Your Home Mountain

Gore is pretty much home in winter. I voted.

I ski around lol, but I voted for Belleayre because I skied there three times last year. Maybe "other" would have been a good choice too.

Coach Z wrote

I think Matt is onto something here.  Your home Mt evolves...

Yup. Been a long time since my last change, but Smuggs for me in 2013-2014.

riverc0il wrote

Coach Z wrote

I think Matt is onto something here.  Your home Mt evolves...

Yup. Been a long time since my last change, but Smuggs for me in 2013-2014.

Good for you, Smuggs is a waaaaaaaay cool place

I really don't have a home mountain. I'm more of a nomad.

Mountain Creek, NJ, is less than a mile from my office. I ski there 3-6 times a season, mostly evening sessions with my kids. I prefer day trips to Elk, Plattikill, Hunter or Catamount. Overnighters take me to anywhere I can get to in 5 hours or so in ADKs or VT.

  My home has been a little 650 ft vert mountain 14 miles from house. After 9 seasons kids have way outgrown it. It has a nice lodge and great restaurant at Top.  It really sucked on a powder day , all but two trails were too flat.  Gonna go back to the place I started next season Elk.  I call Plattie our home mountain in NY,feels like home, never had a bad day there. If they lift the drilling ban in NEPA  anytime soon I will have a spot near Gore mt.

Hickory is closest to me, Gore and West are both about 25 miles away.  Out of 101 ski days over the last three seasons I've logged 52 days at Gore so it wins as my home mountain by a landslide.  I was surprised to see West in second with 16 days.  I like going there mid-week when it is empty and they're running specials.  It's an easy drive for me to get there. I love skiing a variety of mountains and Whiteface is a favorite of mine but 88 miles vs. 25 makes going there a tough choice when you figure in travel time and the cost of gas (especially if I have to take my truck).  The quality of Gore combined with the ease of getting there makes it a no brainer for logging lots of runs.

I learned to ski on MLK weekend in 2003 at Hidden Valley in NJ.  I was only 4 years old.  It was my family's home mountain for a while until I decided to try racing.  My family switched to Mount Peter because it had a better racing program.  A couple years later I decided that I didn't like racing, but Mount Peter remained my home mountain for quite some time.  Soon we got Sunday season passes to Windham and we went almost every Sunday, but we went to Mount Peter on weeknights and on days that we were not at Windham.  In the 10-11 season we decided to do most of our skiing at Windham and not get passes to Mount Peter because I had pretty much outgrown it.  The next year we found out that the SANY Gold Pass was cheaper than a pass to Windham and since Mount Peter accepted it, Mount Peter became my home mountain again.  That was also the year that we switched to Hunter for most of our all day trips because they had much better snow than everyone else during the not so good 11-12 season.  This past year it was the same story, but I got a Mountain Creek Spring Pass in late February that was good for the rest of the 12-13 season and all of the 13-14 season.  We decided that I had really outgrown Mount Peter and that we also wanted to do overnight trips to places other than Whiteface and Gore which we had done when we had the Gold Pass and most years before.  Next year we will have passes to Hunter, I will have one to Mountain Creek and overnight trips will be done most likely to Vermont.

Oak Mountain.  Started out there almost 20 years ago. Started riding gore a couple years after. Gore was a home mountain most of my life. Did 3 years at West, a year in NH, and just came back to oak last year.


I'm sure I'll dabble in some whiteface gore this year. It's been a little while on both. I love the mountain and the glades at gore, I just wish the park was better. Whiteface has really been steeping up their park game the last couple seasons so I'm stoked to check them out.

You might be able to get involved with the park at Gore, maybe up their game?

I_BUILD_PARKS wrote

Oak Mountain.  Started out there almost 20 years ago. Started riding gore a couple years after. Gore was a home mountain most of my life. Did 3 years at West, a year in NH, and just came back to oak last year.


I'm sure I'll dabble in some whiteface gore this year. It's been a little while on both. I love the mountain and the glades at gore, I just wish the park was better. Whiteface has really been steeping up their park game the last couple seasons so I'm stoked to check them out.

You from Speculator???? If so, you know the Swift family....real good friends of mine, super people

For sure, unfortunately it's a been there done that deal.

I spent a lot of time at the mountains working over 2 years. Did my best to make the park better there, but constantly ran into problems. I think that management is fine with simply having a park their. They like where things are and feel content to keep it that way. Unfortunately they drove away quite a few loyal people. 05-09 there was was a solid group of local kids there all the time and things were fun. The couple times I went over the last few years the park was kind of a ghost town.

I did what I could for that place in the end I could never go back there. I do hope they get their stuff together though as the rest of the mountain is awesome, and I love to see good parks.

They were pretty good at running people out of there. Anybody who really cared about the park was not going to make it. If you looked at it as simply a job and were fine with mediocre settup it wasn't bad. I was working 40 hours on the books and 20 off at one point and I still got burned by gores management. They didn't want to pay me overtime anymore and held me at 40 but I didn't want the parks to suffer because that's what the kids have to ride. I'd punch out and go back up at night to do work.

I would like to visit a couple times this year and check out the new glades. I've barely even explored the burnt ridge quad expansion and still have yet to hit the new ski bowl lift.

I_BUILD_PARKS wrote

 RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE

I knew it was you!

Why isn't Alta on the list? I know of at least two people who would vote for it

Yeah I'm up year right now here and there until fall then I'll be kickin it here all the time for the winter. And which swifts?

I_BUILD_PARKS wrote

Yeah I'm up year right now here and there until fall then I'll be kickin it here all the time for the winter. And which swifts?

Cool...Speculator is a fun place.

I know the entire family (Melody Lodge)........R. Swift and I shared a house together for a few years up at Smuggs (late 80's) that's how I met them.