Belleayre 2-27-2016

Early this season, when they had just a few trails open, Belleayre was giving away vouchers for future visits with every lift ticket sold. Last Saturday, with a couple of these in hand, I headed up there for a day of mostly-free skiing with my two sons. We aren't very good at getting out of bed at my house so we didn't reach the mountain until almost ten. We booted up at Overlook Lodge, skied down to Belleayre's sole high speed quad, Super Chief, and it was on.





This trip was part of my ongoing effort to ensure I have skiing buddies into my old  age. I figure the most important part is for both my sons to really love to ski but I also want them to improve. In general, I wanted my nine year old to  wedge less and parallel more and my older son to carve his turns a little more, smear them less. Modest goals.



After our first ride up Super Chief we followed Onondaga down to Horseshoe Pass and Roaring Brook til we were back under the lift and we followed it back to the loading station. My boys skied well. They seemed to be taking my coaching well. My older son was fooling with his gopro a little but not annoyingly so. The nine year old got the assignment of counting our runs and we chose which trail to ski democratically. After a couple Super Chief runs we moved to Lift 7 for a while and then over to the Tomahawk quad.





My kids got a kick out of the fact that we could see Plattekill off in the distance from that side of the resort but they were getting hungry.





I set them up in the lodge and went to check a couple of the black diamond runs under Lift 7. On a better day I would have brought both my sons on them but the underlying base was frozen hard pack. There was good man-made snow on top but even on the blue trails there were icy spots here and there. The steeper runs had a lot of skied off ice and hard uneven moguls so I decided not to ruin my nine year old's progress with something too tough. Confidence building was the name of the game on this trip.

After lunch I noticed they were both less talkative. I asked if they'd finished thief drinks at lunch and it was as I suspected. They were both bonking from insufficient hydration. We rectified that and I kept them going a while longer. The second to last run I took the gopro to get a little footage of my older boy and then the nine year old wanted try it out so we let him take it for a run. The confidence building must have worked because the last couple runs were the best of the day. I called before anyone started crashing.



Overall it was a great day. There was a big crowd on the mountain but we stayed away from the learning areas and the race course. Conditions were pretty good considering the challenging weather.  Everybody had a great time and I was satisfied that they both improved thier skills a bit. Mission accomplished.

Very cool.  Did tomahawk ever get crowded?

Almost no line at all on Tomahawk, a bit of a line on 7 and, maybe five minutes on Siper Chief. We stayed away from the doubles by the lower lodge. If I had a complaint it would be that they seem to have a lot of stops there, even on the detach.

Thanks for the report. Creating your personal ski buddies is always the smart move.