Hunter Mountain - 12/21/22

B

berkshireskier

Active member
Skied Hunter Mountain in New York today (12/21/22) with my daughter. Unlike the Berkshires about 60 miles to the East, where I live, Hunter and the other ski areas in the Catskills, got 12-18 inches of snow from the storm last weekend (it was 35 degrees and raining in the Berkshires) and it was a beautiful mid-December ski day in the Northeast - sunny, bright blue skies, 20-34 degrees, morning to afternoon, and no wind. Hunter has about 50% of the mountain open, with most of the trails and 1600 feet of vertical on the main mountain fully open. Hard to believe, but it was the first time I had ever skied Hunter (it's about a 1.5 hour drive for me). It was strange driving over, because there are a few inches of snow on the ground at my house and then when we crossed the Hudson River there was no snow on the ground (we drove past a golf course and the fairways were still quite green!) but then as we drove up a steep, winding road to Hunter's base at 1600 feet, all of a sudden we were in the middle of Winter with about 18 inches of snow on the ground and the trees still covered with snow. It was sort of a strange metamorphous, in a very short distance.
The conditions on the open trails on the mountain were quite good. They seemed to have a fairly deep base with groomed powder on top, that got somewhat skied off as the day went on (especially on the steeper sections of the trails) but the sun helped to soften the trails on the south-facing trails.
I liked the mountain. Even with only 50% open, they have a fairly wide variety of terrain, with some steep pitches on some parts of the mountain and moderately long trails. I know it can be extremely crowded on weekends and not a great place to ski then.
Hunter is now owned by Vail and is on the Epic pass. I know that, in the past, Hunter had the reputation of having a very extensive snowmaking system and blowing a lot of snow. But I rode up on the lift a few times with long-time season pass holders and they were complaining that Vail has seriously cut back on the amount of snowmaking that they do, to try to save money. They did not seem like happy campers.
I did not take any photos. Sorry. I did do a couple of 20-second videos of my daughter skiing but I think the files are way too big (40 mb or so) to attach on here.
 
Last edited:
I have been skiing Hunter since 77...I haven't set foot in place since Vail took over...
I skied Bellearye this past Sat, full on western conditions...It wasn't good, it was insane...
 
I still think both of you are misspelling the name of the place.

I believe it is actually very guttural version of : Hun'tah

:troll:

:icon-lol:

Only a long, long ago handful of days there myself. Never quite understood why I had so few races there compared to Bellearye, Highmont, Deer Run (ne Scotch Valley), Holiday Mtn, Windham, etc...
 
Do you have some variety of Epic Pass? I'm surprised to see online that a ticket for Friday purchased today is $79, which I would not expect from a Vail-owned resort. That ticket would be $149 at Big Bear.

At any rate it was a great call to ski Hunter today because the Northeast is going to get 2-3 inches of rain Friday followed by "wicked cold on Saturday" per OpenSnow.:icon-twisted:
 
Yea, EMSC, definitely a "Hun'tah" element there (when my daughter and I pulled into the parking lot in the morning, someone in a Porsche SUV was doing "donuts" in the parking lot. Huh?).

No, Tony, I do not have an Epic pass. It cost me $78 (as a senior) to ski today. If I had bought the ticket last night, I would have paid $70 but we weren't sure if we were going today or tomorrow, until we woke up today. I didn't realize the difference in pricing). Yea, I was watching the weather forecast and even tomorrow (Thursday) is supposed to be cloudy with rain/snow showers starting in the early afternoon, so I figured today would be a better bet for skiing. It was a beautiful New England Winter day. We get, maybe, five days all Winter long like today. Friday is supposed to be low to mid 50's for part of the day with rain and then a flash freeze Friday night with high temps only in the teens on Saturday. The ski conditions will be decimated.
 
berkshireskier said:
It was a beautiful New England Winter day. We get, maybe, five days all Winter long like today. Friday is supposed to be low to mid 50's for part of the day with rain and then a flash freeze Friday night with high temps only in the teens on Saturday. The ski conditions will be decimated.
Click to expand...

The tragedy of New England skiing. Conditions become optimal, and then you get a low that brings warm air and rain, followed by wind and frigid temps. Always brutal and a letdown. :(:mad::confused::eusa-wall:(n)

I saw Sugarloaf received nearly 3 feet of snow from the last storm setting up epic Holiday conditions, only to be destroyed by this coming storm.

Lucky when you have 2 weeks of cold, snow, and no thaws.

Glad you got out there at Hunter!
 
And now, this. Such a shame that we can't transport the ADKs and Cats to these places.

StormTotalSnow.jpg
 
ChrisC said:
The tragedy of New England skiing. Conditions become optimal, and then you get a low that brings warm air and rain, followed by wind and frigid temps. Always brutal and a letdown. :(:mad::confused::eusa-wall:(n)

I saw Sugarloaf received nearly 3 feet of snow from the last storm setting up epic Holiday conditions, only to be destroyed by this coming storm.

Lucky when you have 2 weeks of cold, snow, and no thaws.

Glad you got out there at Hunter!
Click to expand...
Yea, Chris, no doubt the tragedy of NE skiing. And I don't know if it is climate change or global warming, but it seems like we are getting more and more warm spells and more and more rain events, with each succeeding "Winter" in the Northeast. It's just one reason I would never want to own or invest in a ski resort in the Northeast. It has to be VERY frustrating to deal with all of the ups and downs in the weather.
I've about 50% given up on skiing in NE; I pretty much assume the Winter will be terrible and, if you're lucky, you might get half a dozen or so "good" ski days in a season. Last season, at least where I live, we did not have one substantial snow event all season - nothing more than several small - 3 to 4 inch - snow events. Luckily, there was enough cold weather at times for the local ski areas to makes a decent amount of snow and the conditions were OK for most of the season. The good news is that I saved money on not having to pay my snow plow guy to do my driveway.
 
jamesdeluxe said:
3-4 feet usually addresses that issue!
Click to expand...
That's the usual solution in the PNW. The Northwest is predicted to get an eastern type storm this weekend from a warm atmospheric river pushing over existing very cold air. This diagram is on today's Northwest OpenSnow.
16717209511f653a4396a5831ef90f32130edf4e92.png

Seattle and Portland are predicted to get quite a bit of freezing rain, leaving a 1/4 inch layer of ice on the roads.
 
Last edited:
berkshireskier said:
And I don't know if it is climate change or global warming, but it seems like we are getting more and more warm spells and more and more rain events, with each succeeding "Winter" in the Northeast.
Click to expand...
Here's some data on that.
NortheastSnowTrend.jpg

This trend is mildly negative, though surely offset by snowmaking improvements over the last 50 years. Here's North America ski areas overall, which the above constitutes 1/8 along with 7 western regions.
NorthAmericaSnowTrend.jpg

Most western regions look similar to the overall graph. Utah's is worse and interior western Canada's has a slight upward trend.


PinkhamWaterSnow.jpg

When I went to the Weather Summit meeting in Stratton in December 2018 I prepared several graphs like the above and have updated them every year since. Pinkham Notch is the site in a location/elevation most representative of northern New England ski areas. Total water as a percentage of total snow by the linear fit has increased moderately from 22% in 1967 to 26% now. This demonstrates that winter/ski season rain has always been a feature in the Northeast. And it's worse in other places. At East Jewett in the Catskills that trend line is at 34-38%, which means a LOT of rain. Snowshoe has the worst trend of the 5 eastern locations I found, rising from 19% to 28% since 1977.

I gathered similar data for West Coast locations that get rain as well as snow. Most locations (Alpine Meadows and Rainier Paradise for example) also have rising trend lines but at a lower level, something like 13% to 17%, which they can handle most of the time as they average 350+ inches snowfall. Lower elevations have more of a problem. Government Camp, Oregon's water as a percentage of snow has risen from 28-35% over the past 50 years. And Alyeska's mid-mountain as a percent of upper mountain snowfall has fallen from 85% to 60% in the past 40 years.


Mansfield Stake Days and Amount of Rain by Month
NovDecJanFebMarAprTotal
Avg. Days
2.88​
1.29​
1.37​
1.22​
1.95​
3.79​
12.50​
1982-2000
Avg. Rain
2.43​
0.90​
0.95​
0.65​
0.83​
1.74​
7.51​
Avg. Days
4.76​
2.88​
1.53​
1.06​
3.06​
6.00​
19.29​
2001-2017
Avg. Rain
2.15​
1.85​
0.77​
0.53​
1.40​
2.45​
9.16​

The Mansfield Stake was one of the most valuable datasets in the Northeast for many decades, recording daily temperatures and precipitation. Unfortunately this requires a live observer and that job ended in December 2017. Before that I would go through the daily records to determine which days it rained and how much. The days count is important because it doesn't take much rain to degrade ski surface conditions, especially with the almost automatic ensuing freeze. There were several times I'd notice a month of of Mansfield data with only one day above freezing, and sure enough there would be rain on that day.

A moderate trend in rising temperatures should not affect the midwinter cold months too much but would have a larger impact upon the shoulder seasons. That's overall what the comparison of 1982-2000 vs. 2001-2017 above shows. I'm surprised to see the deterioration in December though. My snow conditions chart also shows that Decembers may be getting worse, while there's not much change yet January-March.
 
Last edited:
Tony Crocker said:
This diagram is on today's Northwest OpenSnow.
Click to expand...
I demand they add in Graupel on that chart, between the snow and sleet. Otherwise great graphic.

Tony Crocker said:
Before that I would go through the daily records to determine which days it rained and how much.
Click to expand...
That's a pretty wild way to spend time, but it sure is useful data for skiers. Was it Vail Inc that stopped the role up top at the stake?
 
The ski area had nothing to do with the Mansfield Stake. There is a WCAX TV transmitter up there, and they employed Fred Lavenberg and others who measured the snow in person. Powderfreak and JSpin were quite critical of the Mansfield Stake snow measurements being done with a bucket rather than a snow board, and in a less sheltered location than the stake measuring base depth.

Fred was pretty good about sending me the Mansfield Stake monthly spreadsheets every spring. It was not that tedious to go through them and add stats to the prior record. Similarly it was not hard for me to find my 5+ year old spreadsheet this morning to split out 1982-2000 vs. 2001-2017.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top