JC
New member
We hit Whiteface over the President's Day weekend with my family, some neighbors from Jersey and my brother from Toronto. Although Whiteface, like most Eastern resorts, is experiencing a sub-par snow year, most of the runs were open thanks to snowmaking. Runs relying on natural snow were closed (Upper Cloudspin, Upper Empire, Upper Northway, 10th Mtn. Div. Glades, Cloudsplitter Glades). The open runs were in decent shape, although I'd recommend an edge tune-up before going, as there were some icy sections. My brother spun out on a patch of ice under the Summit Quad, followed by a yard sale and much applause from the chair. We had a good laugh over that one, but he took his skiis in for a tune-up overnight to avoid a repeat-offense. Overall, we had a great time and enjoyed the skiing. You can't beat 3400' of vert. and we made some nice turns from the Summit down Skyward. The first 20 yards (the steepest section) was pretty icy, but beyond that the conditions were fine. The snow guns were firing away on Lower Cloudspin and by the end of the weekend, some nicely spaced bumps were forming on the run. Off the Gondola, Wilderness, Mountain Run, Parkway and Thruway were all skiing well. Although conditions were fast, with some icy sections, setting an edge was not too difficult providing your skis were properly tuned. Some of our favorite runs were: steep cruising down upper Skyward over to the bumps on lower Cloudspin and finishing off on either the Nastar course, the superpipe or the mini-terrain park. Off the Gondola, we hit the small natural kickers on Approach (the kids loved this section
), over to some bumps on Upper Wilderness, GS turns on Lower Wilderness, followed by the super-pipe or mini-terrain park. Another good route off the Gondola was to take Approach to Upper Thruway for some nice GS turns (this was the Olympic GS run) to Lower Thruway where there is a nice big kicker at the bottom of the terrain park. As usual, you can finish the run on the super pipe on Bear or the mini-terrain park on Deer. We did one glade run on the weekend (High Country Glades). No other glades were open and the conditions were scratchy to say the least. Nevertheless, my son, his friend and I had a blast hopping logs, rocks and sticks through the woods and my P-Tex was unscathed in the end. Whiteface has done a very nice job with snow-making and spicing things up with the superpipe and terrain parks. The ample vert. allows you to do a little of everything on each run. Sure this isn't the perfect snow year, but it's what you make of it and even in a bad year, Whiteface provides plenty of options. Still hoping that one of these days the Slides will be open when I'm in town .........the terrain over there looks awesome.
