Whiteface Begins Making Snow

Reported by the Adirondack Almanac - "You don’t need to be a meteorologist to know that it’s been cold the last several days and nights, ideal for dusting off the hoses and guns and making snow at Whiteface. “We saw an opportunity to take advantage of some good temperatures,” said Whiteface general manager Bruce McCulley. “We’ll keep watching the weather and the temperatures over the next several days and make snow when it makes sense so that we have a good product for opening day.”

This season’s snow-making is far ahead of last year’s, when the mountain didn’t make its first snow until Nov. 16, pushing back opening day until Dec. 5. Starting at about 6 p.m. last night, 35 guns began blowing snow from the mid-station down, laying the based for the Friday, Nov. 26, opening, weather permitting..."

I didn't hear any guns at Gore last night and the summit is in the fog this morning. We had some cold nights this week. Monday was cold enough in Lk Placid to delay school 2 hours due to icy roads. So...will we see an early at an ORDA mountain? Historically both Gore and Whiteface open and close the same day even if one of them was very marginal.

....starting tonight. Couldn't find it on the website, but it came through on the Twitter feed on the HR Weather Page:

http://www.nyskiblog.com/p/ny-weather.html

Before everyone starts beating up Gore for not blowing snow. In their defense, If I  were a mountain manager knowing what the weather would be a week from now... no way would I blow snow.

Maybe I would turn on one fan gun and set up a few rails and boxes for the snowboarders to use for free..You know some PR.

Face says they're gonna blow snow on Upper Valley tonight.

Take a look at the WF webcam. They are blowing snow now.

sometimes crow is good in the morning...

That was from a press release from Jon Lundin at Whiteface.

When I got it, I sent Jon a note asking about his planned opening date. He answered:

"Friday, November 26."

Mid-station cams from 11am:

Staffing is tight and both mountains have a lot of work to get done before they'll be ready to open. Since early opening don't make any significant cash, it's probably a fantasy at best.

It's hard to believe... but on the WF cam it looks like Lower Valley retained some of the snow they'd blown on it earlier in the week.

Bridget's twitter feed reports 8 inches at the summit of Whiteface.

The report was from last night.


Excelsior 11/6/10

Skied the WF Auto Road yesterday (Sat).  Snow range was in the 8-12 inches range above approx 3500'.  Enough snow at lower elevation that we were able to ski right from our car at the Toll House.  


Here's a pic of the ski area from the Wilmington Turn on the Auto Road.  Guns were blowing on Excelsior and possibly elsewhere on the upper mtn.

Beautiful day in the mountains.

    Trip report here.

Can't wait to check out the snow on the Gore webcam...maybe some day before hell freezes over! They have lots of bandwidth and they ran fiber to Bear Mtn, but no cameras.

Whiteface posted a snowmaking photo album on Facebook today:

Hey ADKskier, were they getting rain or snow up at the Face today? Any decent amounts of accumulation? A friend is considering hiking it.

Nice trip report of a beauty day in the mountains. Thanks.

From the Whiteface Facebook page:

"The guns should be back on tonight and then again from Wednesday on out!"

i guess they have a way to make snow in the pouring rain

Just like gore where they often just make fog!