Mountain Creek 2/9/13

This is my first trip report so I hope it turns out well.  I went to Mountain Creek in Vernon, NJ on Saturday 2/9/13 the day after Nemo.  The picture below shows the South Base Area.  The lift on the left is the South Peak Express.  The lift of the right is the Bear Peak Express.  All of the runs on the South and Bear peaks are supposed to be terrain parks, but only some of the trails have features on them.

Mountain Creek opens at 8am for season pass holders and at 9am for non-season pass holders.  I do not have a season pass, but they let me on at 8:50.  This was my first ride up the South Peak Express.

Pictured below is the top of South Peak.

After 3 runs on South, I headed over to Bear.

On my first ride up the Bear Peak Express,

I noticed that the Big Bear trail,

was all powder.  I wanted to lap it for the whole morning but there was a problem with the lift.  Apparently the anti-rollback brake was locking up every time they tried to start the lift.  As a result I only took two runs when it was fresh like this as I had to use the South Peak lift for most of the morning.  Later this problem was fixed.
The Sojourn Double which connects South Peak to Granite Peak was snowed in.  As a result, it opened late.  As soon as it opened, I got on and headed over to Granite.

When I got over to Granite, I saw that Pipeline, the only double black diamond at Mountain Creek, was open.  Down I went.  It was a sheet of ice at the headwall, so I didn’t get a picture as I was focusing on trying to get down it without getting hurt.  When I got down to the bottom I was greeted with…

a 15-20 minute lift line for the Granite Peak Quad.  
The reason that the line was so long is because the Cabriolet Gondola on the Vernon Peak was shut down due to wind and the Vernon Triple which is the other chair on Vernon Peak had a similar line to the one pictured here.  Eventually I got on the lift.

Later I headed down to the Vernon Base to have lunch and the gondola was open.

It too had a huge line, but the line wasn’t that bad as the gondola was being loaded to capacity.  That line took only 8 minutes.  The downside to this lift is that you need to remove your skis and stand for the whole ride.  Pictured above in the background is the Red Tail Lodge which was brand new last year.  Pictured below is the bottom of Vernon Peak.

Pictured below is the green circle run called Horizon as well as the Cabriolet gondola.

Below is a Better picture of the Cabriolet gondola.

After that, I headed back to South to for the remainder of the day.  When I got there it was already starting to get dark.

My day however was far from over as Mountain Creek has night skiing everywhere on the mountain until 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays and 9pm Sunday through Thursday.  It was a Saturday but I did not ski until 10.  The picture below is of the sunset on the top of South Peak.

I then took a few more runs and quit for the day at about 6pm.  I proved today that a powder day is a powder day and you don’t have to drive all of the way up to Gore to enjoy one.  However, I will be going up to Gore tomorrow and will post a trip report from there as well.

8:50 to 6pm. I'd call that a day.  Looks like some nice snow around.



Thanks for the report, have fun at Gore tomorrow.

I'll be at that other ski hill in town.

Thanks for a great report. You have really captured the place. Those lines are still a bummer.

Thanks for the report. i learned to ski there many years ago when it was Vernon Valley & Great Gorge. For being an hour from our home it good, even then they had a ton of snowmaking and it was really good when the occasional big storm came by.

Had another powder weekend at Mountian Creek exactly 1 month later on 3/8/13, 3/9/13, and 3/10/13 (3/9 was a failed Hunter trip as plans to go there fell through).  They had alot of snow and are going to be open till at least 3/17/13 and possibly until 3/24/13 despite a nasty r**n event this week.  Sucks that their season is almost over, but I guess it is just that time of year again.