Whitetail 1/23/20

[rgrwilco]

Since this will be my last year on a super pass situation, I figured I would try and hit some hills I’d never go and pay a day price for. Last time out I went to Liberty and roundtop. This time I’d go to whitetail. Watching the weather and their webcams, they were basically brought back to nothing and had to close. Before today they had about a solid week of snowmaking temps. I also noticed the weather at whitetail is pretty much the same as my home in south jersey save for a few degrees here and there, so today was my chance to hit them with good conditions this year. 

 

I left early and made my way three hours across southern pa through china level smog. There was also a terrible chemical/fecal smell the entire way from KOP to just past Harrisburg. Made me miss the somewhat decent environment up in the pokes.

 

 

I checked whitetail out on google earth and watched some videos, and thought I had an idea of the area and what to expect but I would say the area exceeded my expectations. From google earth you cant really tell its nestled in a valley. The trails also make full use of the almost 1000 feet of vert as there is barely any runout. Some of the trails actually have a pretty steep head wall right before getting back to the lift. The snowmaking power was impressive, and even the blue trails rode like black trails you would see at other places. As there are three main lifts with three sort of peaks, we worked left to right and started on the beginner side. They were making snow on all the trails and it was a bit sticky so I could never really get that much speed.

 

 

The beginner hill was about 500 ft of vert per my tracks app, and had a carpet loading triple. Pretty impressive. Two options were open from the triple, including one almost mile long trail that wraps around the side. Decent warm

up.

 

Base area with beginner triple to the left and high speed quad to the right.

 

Looking up the triple.

 

View the blue trails from the beginner triple.

 

View of the rest of the resort from the top of one of the beginner trails.

 

We moved to the intermediated pod, serviced by a high speed lift. Really fast with tight spacing. Snowmaking on all trails served, and they were pretty steep and used the full vert of the mountain.

 

 

 

 

View of the beginner area from the quad.

 

After quite a few runs we moved to the expert lift. only two trails were open out of the three, and the vert is a little shorter here at 7-800, but the trails use absolutely all of it without any runout whatsoever. Didn’t get any photos from over there are since I stopped pulling my phone out due the snowmaking. Nothing crazy steep but sustained and fun.

 

 

Overall I was really impressed with the area. The snowmaking power was insane, and everything was really nice and well kept. It is interesting that they built a resort like this south facing, in an area with high temps and low snow, considering the north side of the mountain was undeveloped and would hold snow much better. If it was an hour closer I would even consider it for a home mountain pre-vail.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[toast21602]

Damn that place looks bigger than I expected. Nice report and pictures! 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Great report and why aren’t you getting a superpass next year?  I believe whitetail was the first resort in PA to get a high speed detachable quad when they opened in 1992 or 1993.  In 1994 Blue installed the comet quad and camelback the Stevenson lift.