Crowds next week at ORDA mountains?

As first year Ski3 passholders, my dad and I aren't entirely sure what the crowding scenarios are at the ORDA mountains in the week between Christmas and New Year's.  

Went to Gore once during that week in the 12-13 season and the parking lot and base area were an absolute shit show.  25 minutes to get up the access road and gondola line backed up all the way to Jamboree, which had to be at least half an hour.  They did have 2 back to back storms that week in the flatlands, so the backyard effect was in play.  Whole mountain was open, so easy to avoid crowds after getting out of the main base area clusterf*ck.  Since this year it looks like they won't even get half of the terrain open for this week, I'm thinking the crowds could be even worse.  Also, with the High Peaks chair off-line, and they don't appear to plan to open it anytime soon, you can't get to the summit without riding the gondola, which will likely have a Mountain Creek size line.  Probably not worth the long drive to do it as a day trip.

Never been to Whiteface during that week and won't be able to, so I'm not really concerned about how crowded it gets there.

Never been to Belleayre either during the Christmas-New Year's timeframe, but I have been to Hunter and Windham and they were always very crowded.  I'm guessing Belleayre will be busy, but much less crowded than those.  Anyone been there during that week with and want to comment?

As a general holiday week rule, go very early and leave early or stay extra late.

If your goal is more high speed lifts and twice the snowmaking, you pretty much have no choice but to root for crowds at Christmas.

One thing to go to a crowded mountain when they're running all the lifts with most terrain open so it's easy to find an uncrowded lift or run to lap.  I've done this on many days and always had a good time.

It's a different thing to go to a crowded mountain that isn't even half open and all the lifts that allow you to avoid crowds are closed.

For example, easy way to avoid the line for the gondola at Gore is to take AE2 and use the High Peaks lift to reach the upper mountain.  With that connection closed, everyone has to take the gondola to reach the upper mountain.  Normally speaking, Gore has a gondola and HSQ to get people out of the base area and to the upper mountain.  Whiteface has the same setup.  Now, the HSQ will only be useful to lap the front side, and your capacity out of the base is halved.

snoloco wrote

For example, easy way to avoid the line for the gondola at Gore is to take AE2 and use the High Peaks lift to reach the upper mountain.  With that connection closed, everyone has to take the gondola to reach the upper mountain.

Take the AE2 to the Saddle and (sneak) skin up lower cloud to Headwaters.  No one but newbies will be on lower Cloud anyway.

Three options:
1) go, make the best of it, be patient, enjoy your TIME with family/friends, remember its holiday week
2) ski somewhere else
3) stay home

Choose one.  

All choices will be well-received by members of the forum provided they don't also come with your usual belly-aching about conditions, crowds, and snowmaking second-guessing. If you insist on doing that anyway, please at least choose #2.

I was basically asking whether it was worth it to drive past Belleayre to ski at Gore next week.  My conclusion as of now is that it is not worth it.  

Kind of disappointed that Gore didn't open more than one additional trail since last weekend.  Whiteface just opened the Summit today, as well as Boreen, Brookside, Easy Way.  Belleayre opened basically 3 trails since last weekend.

No matter, you need crowds at Christmas to be profitable regardless of how much terrain is open.  You have maybe 20 or 25 profitable days in this business and 8 or 9 of them come at Christmas.  Unless you want to go the Peak route, you need money to buy stuff.

You going to do a sno-approved report card?  I'm curious to know how many mountains will get all lifts open by Monday.  I know you kind of gave everyone a pass last year since it was 1-in-5 bad, but this year is basically average. Who makes the cut?

I'll do a sno-approved report card on Monday.

A:  All skiable lifts and lots of terrain open

B:  All skiable lifts, but limited terrain off each.

C:  Some lifts closed, but little impact to crowds elsewhere.

D:  Lifts closed, major impact to crowds elsewhere.

F:  Not open at all.

I have skied Belleayre and Gore Christmas week many times when my kids were younger. I never found the crowds at either to be too bad. It was a long time ago that I skied Belleayre so I don't really recall clearly. There were lines, but not horrible.
Gore will likely have a gondola line from 10:30 -11:30 and then after lunch. But as you say after that you can avoid lines.

Obviously arriving early makes things better.

Merry Christmas.

tom

I skied Belleayre Christmas week a few years ago, and it was a complete shitshow. I haven't skied there since. When we arrived they were plowing the field right down on the highway, and parking cars there, because every other lot was full. If I remember correctly, there were 6K people there.  They had a shuttle bus running to bring people up to the mountain. They had a faculty member who was actually responsible for loading an unloading people's equipment in the back of the bus. Well, the asshole apparently forgot my father's skis, and they went back down the hill to the next crowd in a hurry.  We never saw those skis again, and the faculty at Belleayre weren't very helpful about it. Thankfully, they were not expensive skis.

So that pretty much sums up my experience with Belleayre on Holiday week. I have not been to Belleayre since. We were with friends who were new to skiing and who were at the time convinced that Plattekill was too difficult and didn't have enough terrain open. We thought Belleayre would be less busy than Windham and Hunter. Wrong. The friends I speak of have come a long way, and now ski with us at Plattekill quite a bit. We also occasionally day trip to Gore on Christmas week which we have had more success with.

I will be at Gore on the 27th. Looks like it might be a little soft, but I'm cool with that.  

What time did you arrive?  I usually arrive 30-45 minutes before the lifts open.  Parking is never an issue for me.

problem was we got there late, I don't remember exactly. 9:00 maybe? Either way, 6k skiers is a ton. That's twice the population of the town of Margaretville.

Depending on how many years ago that was they may have been running a promotion, I recall them running something Christmas week a few years ago prior to ORDA.

And it would do exactly what you describe, create an absolute shit show.

They use to do extremely cheap tickets on black friday/opening day. One year they did that they only had two trails open (though both funneled to the Super Chief) on the upper mountain and it was an absolute night mare. The main lots were packed like it was mid season. My cousin and I ended up leaving within an hour and heading to Hunter, which was very quiet.


Long story short, theres a good chance it wont be a shit show because ORDA doesn't promote Belleayre like the DEC did with  cut throat ticket sales like they use to do (and thank god they don't anymore)

Good point. The DEC owned it at the time. Still a crazy experience basically having skis stolen/ misplaced by faculty who has probably never actually put on a pair of skis.

The DEC ran some overly aggressive promotions, that probably shouldn't have been done.  Pricing well below marginal cost with intent to limit competition is predatory pricing, which is illegal for a private business to do.  ORDA seems to be running Belleayre much more like a private business would.