DAY 10 OF THE SKI SEASON AT WHITEFACE SKI AREA
And just like that the new ski season isn’t so new anymore. Today was my 10th day on the mountain and it was a real treat. Some new terrain opened up, there was snow in the air and conditions were fantastic. Not too shabby for December 3!
Yesterday, I told y’all I get to the mountain at 1 PM during the week, which is generally accurate, but sometimes work runs over or I just end up leaving late for whatever reason. Today was a day where I just left late and so I got to Whiteface at about 1:30 PM. By 1:40, I was riding up the gondola to Little Whiteface for a 2+ hour session of skiing.
Today they were once again spinning the gondola, Summit Quad and Face Lift. On the drive to the mountain, I had decided that I would only lap the gondola today, making sure to ski Victoria as much as possible. Victoria opened this morning for the season and it’s an intermediate run that is definitely on the more difficult side of intermediate. It’s got a nice steep pitch to it and you can really get a lot of speed on it when it’s groomed. Since it just opened today, however, it hadn’t been groomed and they were still making snow, but it sure skied great! Skiers left had natural snow mixed-in with the man-made stuff and it felt like a powder day every time I went down the run.
Another noteworthy run today, in terms of conditions, was Essex. Essex is a black diamond run that opened over the weekend. It was phenomenal on opening day, pretty good yesterday and today it was once again phenomenal. I couldn’t get enough of it! Fortunately, there’s a cut halfway down Essex that allows you to bail out and, from that cut, you can eventually make your way to Victoria, so I was able to ski both trails in one run.
Since I was lapping the gondola, I had to ski to the bottom of the mountain every single run. Today was my 5th day in a row of skiing and it’s still early in the season, so I was really feeling that roughly 2,400 ft. of vertical every time I skied down. The trail to the base is the same as it was yesterday. There’s only one way down and it looks to stay that way for some time. Basically, from the Legacy Lode at mid-mountain, you take Boreen to Brookside and on down to the base.
They’ve been making snow on these runs since they opened them and I haven’t really been able to trust the snow in that time and today was no different. You could feel it occasionally grab at your skis and the snow coming from the guns was sticking to my goggles. Once they’re done making snow in this area it will all ski very nicely.
Yesterday, I noted that the base of the mountain was very rocky and, while some people were skiing right up to the gondola and the Face Lift, I wasn’t comfortable with the amount of small rocks and I was taking my skis off and walking. Well, with more snowmaking overnight, that problem has been fixed. You can now ski right up to the gondola and the Face Lift. It’s not a big deal to have to walk the final stretch to a lift, but it’s much nicer being able to ski right up to it!
High up on the mountain, the snowpack is really starting to get deep. There’s a clipper coming this week and I wonder if we will finally see some natural snow terrain, like Cloudspin, open up. I guess we will just have to wait and see.
Talk to you tomorrow,
Lincoln