Smallest most obscure Ski hill you've been to?

EMSC

Well-known member
Re: Shawnee, PA 02/09/13 by jamesdeluxe » Mon Feb 11, 2013 8:45 am

Admin wrote:
I skied there a bunch as a kid, actually, as well as at Camelback, Big Boulder, etc. as my grandparents lived in the tiny burg of Pen Argyl, Penn.,

Just when I think I've found a U.S. hill that Admin hasn't skied, it's [-( .

Next month, I'll hit a couple out west that I'm reasonably sure you haven't been to, but who knows.

In the spirit of this TR and it's following exchange I got to wondering. Not about what the list of top notch resorts everyone has been to, but what tiny dilapidated hills the folks on the board have skied at?

No need to limit oneself to only one. As a Racer Chaser much of my life I've been to quite a few molehills. For that matter to quite a number of now defunct ski hills that no longer exist (including where I first learned to ski).

A sampling of some of mine (wow, I've been to a lot of tiny places):
Brantling, NY - 250 verts; all surface lifts and a literal cow pasture in summer.
Holiday Mtn, NY - all 350 verts or so.
Addison Pinnacle, NY - now defunct; all surface lifts including a poma with a 90 bend in the middle.
Mystic Mtn, NY - now defunct. 1 chair and several surface lifts
McCauley Mtn, NY - Freeze your #$% off in Old Forge, NY.
Cazenovia, NY - private club; pretty sure the rope tow was/is worlds fastest...
Scotch Valley, NY - now defunct; OK hill and hey there was bowling in the base lodge... Welcome to the Catskills.
Highmont, NY - now defunct; not really all that obscure since Belleayre wants to expand onto it's old footprint...
Blue Mash, PA; another 300 vert knob.
Bryce. VA - 400 verts of flat with 4 runs
Howleson Hill, CO - Surprisingly steep for such a tiny bump on the edge of town.
Sky Valley, GA - Now defunct I believe; Couple hundred verts and 2 runs
Iron Mtn, CA - now defunct; surprisingly 5 (very slow) chairs and maybe 1200 verts? Well, it was small for California.

OK, I've listed far too many - even though my tiny operations list above is very incomplete. But you get the idea.
 
Yawgoo Valley, RI:

Base Elevation: 70 ft (21 m)
Summit Elevation: 315 ft (96 m)
Vertical Drop: 245 ft (75 m)
Skiable Area: 36 acres (15 ha)
Annual Snowfall: 48 in (122 cm)
Snowmaking: 100 %
Number of Lifts: 4
Uphill Lift Capacity: 2,700 per hour
Types of Lifts: 2 Suface Lifts
2 Double Chairs
Number of Trails: 12
Longest Run: 2,200 ft (671 m)

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Doe Mountain, Macungie PA. Now known as Bear Creek Mountain. It started with a t bar, tow rope and two trails. I spent half a day just trying to up that tow rope when I was a teenager.....
 
Admin":2g5bgjup said:
Yawgoo Valley, RI:

Base Elevation: 70 ft (21 m)
Summit Elevation: 315 ft (96 m)
Vertical Drop: 245 ft (75 m)
Skiable Area: 36 acres (15 ha)
Annual Snowfall: 48 in (122 cm)
Snowmaking: 100 %
Number of Lifts: 4
Uphill Lift Capacity: 2,700 per hour
Types of Lifts: 2 Suface Lifts
2 Double Chairs
Number of Trails: 12
Longest Run: 2,200 ft (671 m)

I just checked a topo map because I didn't believe the reported 245 feet of vertical. The vertical drop is at most 160 feet, and I suspect that other stats like acreage and longest run are equally inflated. When I was a kid they had one double chairlift and a few rope tows.

And talk about flat! Notice the country road that parallels the runs from top to bottom without the need for any curves!

uploadfromtaptalk1360823069125.jpg


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Didn't we have this discussion last season or two years ago?

Smallest would probably be Beaver Lake on Montreal's Mt Royal Park back in the 1960 and early 1970s. Something like 45-50ft vertical. However this place was pretty popular back in the day.

Most obscure would probably be Mt Chilly in Western Quebec. 130 meters, roughly 2 hours from Ottawa. 1 t-bar, 6 runs.
 
I believe we did have this discussion a few years ago on this board. The smallest hill I ever skied at (other than that 40 vertical foot drop in my backyard when I was growing up) was Jericho Hill in Marlborough, MA, located in the town next to where I grew up in the 60's. It was owned and operated as a private ski club but the public could pay and ski there. I would estimate it had about a 200 foot vertical drop with two rope tows in the 60's. It was basically two open slopes (that I believe had been cleared at some point) and was straight up and then straight down with one meandering trail in the woods. They had no grooming maching so, when it snowed, the club members would show and sidestep up the hill to pack down the snow (and it seems like it used to snow a lot more in the 60's in New England). It had one small, flat-roofed concrete building as the "lodge" that sat near the entrance road and I remember that you had to ski down a moderate slope from the lodge to get to the rope tows. Amazingly, that small ski area produced many good skiers over the years.

See link below from the New England Lost Ski Areas website.

http://www.nelsap.org/ma/jericho.html
 
Patrick":36gn6eb5 said:
Didn't we have this discussion last season or two years ago?

Yes: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=9730

As to smallest, my answer remains the same.

These days, I regularly ski Buck Hill with my daughter, who just turned 7. Its 310 vertical feet, next to a freeway and otherwise surrounded by a forest of suburban condos. On the other hand, it's super friendly, 20 minutes from our home in South Minneapolis, cheap and convenient (a morning lift ticket is $20 and kids ski free through the winter of their 6th birthday), and because it is a training ground of champions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_hill), my daughter has learned a great deal just by imitating the kids in the racing program. Buck Hill was also the title a Replacements song, making the place just that much cooler in my estimation.

As to most obscure?

Define obscure. I've skied some pretty weird places in the snowbelt of the south shore of Lake Superior like Whitecap (http://www.skiwhitecap.com - check out the trail map, they have one of the strangest chairlifts I've ever seen) or the Porkies (http://www.porkiesfun.com), a state-owned ski area on the U.P. As a kid, I skied at least a couple days each at Hogback and Haystack, Vt. in the 70s. Mt. Bohemia is probably the most remote area I have skied. viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9389
 
flyover":3hvbkqlu said:
These days, I regularly ski Buck Hill

Yeah, James, I've skied there too.

flyover":3hvbkqlu said:
Buck Hill was also the title a Replacements song, making the place just that much cooler in my estimation.

The Placemats! I agree.

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Admin":1wfhj9at said:
The Placemats!

Yeah, the importance of the Mats to Twin Cities' music scene is hard to overstate, even decades later. In fact, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak declared yesterday "Slim Dunlap Day." http://www.startribune.com/entertainmen ... 74461.html

Back in the day, I probably fell more into the Huskers' camp when it came to picking sides in the long-standing local rivaly. These days, however, "Let It Be" probably gets more annual spins on my turntable than "Zen Arcade."
 
flyover":1o4mvktj said:
Back in the day, I probably fell more into the Huskers' camp when it came to picking sides in the long-standing local rivaly. These days, however, "Let It Be" probably gets more annual spins on my turntable than "Zen Arcade."

Both "Zen Arcade" and a couple of Replacements albums, along with some Paul Westerberg solo material all reside on my phone's SD card to play in the mix each time I ski.
 
flyover":1g0ncuwf said:
Yeah, the importance of the Mats to Twin Cities' music scene is hard to overstate, even decades later.
And from the "it's all connected" camp -- for the past week, I've been making my way through Alex Chilton's solo oeuvre. Right now, I'm listening to his 1999 release "Loose Shoes and Tight P*ssy."
 
jamesdeluxe":2iwm46mn said:
And from the "it's all connected" camp -- for the past week, I've been making my way through Alex Chilton's solo oeuvre.

Hmmm, connected or coincidence? You decide: driving back from a meeting just this morning, I heard "Back of a Car" on the radio. (http://www.thecurrent.org/playlist#song - on the playlist at 11:22 a.m.) :-s

In my experience Big Star very rarely gets played on the radio.
 
http://www.bolermountain.com/trailmap/
From Wikipedia:
Boler Mountain, is the home of the London Ski Club in London, Ontario. The mountain is located in the western suburban neighbourhood of Byron and is used for skiing, snowboarding and snow tubing in the winter and for mountain biking in the summer. Despite its title, it is more accurately described as a hill than a mountain. The facility is relatively small but very conveniently located for Londoners.[1] After the 2012 completion of the West Hill expansion, Boler has 3 quad chairlifts, a magic carpet and a tube carpet serving 16 trails.[2]
The hill has been in operation since 1946 and is Canada's most southerly ski hill. It began as a single run on the southeastern-most section of the modern hill, accessed by a gravel road from Boler Road, just south of today's Gatineau Road. The small ski club property expanded westward over the years, and the current chalet was built in 1972. The original Boler Road access was closed off around the same time to permit the building of a subdivision, and the entrance moved to the newly extended Griffith Street where it met the original road.
Boler Mountain was served by three T-bar lifts throughout the 1970s and 80s, the western-most of which was replaced by a quad-chairlift in the early 1990s. The other two T-bar lifts were replaced by a single quad-chairlift in 2003. A fourth T-bar lift had been partially constructed in the early 1980s on a then-newly acquired area of land immediately west of the chalet that came to be known as Hill 2000. The lift never was completed, and was mostly dismantled in 1997. A tubing hill was added at the base of Hill 2000 in January 1998. Work on Hill 2000, later renamed West Hill, progressed slowly from 1978 to final completion in February 2012. Boler officials attribute the delay to the need to wait for donated loads of dirt from construction elsewhere in the city.[1] West Hill includes a quad chairlift and, at 67 metres (220 ft), is now the tallest point in London.[3]
 
And for anyone planning a Ski Vacation to the London Area of Southern Ontario, we must not forget Cobble Hills - perfect for those looking for a less busy atmosphere than is offered at Boler Mountain... http://www.golfcobblehills.ca/

The Mountain
The total vertical at Cobble Hills Ski Club is 140 feet, which is 1,610 feet lower than the average for all Ski Resorts.

Trails
Cobble Hills Ski Club has a total of 7 trails, which is 14 trails less than the average for all Ski Resorts. The trails are 17% of the easiest variety, 33% more difficult, and 50% most difficult.

Ticket Pricing
An adult lift ticket price at Cobble Hills Ski Club costs $18, which is drastically less expensive than the average for all Canada Ski Resorts. A child's lift ticket price at Cobble Hills Ski Club costs $15, which is far less expensive than the average for all Canada Ski Resorts. The senior lift ticket price at Cobble Hills Ski Club is $10, which is drastically less expensive than the average for all Canada Ski Resorts.
 
jamesdeluxe":svfnp17z said:
East Hill, NY. Directly alongside my old grade school in a suburb of Syracuse.

And we have a winner! (So far...)

I've gotta admit, seeing the "Biglines" watermark on those particular photos is hilarious!
 
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