quad and the triple and got to try out some of the right side of the mountain... It was in great shape and Deer Run is a great cruiser... We travelled the whole mountain pretty well the next 3 and a half hours and most of the trails were still in great shape... Very few glades were actually open, but it was obvious that you could probably poach them without any repercussions... Several trails were closed for the first couple hours and had snowguns on them, but they opened them later and kept the guns on providing for some pretty sweet deep manmade...

The crowds began to thin at about 2 and we left at about 3:45... It snowed pretty heavy through snow showers most of the day... They picked up about 2 inches of snow, and these snow showers continued throughout the evening...

 

After leaving we went to the hotel, showered, and embarked for somewhere to eat... We ended up at the Phoenecian Diner which is about 12 miles away... It is an old school diner that serves your normal diner food... The upside is that they make alot of their food homemade... The downside is that they don't accept credit... There were only several people eating, but it appeared to be much busier the next morning when we left...

 

All in all, it was a great day of boarding... Unfortunately, I got to talk to one of the employees, and due to the budget cuts, this means their closing date has already been set as the last weekend in March... The employee said that skier visits have been slightly down, but it isn't an alarming amount, and if the upcoming holiday is decent, they may consider pushing it back another week, but nothing is set in stone... Sorry Steeze, you may be heading North a week earlier than you thought... I may try to make a weekend trip in April... The spring skiing last year was awesome...