Windham 1-21-2018: More Core than Gore?

Once again family commitments prevented me from skiing on Saturday but I had Sunday to myself. Where to ski? Somehow I decided I had to choose between Windham and Gore, both on the max pass, both within day-trip range of my home. I haven’t been getting enough exercise lately so I thought it would be nice to do little skinning at some point. That ruled out Gore, which led me to an unexpected question. Is it possible that Windham is more core then Gore? At first it seems like heresy to say it but Gore, like it’s ORDA sister Belleayre, doesn’t allow uphill traffic while Windham, in spite of its luxurious fancy pants image, embraced it long ago. Hmmm, I would have to think about that one. No uphill doesn’t seem all that core... Regardless, if I wanted a full on workout (and I desperately needed one) it would have to be Windham.




When I pulled into the parking lot at 8:30, it was already filling up with cars. A lot of Windham skiers beat me to the hill, which is kinda core of them really. I turned into the lower lot, below the hotel and the beginners’ area, grabbed my stuff out of my truck and headed up to the base area. By the time I had my squishy soft AT boots on my feet and a lift ticket attached to my anorak, the line for the Whirlwind Express, the main high speed quad had filled the maze. Even the singles line was packed. I hopped on the fixed grip triple instead, the one that lets you off next to the mid mountain lodge, just above the East Peak Express, Windham’s second high speed quad. The line up there was more reasonable so I jumped right on and made my way to the top.





There was racing on one trail but the other East Peak trails were not super crowded. I did a couple laps on Wicked before taking a run down Wanderer to see if it was empty enough for skinning. Not only did it have no crowds, there was already another guy skiing uphill as well as a few people on snowshoes. It occurred to me then that it was really the snowshoers that were responsible for Windham’s liberal uphill policies. Being a full service family oriented resort, Windham probably views snowshoeing and hiking as vital ways to keep the skiers’ non-skiing relatives entertained. Allowing uphill skiing is a no-brainer when you already have a bunch of folks on snow shoes. So I stopped near the bottom of Wanderer, got my skins and baseball hat out of my backpack and got my workout for the weekend. I made pretty good time getting back to the top but man was I feeling it! My heart was pounding and I had a decent sweat going, in spite of opening every zipper I could find. I took it as evidence that I needed the workout even more then I thought I did. Maybe Windham is more core then people give them credit for but I still have some work to do.



When I was done skinning, I took a few more runs before making my way down to the mid lodge to eat lunch on the deck. Lots of racers in there. After that I made my way back to my car to swap my soft AT boots for my stiff no-walk-mode alpine boots.




The main quad still had a crazy line so ended up riding the Whistler triple instead. The two lifts are right next to each other and it was striking how much faster the detach is then the fixed grip. One after another full chairs zipped by under my left elbow as I leaned back and man-spreaded to my hearts content. The triple and another fixed grip, disturbingly called the Wheelchair Double, were ski-on so I just hung out over there for the afternoon. I skied Upper Wheelchair (seriously, who came up with this name?) and the other stuff on this part of the hill... I hit Windfall, one of my favorites, repeatedly. There was racing over here too, NASTAR and some race-training but it didn’t get in the way. Considering everything, I was impressed that I could still hang out on my little corner of the mountain and do hot laps all afternoon. Windham certainly knows how to handle the crowds.





Conditions were good, considering the recent meltdown and rain. The steeps were scraped off but they skied nice along the edges. There were icy spots, dirty spots, even some hard boiler plate here and there but overall, Windham was in surprisingly good shape. I had no complaints.

Great report marred only by the omission of a "Bearpen in the distance" caption.

Jamesdeluxe wrote

Great report marred only by the omission of a "Bearpen in the distance" caption.

Dammit- still making rookie mistakes after all this time...

Brownski wrote

Jamesdeluxe wrote

Great report marred only by the omission of a "Bearpen in the distance" caption.

Dammit- still making rookie mistakes after all this time...

I'm calling BS on James.  Bearpen is dead west of Windham.  It's not visible in any of those photos, and maybe not visible at all from Windham.

mm

Milo Maltbie wrote

 Bearpen is dead west of Windham.  It's not visible in any of those photos, and maybe not visible at all from Windham.

Whether you can see it on a given day or not is irrelevant. You should simply acknowledge that Bearpen is out there in the distance... lurking.

In was tradition in the past to give Bearpen it's due under a photo shot in the right direction.

Kids these days. Sheesh.

I like the lady with the pooch!

Awesome TR Brownski way to get after it.

You da man, Brownski!!  


I heard there were crazy long lift lines at Windham on Saturday.  Conditions do look quite good though.

James, this was taken on the same day ... with Bearpen in the distance... just from the other side of the mountain.

 

Thanks Marc! If we're gonna be strict, the pic of the woman walking her dog up the trail was kind of pointed in the right direction but of course the mountain is in the way. I have kind of started regarding "bearpen in the distance" as a funny because every time I ask a Platty local which mountain is Bearpen, I get a different answer. From now on I will remember to include the caption with all clear-skies-from-the-peak photos of the Catskills.

And just as a side note: I think Gore should allow uphill. Tannery (I think) would be perfect for it.

Nice work Broski ---- i'm shocked Gore doesn't allow the up? seems strange

How crowded were the runs? We had some friends there this past weekend and they said it was insanely crowded.  We are in the city area next week and we are debating to go to Belle or here for a day trip.

The couple of runs under the main lift were pretty crowded. No place on the mountain was deserted but it was manageable everywhere other then right there in the middle. I was able to find some lifts that were ski-on to skiers left