Holiday Valley Conditions

I skied there on the 14th, the man-made was in great shape which I'm sure got hammered yesterday with the driving rain. Tomorrow is demo day there, still debating on whether to go or not with some friends who are dying to get out.  This weather could not be worse.

This will go down as a classic tweet from Holiday Valley:

Epic Powder Day! from Holiday Valley on Vimeo.

hmmm, i suspect that video is not contemporaneous

Holiday Valley Will Open One Week Early
2014-15 Season to Begin Friday, November 21, 2014
 
(November 18, 2014, Ellicottville, NY…) Holiday Valley’s President and General Manager, Dennis Eshbaugh announced today that the resort will open at 9AM on Friday, November 21. According to Eshbaugh, “We’ve received over 20 inches of snow since last Friday and we were able to fire up the snowguns Monday evening. With round the clock snowmaking, we’ll be able to open a week earlier than planned. What a great way to start the season!”
 
The resort plans a “Preview Weekend” with 2 lifts running from 9AM to 10PM on Friday and 8:30AM to 10PM on Saturday and Sunday, serving 4 slopes or more, depending on the natural snowfall and snowmaking progress. There will be terrain available for advanced beginners through advanced skiers and snowboarders. The slopes will then be closed from Monday, November 24 through Thursday, and will reopen for the season on Friday, November 28.

Looks good out here and no lift lines either.

Unmarked and closed trails is where its at.  Fresh tracks all day!

Saw those tracks under the chair in in the trees all morning.
Missed opening on Friday, but today's conditions were great!  The 7 inches they got Thursday and Friday helped make for a great surface.  Giant whales of snow everywhere look like they will be able to battle the rain coming through. Hopefully they will screw up the forecast again on the side of snow.
Good job getting the mountain open!

Looks great, I am trying not to get bent out of shape about the weather, hopefully this weekend is just a taste of the many pow days to come.

Holiday Valley Resort Opens Sunday, December 20
 
Holiday Valley will be opening for the 2015-16 season on Sunday, December 20 at 10AM and will operate until 10PM. The Yodeler lift and 2 slopes, Yodeler and the Candy Cane loop, will be open with a variable machine groomed packed powder surface and a 6 to 24” base. Tickets are $39 for an adult 8-hour ticket. On Saturday morning President and General Manager, Dennis Eshbaugh, was excited to say, “We’ve received 10-14 inches of Mother Nature’s snow so far and it is still snowing. The natural snow, along with a good run of snowmaking will allow us to get this season rolling!”
 
Snowmaking will continue on 10 slopes as temperatures permit, to be able to open more terrain as soon as possible. Holiday Valley has invested heavily in a state-of-the-art automated snowmaking system which has been critical this year to get the resort open. Roughly a third of Holiday Valley’s 611 snowguns are part of the automated system. These guns are controlled by a computer to turn on or off and can adjust for the type of snow to be made. Thus the snowmaking crew can react quickly to make snow in short windows of cold temperatures versus the time consuming process of turning each gun on manually on the hill.

Holiday is open and in pretty good shape. Some nice soft natural snow in the woods and some good snow with a bit of a man-made base below. The front side of the hill is mostly open, although the weekends forecasted rain will do some damage. Some of the steeper bits were bumping up nice with very little traffic to firm it up. Tomorrow morning should be pretty good but that’ll be it until the next cycle.

Thanks for the update.  Wish I had the time and energy to get down there and poke around up on top of the ridge.

I’ve been out a few times in the last week and it’s been really nice considering the lack of snow. Most of the steeper terrain is open and in good shape. Lots of frozen granular to push around and some very edgable groomers. There are a few overly firm patches, but nothing bulletproof. I also haven’t skied past 1 pm at all and it might get pretty beat up for night skiing. The groomers have done an excellent job and pretty much everything is very well covered Traffic has been pretty low. Even for a holiday morning, every lift was ski-on the whole morning. Should be good until the rain on Friday.

Today was excellent. 10” of fresh that fell from rain to slush to snow and skied great. everything bonded to the rain/ice from yesterday really well. The natural terrain and unsanctioned trails skied really well all day. Good stuff.

On trail was soft until it wasn’t. Super hard base under 6” of fresh. Natural snow trails and the woods were great. The precipitation was all right side up with a supportable crust about 6” down that had everything below it pretty locked up. The woods had an extra 4-6” of windblown in spots and were skiing excellent. It was a great morning.