Greek Peak closed Valentines Day due to power outage

Sharon

New member
A fire at a transformer stopped the lifts loaded with powder pigs. A couple hundred people braved the blizzard conditions to get to Greek Peak to ski the new bounty.

Over a foot of snow has fallen. Maybe close to 20". Tough to tell because it's drifting around with the winds that have really picked up.

After spending 2 hours breaking trail in my woods, the driveway was plowed and we got the truck out and Bubba and I headed out to Greek Peak for a Valentine's Snowstorm ski.

We parked at Chair 5 figuring the fresher snow would be on that side. The fresh snow was deep and dense. The particles were like sugar granules so it skied very slowley where it hadn't been broken. The tracked snow skied faster, but if you went off tracked snow into untracked snow you would be slowed down very quickly by the sheer density of it. We skied Alsop's Glade and Arethusa. Bubba got stuck on the flatter section of Mars hill trying to get some fresh snow.

Then we went over to try the new trail Hercules. It was great where it was steep, but don't stop on the flatter sections or else it will be tough going. I just did top to bottom runs. Afterall, they are much shorter than Utah. Bubba hasn't skied as much as I did (not to mention he's got 13 yrs on me) so he needed to stop, but in the end it was more work slogging out. Zeus skied very well and was tracked enough for it to ski fast charging through the puffs of loose snow.

We wanted to ski the Aesop's glade off chair 2, but it was not running. I figured we could take chair 1 up and hike over. But first, a run on the steepest trail, Olympian was in order. We got to the lift and there was a small line and the lift was not running. They said it was the electricity. The management made an announcment on the PA that they were going to use the backup generator to get the people off the lift, but that they would not be loading the lift until further notice. I think the people were stuck on the lift around 30 minutes as the winds started to kick up. They announced free hot chocolate and coffee in the Taverna, so we all went inside. There was certainly less than 200 people by that time. Maybe 100 or so. The lunchladies were having power trips about the coffee and hot chocolate and they said that no one could have any until all the people were off the lift and they all got their hot drinks first.

This is Greek Peak...the lift goes very slowly. People trickled in 2 at a time, but not very many. I think most people just went home.

My friends were very unhappy with the coffee-nazi's in the cafeteria and all 3 of them failed at getting a cup of coffee. I was able to get a small one that we all shared. About 30 minutes go by, never a line forming, never hoards of frozen skiers coming in for their hot drinks and it was safe to go in and get the coffee.

Eventually the management got on the PA and said that there was a fire at the National Grid transformer and electricity was unlikely to be restored today.

So we all went home. Our friend gave us a ride back to our truck at Chair 5. It was the last car in the lot.
 
Bring back Niagara Mohawk! My mother (from just west of Syracuse) can't stand National Grid.

We'll be at Greek Peak on Saturday for night skiing.
 
I was at Greek Peak today from first chair till the power outage. I'll be posting a full trip report complete with a whole bunch of pictures and hopefully some video if I can figure out a way to get some up.

Epic day, and we were pretty exhausted but still had a few runs in us when it ended up shutting down.
 
My son and I were at Greak today. We got two runs in before the outage. We hit "Fields" first, then did Karyatis. We were on our way to chair four to hit the terrain park via Marathon when the lifts died. You're right about the untracked pow. We hit the big field between Karyatis and the Castor Connector. I was able to make it through very slowly on my skis. My son was stopped dead in his snowboard track. He unstrapped his board, laid on top of it, and "swam" on it till we reached firmer snow. It was fun while it lasted. I had to laugh about the coffee Nazis. I thought the same thing. NO COFFEE FOR YOU!...NEXT
 
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