Hunter Mtn - November 26, 2008

[sven]

Conditions were a bit scratchy except for on parts of Cliff / East Side Drive / Minya Konka, it looked like they picked up maybe 4-5 inches at the top and at the base it was trace amounts. Not really crowded surprisingly. The top of K27 was actually looking tempting to poach.... Here are some pics:

Hellgate from the lift

Racer's Edge from the lift

Beginning of Way Out to the west side

Taken from west side double lift (whatever letter that is)

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Since I have to work tomorrow and with the wife and son out of town, I nixed Thanksgiving in favor of getting my first turns of the year at Hunter. Even though, as Sven notes, there were scratchy spots on the steeper areas, I was happy with the coverage and the amount of open trails. Props to their grooming/snowmaking team; I found a lot more soft spots than I had expected.

I didn't bother taking photos because Hunter is one of the least photogenic ski areas in existence, but it's a good "gym" hill to work out the cobwebs. Talk about an international crowd... on the chair or in the lodge I heard: Spanish, French, Russian, Dutch, Ukrainian (I asked), Polish, Czech, and Danish. The jester-hat demographic was out in force as were Skidog's bridge-and-tunnel homies all speaking in CAPS.

 

[sven]

I didn't bother taking photos because Hunter is one of the least photogenic ski areas in existence, but it's a good "gym" hill to work out the cobwebs.

Hey, I thought it looked pretty nice with all the trees covered in snow (you don't see that very often there)... I like the trashy charm of the lodge which can't have been modified in the last 3 decades. Even the audacity to put in that "Sushi bar" upstairs, which I think was done in some sort of sarcastic mockery of Killington. But what other ski areas still have a straight forward bar you can ski up to at the bottom after the day is over...

 

[sheahunter]

The Hunter Base Lodge has been updated many times. It is extremeley functional. Having the Sushi bar upstairs keeps the rif raf at bay. They have carpeted the whole place, installed several new conference rooms also. They even ripped down a lot of the really old pictures this year. This past weekend they inducted Orville and Izzy into the Hall of Fame. At 91, Orville can still hold a decent conversation even if he can't remember my name.