Bristol Mt March 5

I really enjoyed my morning yesterday skiing here.  This place skis big for 1200 vert.  I think it's due to it has no run out and a nice fairly steep pitch.  

There are 3 trail pods. The middle one was the most crowded and had a long lift line due to the race.  This has the steepest pitch.  The morning side is pretty mellow with long but not too boring greens and a few blues.  I liked the Galaxy pod the best.  The line was short and I really liked the steep blue cruisers universe and North Star.  Universe is a twisty trail with some surprisingly steep roll overs.  Really fun.  The conditions were Frozen granular with some icy spots but really not too bad but I think my standards have slipped this yr for sure.  It got skied off around 11 to noon but it was race time then anyway.

The lodges are nice and I didn't see any of the issues posted about the racers not being welcome in the lodge.  They all stored thier bags in the race center.  The food was decent and the buildings particularly the new waffle hut were really nice.

So to sum up Coach is not a big ski area snob but being from WF I need pitch to make me happy.

I grew up skiing this place.  Honestly I can't stand it anymore.  Pretty much everything skis the same IMO.  I guess the new greens they put in like Milky way, etc to ski different, and universe and north star were always two of my favorites, just because they were narrower and had some twists in them, also if there is natural snow, there's a lot of no-no tree cuts through that part of the hill.  They don't get much sun though and tend to be icy.

I always liked Meteor a lot though.  It's a good trail for really fast skiing and the little curve in it (and IIRC some off-camber) makes it more interesting than Rocket.

One of the hardest trails on that hill, IMO, is lower challenger.  It's narrow and fairly steep, but that's not what makes it hard IMO.  It's usually a friggin' sheet of ice.  I recall one year I nearly killed myself hitting some real bad ice on that one at speed and skidded right into the trees.  That was when it was first built, now they seem to close it off quite a bit, probably for that very reason.

Anyway, I find Hunt Hollow infinitely better than Bristol.  It's smaller but it actually has more pitch and the trails are more like the narrower ones at Bristol.  If I was going to ski that area again, I'd be at HH.  Bristol also gets skied off really quickly.  Typically by 2-3pm on a weekend the main runs like Galaxy, Rocket, Meteor, etc are trashed.

It's funny you say that place has a lot of pitch.  When I've skied other places and talked to people about Bristol, they said the same thing, but I never really thought that - I realize it now, even sunset, a short blue run is steeper than some more challenging stuff on other hills.  It's just the topography of that area.  Everything tends to be pretty steep.

Visually I think because of Stid Hill being right across the way and the relatively narrow valley it feels like you are up there.  If you look at the topos of the area, you'll see Bristol has one of the shallowest pitches around.

IMO biking is better in this area.  If you ever make it down in the summer, Harriet Hollister Spencer and Ontario County Park both have great systems.  You can also ride at Hi Tor on the double tracks.

Harriet Hollister is a bit harder to figure out, but really sweet riding.  The trails aren't marked as well and there is a mix of single and double track, finding the good single track takes some searching around, but there's a lot there.

Looks like a nice enough little mountain.

What is this about no-no tree zones? I can't imagine ever taking someone seriously that tries to tell me that I can't ski somewhere. I certainly wouldn't have a home mountain with such policies.

I suppose though from what I can tell by looking at the photo it doesn't matter anyways unless maybe you are Candide!

Mountain Creek fairly lenient and if there's snow, you can ski the MTB trails.  Hunter is extremely rocky and it takes a 5 foot storm to bring the trees in play.  Must be an insurance issue for the places with that policy.

Bristol looks like a cool place to ski.  I know a few people who've raced there.

I have no idea what their policy is now, but it used to be if they caught you skiing off-trail they'd pull your pass.  I used to do it all the time, never once had my pass pulled.  Maybe it's more stringent now?  I skied there maybe 4 years ago?  last time... hard for me to remember now.

I don't like how they do the bumps now.  Used to be the left side of galaxy was left ungroomed, now it's lower galaxy or meteor, I can't recall.  Basically clogs up a whole trail whereas upper galaxy is so wide they did half and half.  Upper galaxy is one of the less steep blues though, so that might be one they moved it.

Also I hear they moved the terrain park.  They have this really slow lift over on the far, far left of the hill that runs mid to the top, I think it's the old galaxy quad.  Turns out it's faster to ski the whole mountain and ride the high speed comet lift than it is to ride that damn thing.

Southern cross used to be a green run.  That magically turned to a blue run when they built the stuff on the far left.  It didn't get any harder to ski.  Same trail with pretty low pitch and steep switchbacks.  The was lots of good off-trail riding on that one though.  Seems that the stuff to the left has lots has lots of good no-no trees too, but I didn't get in there last time I went.

Bristol's problem is it's like the biggest thing in the Rochester area, so it gets a lot of traffic.  With the high speed quad it can handle a good volume of people but it doesn't have the acreage to spread out the skiers, so it's wiped by early afternoon despite having lots of lights for night skiing.  The mellower greens don't tend to destroyed because they don't have enough pitch for everyone to be skidding the snow off, but almost everything else has a similar pitch and it's straight down the fall line.  To me there is very little difference between comet, a double black, and sunset, a blue.  The width of the trail is different, the but comet isn't really that much steeper.

Hunt hollow is way more dynamic.  It's probably got half the vert though.  And half the acreage.  But it probably gets 1/4 the people.  Everytime I've skied there it's been a blast.  Bristol was fun the first year I skied there, but after a few times it gets old real quick.  I think the crowds make it even less appealing.