A VERY WET DAY OF SKIING AT WHITEFACE

It was quite a wet day on the mountain with moderate to heavy rain coming down all afternoon. Because of this, I was king of the mountain. I had the place to myself! I only saw a handful of people skiing or riding the entire afternoon and none after about 3 PM. Despite the rain, it was a nice afternoon of skiing on New York’s 5th tallest mountain.

Whiteface was spinning the gondola, Summit Quad, Face Lift and Falcon Flyer today. Most (all?) of the five people on the mountain this afternoon stuck to the gondola, as did I. I only rode the Summit Quad once today, because it’s a very long ride in the pouring rain. I was soaked after that. When the gondola and Summit Quad closed at 3:30 I started riding the Face Lift and the lift attendant told me I was the first person to ride the lift all day.

When it comes to skiing, rain has a bad reputation. Yeah, it sucks getting wet and it definitely sucks watching the snow melt, but conditions are generally pretty good for skiing. Today the snow was nice and soft on the groomers. It was very care-vable. The un-groomed terrain was rough. I skied Essex and the snow was so dense that I came to a complete stop at one point and came out of a ski. I wasn’t going very fast and it didn’t hurt, but I skied the remainder of the run in fear that it would happen again and never returned to ski it again.

There were some patches of dirt to be found here and there, but it’s nothing too bad. The natural snowpack obviously took a hit, but I think the mountain will recover from this warm-up and rain pretty quickly, at least I hope it does. The good news is that the rain should end as snow and that will help spruce things up tomorrow. It’s supposed to be a fairly cold and windy day so I’m thinking it’s probably going to be pretty icy in spots.

Talk to you tomorrow,

Lincoln