Elk Mountain, PA

jkamien

Member
Elk is, well, the best I've skied in Pennsylvania so far. My other forays into Keystone State skiing include Spring, Bear Creek, and Blue Mountains, and Shawnee Peak. So Elk being the best in PA is faint praise, indeed. At 1000 foot vertical, it skied better and longer than Blue, which lists a somewhat disconnected 1480' vertical.

Elk is a throwback type of place. Two parallel double chairs rise from the main base area, and a fixed grip quad paired another double sharing the same lift staunchions creates a separate pod of trails, including most of their advanced terrain (advanced for PA).

The diamond trails are straight shots down the fall line, not too steep, but with enough pitch to get some speed on. My favorite trail was probably Tioga, a fun, old-style narrow trail that has several S turns twisting its way down the hill. Although it has a gentle pitch, taking it with some speed was great and I think it could be a really fun race trail.

Elk's base lodge must be pretty old, but was functional. They definitely need to add some outside seating on the sunny deck. One small bench that could hold only 3 people was all that was there for outside seating on this warm sunny day.

Elk is a 2.5 HR ride from my home on Philly's Main Line. I have to say I was pretty depressed that I live where I have to drive so far to access the best of mediocre skiing.
 
Here, I added one of your photos for ya. :wink:
 

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Note that the claimed Blue Mt vertical is 1087' (and they had to add a long runout and essentially dig a hole to get that). It's their summit that's at 1407'.

Elk is definitely the best of a weak crop of choices in Eastern PA.
 
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