SKIING ON BLACK FRIDAY AT WHITEFACE
Snow being made at the top of Victoria.
With Thanksgiving now in the rearview mirror, the Christmas shopping season is here! Back in my day (said in an old man voice), Black Friday deals were worth fighting over. Maybe even going to jail over! Now? Pfft. Forget about it. I’m not punching somebody in the middle of an aisle at Target over these deals. Bring back the real door busters! Long story long, there ain’t no deal worth missing a day on the mountain, so I went to Whiteface and skied instead.
Okay, the real reason I didn’t partake in any Black Friday shopping is because I worked this morning. The deals do suck now, though, and people really did used to fight over door busters. Since I worked today, I arrived at the mountain in the afternoon. There was some snow in the air and they were making it, too.
The view from Little Whiteface.
Essex.
I spent most of my time skiing with none other than Wild Bill. He’d been there basically all day, shredding the frozen frontier, and he let me know that conditions were better in the morning. We lapped the gondola, but they were spinning the Summit Quad and the Face Lift as well. There were 15 runs open, including Victoria, which opened for the first time this season.
Life on the Ice Coast, baby!
Conditions-wise, it was an interesting afternoon. To be honest, it was fairly icy in some spots. Thanks to recent and actively falling snow, as well as snow being made in select spots on open trails, it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, though. One trail I found to be really icy was Essex. Some people on the gondola told us that the terrain off the Summit Quad was also very windswept, but we never went up to find out.
Boreen.
The only picture I got of Excelsior.
It wasn’t really a busy day on the mountain, but with it being a holiday weekend and limited terrain open, there were multiple choke points where you could come across a lot of people skiing. In my experience, those areas included basically all of Excelsior, Upper Valley and then Boreen from the top of The Notch Lift to its mid-station. There will be more terrain coming online this weekend, such as the trails in the Bear Den Learning Center area, which should help alleviate some of this.
Today was opening day for Victoria. This run is rated a blue, but I think most can agree it’s teetering on being a black diamond. Most of the time, you can get a lot of speed on this run. That was not the case today, as there were whales and they were still making snow. The snow was soft and forgiving and I’d say it was my run of the day. Even the bumps on skiers left were great!
Looking down Victoria.
Looking up Victoria.
Snow being made down low on the mountain.
Snow being made at the bottom of Easy Street.
As mentioned, they were making snow on Victoria, as well as a few open runs, but they were also making snow on a lot of unopened terrain as well, such as on Easy Street, Lower Valley, Fox, Upper Boreen and a few runs in the beginner area. Sometimes, when a ski area is making snow on open terrain, the snow can be tough to ski through or even extremely sticky. That was not the case today. There was nowhere you had to worry about what was going to happen as you skied through the snow.
Never Quit Skiing,
Lincoln