I've been waiting all season to visit recently reopened Big Tupper in the northern ADKs, so I left my house at 4:30 am and girded my loins for a 5+-hour trip. But when I arrived at North Creek around 8:30, BT's website was only showing 11 trails open and it didn't make sense driving another 1:45 for that, so I detoured to Gore.
I hadn't skied Gore since 2002, and the mountain has -- as far as I can see -- added a lot of terrain and associate infrastructure since then. If you spend time on Harv's site, a decent amount of the forum posts are about Gore, and to be completely honest, I (Jason too) was getting overloaded/fatigued by the sheer amount of information provided by locals and/or season pass holders, similar to the situation here with LCC. Great if you want to know EVERYTHING viewed from every possible angle (including official and non-official names for every glade, rock, tree, and shrub on the mountain), but to a casual observer, sometimes a bit overwhelming.
I started by parking at the revived North Creek Ski Bowl/aka "Little Gore," which had a whopping 12 cars there:
Since the ski bowl is lower than the rest of the mountain and faces east(?), it was already in prime spring condition when I got on the lift at 9:45. I was by myself, so no decent in-action shots:
The trees there (to the left and right of the 46er trail under the lift) were ready to go by 11 am:
Then I crossed over to the main mountain and rode the Burnt Ridge quad, which has two nice cruisers off it, along with some long glade shots.
People often complain that Gore is disjointed with many different trail pods -- i.e. you can't really ski the mountain's advertised 2,500-ish verts, or you can, but it's a bit misleading. However, the good thing about that kind of hill is that it a) spreads people out and leaves certain places overlooked by the hordes, and b) provides a bunch of different facets, which works out well on a spring day like yesterday.
Today, I'm heading over to Gore's polar opposite, Whiteface. What was originally forecast as a wintry mix may turn into five inches of fresh snow today.
[-o<
I hadn't skied Gore since 2002, and the mountain has -- as far as I can see -- added a lot of terrain and associate infrastructure since then. If you spend time on Harv's site, a decent amount of the forum posts are about Gore, and to be completely honest, I (Jason too) was getting overloaded/fatigued by the sheer amount of information provided by locals and/or season pass holders, similar to the situation here with LCC. Great if you want to know EVERYTHING viewed from every possible angle (including official and non-official names for every glade, rock, tree, and shrub on the mountain), but to a casual observer, sometimes a bit overwhelming.
I started by parking at the revived North Creek Ski Bowl/aka "Little Gore," which had a whopping 12 cars there:
Since the ski bowl is lower than the rest of the mountain and faces east(?), it was already in prime spring condition when I got on the lift at 9:45. I was by myself, so no decent in-action shots:
The trees there (to the left and right of the 46er trail under the lift) were ready to go by 11 am:
Then I crossed over to the main mountain and rode the Burnt Ridge quad, which has two nice cruisers off it, along with some long glade shots.
People often complain that Gore is disjointed with many different trail pods -- i.e. you can't really ski the mountain's advertised 2,500-ish verts, or you can, but it's a bit misleading. However, the good thing about that kind of hill is that it a) spreads people out and leaves certain places overlooked by the hordes, and b) provides a bunch of different facets, which works out well on a spring day like yesterday.
Today, I'm heading over to Gore's polar opposite, Whiteface. What was originally forecast as a wintry mix may turn into five inches of fresh snow today.
[-o<
