Willard Mountain, NY Jan 28, 2012 + Celebrity Sighting

I had some time to spare on Saturday morning, and desperately wanted to ski but didn't want to drive far nor spend a lot of $$. Decided to go to Willard Mountain which is about 40 minutes away and cheaper than other nearby options. Like most small mountains, they have struggled in this terrible weather pattern but did offer up some decent skiing.

Willard offers up a 450' vertical drop served by 2 parallel double chairs and two pony lifts, along with a tubing areas. As you face the mountain, the double on the right travels a bit faster than the one on the left. Since the chairs go straight up the steepest part of the mountain, it only takes about 3 minutes to reach the summit. Hence, you can make a lot of runs in a short period of time and I did 31 in about 4 hours including some stops.

Coverage was loose and frozen granular and some wet granular as well. No real bare sports on open terrain, but nary a flake to be found away from the trails. In face, the surrounding locations were completely bare. At my house 24 miles away, we still had 2-3" of snow on the ground even though I'm at a lower elevation.

Colonel, the main trail under the chairs was decent, as was Joe's Special and Billy O'Neill.

After about 20 runs I ran into Frank Winters who is the President at Ski Venture, the ski club that runs a rope tow area in Glenville, which is currently closed due to lack of snow. We made a run, and then saw quite a gathering of skiers and cameras near the bottom of the chairs. Turns out, Chef Gordon Ramsey was taping a segment for a new show called "Hotel Hell" which will be on in the fall! They had been taping at the Cambridge Hotel in nearby Cambridge, NY, home of Apple Pie a la Mode. It was definitely a surprise to see them taping at Willard as that was not previously publicized. It looks like they were doing an apple pie tasting.

We made about 10 more runs, then Frank introduced me to Chic Wilson who owns Willard, a very nice guy, and we talked about ski history for a while.

A nice day, temps were pleasant in the upper 30's, always good to get out on the snow and it was fun to see someone famous at a local ski area!

Jeremy

Chef Gordon Ramsey


The Colonel from the base


Lower Colonel


Towards Glens Falls from the summit


Looking towards Vermont

You rode a lift 31 times?  There is no way a place like Willard could keep me interested enough to ride a lift 31 times - I'm not sure anywhere could.  My hat goes off to you.  That is "core" in some bizarre sort of way.  Very cool.

Scotty Jack will be dropping in any second to regale us with tales of his misspent youth at Willard.  3......2......1......

Yup, 31 times...it did get repetitive, but its a fast lift at least. When the southern side of the hill is open, there is a lot more variety - adds some narrow, steep, twisting and fun trails there.

When my family first moved East my dad took me and one of my sisters skiing at a little area north of Albany.  I think it was Willard.  If so that's the only time I've been.  I like the fact that those little areas are still out there but I must admit I don't ever go to them anymore.  I like to think they can make it without me.  I think their niche is for families learning to ski on a budget.  400 or 500 feet of vertical is all you need for that.

YES!  YES!  Willard rocks!!  

Thx for the pics!  I love that place!  

I'm gonna hit it up when a Nor easter rolls through and stays to the south of us up here - night ski it!!  

Is the "cliff jump" still at the bottom of Joe's Special?  I used to huck my meat off that thing!!!

I think the cliff jump is still there!

nelsap wrote

I think the cliff jump is still there!

I'm so gonna launch that thing!

Whoah, a very special baselodge episode of Kitchen Nightmares?

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU EXPECT ME TO SKI ON THAT THING, HAVE YOU EVER EVEN BEEN TO THE ALPS?"

I had the same thought as Jeremy, and headed over to Willard on Sunday afternoon.  Jeremy mentioned SkiVenture – he and I are both members, and Willard offers a $22 all day / any day lift ticket to SkiVenture members.  Since Willard is just 18 miles from home, it fits the bill for a fun half day of family skiing.

I suspect my logistics were a bit more complicated than Jeremy’s.  My wife Beth had gone cross country skiing with friends at Lapland Lake (btw, she reports excellent conditions on all 50K of trails there, an inch of new snow during the afternoon), so I had our two kids solo.  I wanted to get Sylvie (age 4) into one of Willard’s afternoon Little Colonel ski classes (1.5 hour multi-week learn-to-ski program) as a walk-in, and figured Daniel (age 7) could ski with me while Sylvie was in the class, and ride the lift and ski on his own (something he hasn’t really done before) after the class while I played with Sylvie on the snow or in the lodge.  Honestly I wasn’t sure exactly how I’d juggle both kids, but Willard is the kind of place where a parent can make that kind of thing work out.  In the end it worked out fine, but not at all the way I expected.

When we arrived, I noticed both side-by-side double chairs were running.  The parking lots were about full and the place was pretty busy, despite the complete lack of snow Jeremy mentioned.  I got Sylvie enrolled in her class and lift tickets for Daniel and me.  Meanwhile Daniel had gotten himself booted up, so we walked him over to the lift so he could start skiing right away.  We noticed both chairlifts were stopped, with skiers in the chairs and a pretty good sized group of skiers gathered around the loading area.  Bad sign.  

Daniel walked over to one of the cable tows (still running) and used that to access the small terrain park that’s set up at the bottom of the mountain, and I got Sylvie ready for her class.  The instructors teach the kids to side-step up a small slope and do a red-light-green-light drill until the kids are ready to graduate to the magic carpet conveyor, so the lift stoppage didn’t have any effect on Sylvie’s class at all.

Sylvie's in the pink jacket, last in line:


With Sylvie in the class, I went to check on Daniel.  The chair lifts had gotten powered up by aux power, but ran at low speed to get the chairs evacuated and then shut down for good.  The cable tows had stopped running too.  As for Daniel, he and a group of kids took matters into their own hands and had begun hiking for turns.  It looked like they were doing laps from about 2/3 of the way up and then skiing down to hit a jump, I think the same one Scotty Jack mentioned above.  I don’t know how many laps they made, but they went from a little before 2pm until after 4.

Daniel is with the group of kids hiking up, just to the left of the big pine tree and above ScottyJack's jump:


Sylvie’s lesson went great.  We’ve been spending about 30-45 minutes with Sylvie at the end of each ski day this winter on Gore’s beginner J-bar getting her used to having skis on her feet.  For the life of me, I haven’t been able to get her to do a wedge.  She stuck the lesson out for the full hour and a half (by the end she was one of just a couple kids left) and made more progress than I’ve been able to make with her all season.  Willard does a great job with these learning programs - Daniel did a 6-week program here his first year on skis. We’ll definitely have Sylvie take a few more lessons this year at Willard or Gore, and enroll her in Mountain Adventure at Gore next year.

Sylvie:


While the lesson was underway, Chic, Willard’s GM and owner, came around and told everybody that a National Grid transformer had blown and it would be at least several hours before they had power restored to the lifts.  They gave vouchers to everyone, and nobody really seemed to mind the early end to the day at all, which speaks to Willard’s local, low-key vibe.

Ski Patrol did a sweep of the trails around 4:15 (normally they’re open till 6pm on Sundays), so Daniel came in from his earn-your-turns adventure.  When he took his helmet off, his hair was matted down with sweat from all the hiking.  I let him hang out in the lodge with his new ski pals for another 15 minutes or so before we headed home.  At home, even though he was exhausted, he couldn’t stop talking about his ski day.  I’m sure he’ll remember it for a long time.

Daniel:

ml242 wrote

"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU EXPECT ME TO SKI ON THAT THING, HAVE YOU EVER EVEN BEEN TO THE ALPS?"

"IN ENGLAND, WE HAVE SLAG HEAPS THAT ARE BIGGER THAN THIS SO-CALLED MOUNTAIN!!"

do you have a counter or pencil and paper to keep track of your runs?

Adk Jeff wrote

Is that instructor wearing a buffalo costume? Very strange.

Sick Bird Rider wrote

Is that instructor wearing a buffalo costume? Very strange.

There's a piggie too, and a few other animal costumes.  Isn't that type of ski attire common in the Hinterlands?

I keep track either through the Alpine Replay App (which works some of the time), but mostly I just keep track in my head. As a ski geek I have memorized the vertical of just about every ski lift. Yeah, I'm strange :)

nelsap wrote

As a ski geek I have memorized the vertical of just about every ski lift. Yeah, I'm strange :)

OK, ski geek   You mentioned Willard's vertical as 450 feet.  That seemed a little short to me.  SANY lists the vert as 508.  What's the source of your 450?

Adk Jeff wrote

  Isn't that type of ski attire common in the Hinterlands?

It is, 'cept up there it's requisite to have a nickname, eh?.......Tatonka! Tatonka!

Hi Jeff,

The double that was installed in 2005 has a vertical of 447': http://www.skilifts.org/old/install_na2005.htm.

Looking at the beginner section with the Pony can add about another 20' vertical...so 467' overall, though most skiers would only do the 447'.

Jeremy

But that was 2005.  The Adirondacks (and foothills) are RISING.  Let's settle on 450.0001 vert.

Adk Jeff wrote

Sick Bird Rider wrote

Is that instructor wearing a buffalo costume? Very strange.

Isn't that type of ski attire common in the Hinterlands?

In Soviet Vermont, Meese actually schuss!

Courtesy: Famous Internet Skiers

I'm having a little deja vu looking at a small mountain with decent coverage, but no snow outside of the snowmaking zone. Those little mountains... let's just say that 450 feet is a significant difference vs 250.

JD ... thanks for a very unique TR.  And thanks for knocking another one off The List.