4/18 trip report with pics

[rgrwilco]

i decided i needed one more day on the snow, and woke up at 5 am to hit the road. for some reason i grabbed my artifact by accident, and did not realize this until about halfway to new york. at this point i was farely certain my day was going to suck. i love that board, but it does not ride well on anything steep or at high speeds at all.

 

i managed to miss all traffic, and arrived at belleayre at around 9 oclock(i took a wrong turn, which ruined my usual 3 hour drive time to the catskills). uppon arriving to catskill park, i noticed that all of the mountains had alot of snow at the summit. pulling up to bell, the summit was masked in clouds.

 

 

there was only one lift running when i arrived, so i could not hit anything on the west side of the mountain since i was not in the mood for the hike. atop at the summit, it was surreal. there was so much new snow, and there were horizontal icicles on the lift poles from the wind. the high speed was closed, but there were some dudes working hard to get the ice off of the lines(there was ton of it. definately not a camelback esque excuse.)

 

 

the views into catskill park were also pretty nice.

after a few runs down, me and my boy found a small cliff drop on the side of onedgonga(sp) trail?. it was maybe 15 feet, maybe more as it seemed much bigger then the drop at bear creek. it required quite a hike up the side through alot of brush. all the time ice was falling off the trees onto my head. this was my first real sized cliff, and i know it was bigger then bears because i got that feeling in my stomach like you get on roller coasters. so much fun. of course my boy screwed up on recording it. the snow on lower mountain was a little to slushy, so i had to stick on groomed trails down there. they eventually opened the high speed quad, and that lift is damn fast

 

on the way home, my gps got me lost. i ended up driving past slide mountain and then lost the gps signal. almost dirt mountain roads for miles, and a really clean looking river made for some interesting photos.

 

 

 

 

 

overall, a very fun day. it was my boys first time on a snowboard, and he got the hang of it on his first run. belleayre is a really cool place, and i got 2 free tickets for next early season from the BOGO special. suhweet.

[bigdaddyk]

I was there the 21st and 22nd. They have enough snow that they could have made another weekend.

[snorovr]

Nice TR!