Berkshire East-Charlemont, MA: 1/19/14

BadDNA and I have made Wachusett our home mountain since I moved out to central MA to live with him over this past summer.  While it's fairly comparable to my home mountain in Central NY, Greek Peak, in terms of size and proximity to our home, the terrain isn't as interesting, it gets really crowded on weekends, and there's just something about it that doesn't really do it for me.  We've been checking out some other ski resorts in Southern VT and NH to see if there's something else we might want to get a season pass to for weekend skiing, including Killington, Stratton, and Cannon, but those are still within the 2.5 to 3 hour range away, so I was looking for something a little closer to home and stumbled across some reviews for Berkshire East in Charelemont, MA, about 1hr, 40 minutes away.    

We got a couple three inches of snow on Saturday, and Berkshire East was reporting 4-5" of snow, so we headed out late Sunday morning.  They have a nice half day deal (1pm-4:30pm) for $40, so we arrived around 1:20 and were on the lift by 1:30.  We rode up the main triple with an elderly gentleman whose kids and now grandkids grew up skiing at Berkshire East.  He recommended that we take Outback to Roundabout for a good overall view of the mountain.  It's a green trail that wraps around the backside of the mountain and comes back to the front and was fairly flat, but did give us an idea of the size of the mountain: not huge, but big enough for a fun afternoon, and I think probably even a day when all of the trails are open.  

BadDNA went back to the ski shop to see if he could get a stomp pad for his new snowboard, which had just arrived on Saturday, so I went up their quad a couple times by myself and rode back down Exhibition a couple times to get warmed up.  I ended up riding up the lift with a woman about 15 years my senior who told me about another place in the southern Berkshires, Butternut, that runs $25 mid-week ticket deals.  Another place to put on the mental list of places to scope out.  She informed me that B-East was "crowded" since it was a holiday weekend.  Ha!  If that's crowded, I'll take it!!  It seemed like a normal day at Greek Peak to me.  She was also saying that the conditions were really marginal and what a bad winter it's been so far, but I really didn't think the conditions were too bad.  It was icy in spots, for sure.  I had my "fat" 98mm waisted skis to help even out the choppiness of the few inches they'd received overnight, and they were edging pretty well in the icy spots.  By my second run down exhibition, I was sold on B-East, with their old, rattly chairlifts that took me back to Greek Peak and the lack of crowds.  

BadDNA came back and we decided to take a run down Hemlock, a black diamond at the top and a blue from mid-point down the bottom.  It was a short, steep run and we both enjoyed it quite a lot, so we decided to go back to the main lift and check out the other intermediate/expert terrain.  We took Mohawk down to an intersection with Chute and Old Chief.  A bunch of kids dropped over the edge of Chute and I heard the distinctive sound of metal scraping on ice, so I suggested we take Old Chief, which seemed to be getting less traffic.  It was a fun trail, so we headed back up the lift to do it again, only this time decided to try Chute, which, as I suspected was a sheet of icy and not so fun.  After that we headed back up to the summit to check out the black diamonds.  We headed down Upper Competition, which was a little scratchy, but there was enough snow on the trail to make turns.  

For our second to last run, BadDNA asked me what I wanted to do, so I suggested Flying Cloud.  He responded that one seems pretty steep, are you sure??  And I said, yeah, I can side slip down it if I don't like what I see once we get there.  It's one of those trails where the headwall starts a hundred yards or so beyond the entrance, so turning back is kind of out of the question.  So we started down it, and unfortunately for me, it was steep AND a sheet of ice!!  Ugh!  So I did end up side slipping about a 100 feet to get down the steepest part of it, but then found enough snow along the skier's right edge to make p-turns down the rest of the top section.  He pretty much straightlined it from the top, as he's not afraid of going fast the way I am.  We got on the lift one last time, as the liftee informed up that the trails were closing, and a large group of ski patrollers were gathering at the chairlift to make their end of the day sweeps of the trails.  We made a long run traversing the mountain all the way to skier's left, and then turned and traversed back right to where we'd started, and pretty much skied back out to the parking lot.  We both agreed that we really liked B-East, and there's no question we'd make that our home mountain if only it was about an hour closer!  To me, the mountain seemed like the trail system was laid out like Bellearye, and the variety of terrain reminded me of McCauley Mountain in Old Forge, as well as Greek Peak.  I really loved it and can't wait to go back.  That was definitely one of the best skiing days I've had this season.  

On our way home, we stopped at Buckland Pizza in Shelburne Falls for dinner at the recommendation of one of the locals I'd asked in the parking lot at B-East while we were getting ready to leave.  We both ended up getting a lasagna with a large meatball and a couple sweet sausage links.  It was really tasty and inexpensive.  B-East is kind of like McCauley or Greek Peak:  I'm not sure it's worth driving more than a couple hours to ski for the day, but it's definitely worth checking out if you're passing through or staying in the vicinity for some other reason.  I really need to start taking photos for these trip reports, but they do have quite a number of photos and videos on their website:  http://www.berkshireeast.com/

I've only heard great things about the terrain, especially with a little more natural snow than we've seen so far.

Nice report, hope you get a camera soon, too!