The Home Mountain

This spot could be everyone's home mountain with their small old skool State Park (and corporate owned) vibe. One of a couple "Platty-style" hills in western PA. 760' vertical

I wrote a big long blabbering response to this thread last week that would not load.

It boils down to this: there are two types of “home mountain”s. And I don’t want to lay too much “Native, local, touron, Joey” jargon on you. But when you live local to the hill, when you (or at least your neighbors) work there, socialize there, and it is a key part of your local economy you feel entitled to simultaneously bitch about the place and defend it vigorously from other people’s bitching. Your own identity is often tied up in the place a bit, unlike someone who prefers to ski there, but lives hours away and can more easily switch allegiances.

Nice photo^^

Maybe not sig worthy but the funneh for sho:

camp wrote

3-4 inches of blower on top of boilerplate is still better than boilerplate without the blower.

My home mountain BIG TUPPER is no more . Great place to start 1100 vert , great cruisers , awesome scenery ,retro vibe , low skier density , Hall chairs and dirt cheap lift tix in right up to when it REALLY closed in the late 90's .At one time a casino guy from Jersey , Roger Jacobowski a "serious piece o work " owned it in thlate 80's early 90's . Ole Rog knew NOTHING about ski mgt he had two prices $7 or $11 😆😆😆😆 ran the sumbitch into the ground also had TWOFER. Mondays . Twas cheap skiing but very decent skiing . MY BIL and i were regulars !

I’ve been floundering around without a true “home mountain” for 11 years.  Luckily, I live under an hour from (I think) 7 ski areas.  Tenney is closest but very marginal.  I prefer Cannon because of it’s challenge, scenery, vertical, access, lack of development, etc and have had a NH resident season pass there most years.  Currently, for my kids’ high school ski racing, their home mountain is Waterville Valley, which is probably the mountain that most locals call home.  Also have put in a bunch of January weekdays at Loon with the “winter program” for the elementary (k-8). Tough gig, but somebody has to do it.  

Lucky to have so much variety close by, but sorta miss being a real homer, being a known entity, a known quantity,....part of the fabric, so to speak.

Went to my other home mountain yesterday; the 750' vertical one that I don't work part-time at.
1 - One of the better parts of this hill is the small dirt road parking area around back, less than 100 yards from the lifts. You need a pass to park back there though since there is no ticket window on the backside.

2 - taking a few runs while keeping an eye on the cars to see if any friends vans, trucks, or cars show up.

3 - catching a couple friends after they skinned first lap and took the skins back to the van.

4 - Breakfast stout break at cars waiting for the lifts to come back on after unexpected power outage

5 - the couple friends leave while I try to think of excuses to go home also. non found.

6 - see another friend walking in from the back lot.

7 - after an hour this friend needs to leave so I decide to call it also

8 - beer in the lot next to another friends van, who we somehow managed to not see on the small mountain.

Home mountain is where my friends are