Belleayre - 02/07

eaf · February 8, 2021

So, hearing that Belleayre got 24" of new snow last week, still having unused ORDA cards and Superbowl on the horizon, we decided to do a day trip to Belleayre, especially since more snow was coming.

The timing of this new storm and its general direction couldn't have been more perfect. It was coming from south west in the morning, was supposed to dump 3-5 inches in NJ and Catskills during the day and then just disappear into the Atlantics. So, we've left the house at 5:15am and by 8am were at the mountain having seen not a drop of rain, not a single snowflake, only dry and empty roads.

The mountain wasn't supposed to be open until 9am, but all of the lifts were already spinning. It's nice when the management actually anticipates that people may be coming to ski and starts the lifts not just when lines build up, but way ahead of the opening hour. By 8:30 we were on the slopes and seeing that some blue jackets were already going down started asking around about if it was OK for us to ski as well. "Go!" - they've said: "Go, while the crowds didn't come yet". And so we went. And as it turned out later, the crowds never actually came.

The grooming was impeccable. Same beautiful carpet as I've seen at Blue last Thursday, except that there was just more of it. And the trails stayed good not for an hour and a half, but for the entire day. It was really unbelievable, at Blue lately I can't help but notice that my sessions started to get shorter and shorter because people get smarter, lines build up faster, and snow turns into crap sooner. Here we a-priori decided to wait out the bad road conditions on the mountain from 9am to 4pm, and initially had this idea that we HAD TO ski all day until the storm has passed, but it turned out that we didn't HAVE TO, there was no such feeling of being trapped on the mountain, we didn't count the hours until it was time to leave. We just skied open-to-close and enjoyed every minute of it. It started snowing around 9am. At times the snow was heavy, at times light, I think the total amount of precipitation was less than forecasted, especially in Catskills, but regardless, it was just such a great winter day.

Is there something else one could wish for? Sure. Good roads on the way back. And we've got them too, all plowed, no slush, door to door. Woo-hoo!