Holiday Valley 1/29/217

Sunday morning, my wife and I decided to take the 2 hour drive west down I 86 to ski Holiday Valley.  That area had been blessed with steady lake effect snow since Thursday compliments of Lake Erie and I wanted to take advantage of it!



My accolades to the local highway departments as all the roads leading there were nicely cleared and it was smooth sailing.  I hadn't skied Holiday Valley since college which was 20 years now.  I was amazed at the amount of development around the base area.  Another thing that amazed me were the 3 or 4 detachable high speed quads they have which is rare for a mountain of only 600 or so vertical feet.  The place was crowded, as I expected it to be, but everyone was spread out well .  The base areas are very spread out with several lodges to choose from.  It is not typical other 600 vertical ft areas that I have ever skied.  

I did a couple of runs with my wife to start the day off.  One of them were these low angle pine tree glades I found.  They were at the top where 2 HSQ's unloaded so the recent snowfall was skied off from all of the traffic.  They look good in the picture, but there was a decent amount of ice around.  


I ventured off on my own.  My wife wanted to stick to some of the greens and blues, so I decided to go check out The Wall, the area's only double black diamond.  It took 2 or 3 lift rides to get over to that side of the resort and I was able to check out some of the other terrain and try and find some stashes to hit later.  I never skied The Wall in my previous trips.  I was somewhat disappointed by what I found.  The trail is similar to Greek Peak's Hercules.  A flat lead in, followed by a steep headwall, then a flatter run out.  The top third of the headwall had been skied off revealing wall to wall boilerplate.  The only way over it was to slide on your edges.  Below that was a little carveable snow, and that was it.  I had no desire to ski it again.


I was able to get some information from a local that I rode a chair with.  She said to look for glades off of the Eagle chair.  I would find good snow there that wasn't tracked out yet.  She was correct!  I discovered a few areas off of some crossover trails.  They had nice steep drop ins with many untouched lines.  The fresh powder there was easily knee deep.  Very few people were skiing them, most runs I had the areas all to myself!  They weren't very long glades, but they were the best runs of the day.  






I met back up with my wife for lunch and then we skied some various greens and blues around the mountain.  Around 3 o'clock, she decided she was done for the day and went inside for a drink.  I did a few more runs off the nearby high speed quad, one of them being the pine tree glades where I started the day out.  Here are a couple more pics from around the mountain:

Nice report! Conditions look pretty nice. I have never skied there but have read so much about it over the years. I always thought the vert was in the 800' vicinity not just 600'.  I hear they have an impressive race program and they get a large amount of skier visits...and they always seem to do wellbin polls!

Thanks for this. Lately I've been driving out 17 to go to Plattekill and I go right past HV; I didn't realize they had such cool terrain

I checked, and their true-up vertical is listed at 680'.  Most of the runs I did came in at around 500' on the app I use to track my runs.  They definitely get the crowds there.  They're close to the big population centers in Buffalo, Toronto, and northeast Ohio.

Brownski wrote

Thanks for this. Lately I've been driving out 17 to go to Plattekill and I go right past HV; I didn't realize they had such cool terrain

Brownski, If you're passing Holiday Valley on your way to Platty, you're driving 100's of miles out of your way.  The place is in Ellicottville, NY, about an hour due south of Buffalo!

Me thinks he has it mixed up with Holiday Mt , It's on Rt 17 exit 107...

Is Rt 17 a better route to Platte from Rockland?

Yup. Jason is correct. I confused it with Holiday Mt. Pics still look awesome

Holiday Valley I feel skis much bigger than it is. With the trails being spread out and with all the lifts and three lodges they can handle very large crowds. Also if you piece together tails you can make runs upward to a mile or slightly longer in length.