2024/2025

[Icecoast]

On 1/10/2025 at 12:43 PM, JFskiDan said:

Seems like Fail is operating snowmaking at a snails pace at most resorts.  granted some of these resorts dont have snowmaking on 100%, but this seems like some pretty low numbers to me.  

And Hunter is 47/71

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. 

[Ski2Live Live2Ski]

Yeah have avoided Wildcat which Vail is clearly not putting resources into - will only get there if nature takes care of them by Presidents’ Day.
 

But have had no complaints about my days at Stowe Okemo Snow Hunter Frost and Roundtop. Back to Okemo and Snow this coming weekend. Epic Pass continues to be the best thing that has happened to my family’s ski experiences. Taking kids to Vail in April.

Edited January 14 by Ski2Live Live2Ski

[EdBacon]

Wildcat had a lot of pre-existing issues with their snowmaking system pre-Vail. This is hardly the first time they've struggled. However, Vail really doesn't seem to understand any of the east coast mountains they bought and have failed to make the necessary investments to get Wildcat back up to a state of good repair. 

 

At least management seems to be giving some more leeway to operations at JF this year. Challenge was allowed to go ungroomed to bump up which is nice. They have everything open except Floyd's which I expect to open any day now. Full opening by mid-January isn't bad and puts them about even with pre-Vail opening schedules. And that's with a reduced snowmaking regime and less snow guns. 

 

But then all of that is really just relearning what the old operations staff already knew. Vail came in, gutted the place, got years of complaints and now falling revenue and visitor counts, so they're kicking back some operations to the staff with any experience on local operations. It's like every dumbass corporate job you ever had where your MB business casual boss reinvents your job then gives up and eventually lets you do things the way you already knew they were supposed to be done. Like, it's a waste of time. Thanks for nothing, Vail. I hope their stock price is buried. They've ruined a bunch of good local ski hills. I would suggest the entire Poconos ski experience has been degraded by them. Multiple competitor hills have jumped on the suck bandwagon to try and squeeze blood from the stone that is Poconos skiing and now we've got multiple underinvested hills with aloof leadership looking at spreadsheets and planning their slide deck to talk MB buzzwords like an AI chatbot at their next business retreat in Palm Springs. 

 

What a load of crap. I hate Vail. 

Edited January 14 by EdBacon

[Icecoast]

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.

Edited January 14 by rgrwilco

[EdBacon]

CBK doesn't want to operate the ski area anymore. They're focused on their waterparks. That leaves Blue and Shawnee. Blue is ridiculously crowded now and Shawnee is, well Shawnee. It's nice for what it is but it's small and doesn't even have the small geographic advantage of being on top of the plateau. Plus it's in an awkward location. It's the same drive to Montage as it is to Shawnee for me coming from Montgomery County. 

[Icecoast]

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.

Edited January 14 by Icecoast

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

9 minutes ago, Icecoast said:

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.

How has mountain creek been this season?  

[Icecoast]

2 minutes ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

How has mountain creek been this season?  

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. 

[momskeeztoo]

Makes me sad that Wildcat isn’t being given the attention it deserves. It’s a great mountain, with a ton of potential. I got a 3 day Epic NE local pass this year, mostly so I could ski with my son, who lives in Carlisle. Not many choices close to there that aren’t Epic. 
Otherwise, I wouldn’t get an Epic pass. I’m just not that impressed with them. 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

1 hour ago, momskeeztoo said:

Makes me sad that Wildcat isn’t being given the attention it deserves. It’s a great mountain, with a ton of potential. I got a 3 day Epic NE local pass this year, mostly so I could ski with my son, who lives in Carlisle. Not many choices close to there that aren’t Epic. 
Otherwise, I wouldn’t get an Epic pass. I’m just not that impressed with them. 

I saw that about wildcat on one of the forums. We should be glad blue and most resorts give it their all. 

[C1erArt]

21 hours ago, Kyle said:

I would think the lack of snowmaking willpower, outdated lifts, lack of open terrain might be more of a factor… 

The new lifts replacing the twin lifts Boulder and Frost are pretty nice. 

[Shadows]

500ft/20 min. great.

[trackbiker]

11 hours ago, momskeeztoo said:

Makes me sad that Wildcat isn’t being given the attention it deserves. It’s a great mountain, with a ton of potential. I got a 3 day Epic NE local pass this year, mostly so I could ski with my son, who lives in Carlisle. Not many choices close to there that aren’t Epic. 
Otherwise, I wouldn’t get an Epic pass. I’m just not that impressed with them. 

Sometime when the natural snow is good, you should check out Blue Knob. It's still a ways past Carlisle but worth it when the snow is good.

[momskeeztoo]

I’ve always wanted to go there. Just a bit far for a day trip. I could always stay in Carlisle overnight. Do they have snowmaking, too. 

[trackbiker]

5 minutes ago, momskeeztoo said:

I’ve always wanted to go there. Just a bit far for a day trip. I could always stay in Carlisle overnight. Do they have snowmaking, too. 

They have snowmaking but it's not a great system unless they've upgraded it a lot recently.

[EdBacon]

The Knob is fun. Road up is dangerous when it snows because it's an upside down resort on top of a 3200 ft mountain. The lodge is where the old missile defense shield radar base was. That's why its upside down, when the military closed the radar base they repurposed it to a ski area, but the road and facilities were all at the top. Snowmaking is marginal. It's an old system that's in need of a lot of maintenance and upgrades. Really shines when there's a lot of natural snowfall. Sometimes it can get that owing to elevation and catching the same weather pattern WV resorts benefit from. 

Edited Wednesday at 03:30 PM by EdBacon

[Johnny Law]

Way back I rode alot of knob,  don't sleep on that road. It may be pa but it's one of the most dangerous I've ever seen. 

I'm out of the loop but all I've heard is the knob has no money and therefore no money to blow snow hence no customers. 

Denton always has had a couple of hardcores but with all the jazz about getting that place open and peeps buying every resort they can get their hands on it doesn't make a ton of sense they are so broke. 

[momskeeztoo]

Is Denton the one outside of Wellsboro? 

[EdBacon]

1 hour ago, momskeeztoo said:

Is Denton the one outside of Wellsboro? 

Sort of. It's closer to Coudersport. 

[momskeeztoo]

We stopped and checked it out a couple years ago while camping up that way. Didn’t seem too impressive as a ski hill. It was already non operational at that point. 

[C1erArt]

5 hours ago, momskeeztoo said:

We stopped and checked it out a couple years ago while camping up that way. Didn’t seem too impressive as a ski hill. It was already non operational at that point. 

I think it had one pretty steep run. My son was in a race there over 15 years ago and one of the racers crashed and burned and got pretty messed up. If I recall correctly, he was helicoptered out.  Had a nice WPA type lodge with a bunch of people using straight skis. 

Edited Friday at 06:37 PM by C1erArt