Belleayre (Onteora really) 12-3-2017

"What was your favorite run today?" I asked, as a joke, on the way home from skiing. My eleven year old outsmarted me. He said, "The last one, when I hit the jump." Junior knew what I was getting at and humored me though. "Onteora," he called out. Of course it was, since Onteora was the only run open at Belleayre today. It wasn't exactly what I would call an epic day but I finally got back on skis, after missing November completely. That made it a good day.



Another good thing was that both my kids rolled out of bed without any problems or protests. This bodes well for the season ahead. We got on the road around 6:30 and they both went right back to sleep. I parked in the Overlook Lodge lot before 9 AM. There were some folks ahead of us but not a big crowd and as we got ourselves sorted out Harvey pulled up and parked next to us. After getting everybody booted up, I headed to the ticket window. We were able to process our Warren Miller ticket voucher there but they sent me inside to Guest Services to use our two Max Passes. That took a while. Harv had a run of two under his belt by the time we caught up with him at the bottom of Lift 7, the only chair running that day.



As I said earlier, Onteora was the only trail open so there wasn't much to get excited about. My boys are pretty self sufficient so I was comfortable letting them get off at the mid station by themselves when I went up to the top a few times. Everybody had fun. There was good coverage on Onteora though the snow clumped up pretty quickly. You had to look for your spots to make your turns and avoid going too fast because it was a little crowded.



On one run I noticed Harv had his camera out so I decided to show off and crank up the speed a little. Of course I ended up getting bucked by a particularly thick pile of machine-made and was completely out of balance as I went by him. It was fun skiing- mainly because skiing is fun. The upper portion, that's a bit steeper, was the most entertaining. It got scraped off in spots but continued to be enjoyable.



After a while my eleven year old claimed his leg hurt so I let the boys hit the lodge while I got a few more runs. I knew he was okay when I went to check on them later because he was outside having a snowball fight (Iceballs really) rather then nursing his leg. Junior got his skis and headed back up for a few more solo runs while my younger son and I walked up above a little terrain park the mountain had set up so he could try hitting a few jumps. He had fun and got more air off the little bump then I would have expected. This was his "last run" he referenced in the car later.



So it wasn't any sort of epic day. Honestly we left about two in the afternoon but everybody had fun. Skiing with Harv is always a great time. Me and the boys shook off the cob webs and started getting our legs back in shape. I was able to break in a new set of boots. Successful trip.

Sent from my iPad

Brownski, why did you have to go to guest services with the Maxpass, as opposed to showing the pass at the ticket window/counter, and why did it take a while?

It seemed like the ticket window just wasn't hooked up to read the max pass. Inside there were about four or five people picking up their season passes and no one on either side of the counter was in a big hurry. Once I got to the counter, the dude took the max passes to a computer in the office and punched in our numbers manually (I think) and came back with our tickets. Hopefully they figure out how to handle them at the ticket windows soon.

That sounds like a real pita...  Seems to be an ORDA thing, Jeff at http://saratogaskier.blogspot.com/2017/11/whiteface-opening-day-11182017.html had a similar problem at Whiteface.  On a better note with Maxpass, we’ve used ours at Okemo, they issue a RFID card on your first visit, which is good for all your subsequent visits.  Stratton was straight to lift, really nice.  

Great to ski with you and the boys Brownski. A few shots of mine...

nice report guys

I'm with Coach on the the Gondola...I don't have the words to the describe  the stupidity of that purchase..