A
Anonymous
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Friday was a nice warm day for me to organize a few people from my work to utilize the 4 person conference room facilities at Belleayre Mountain. <BR>Temps were forecasted to go into the upper 60s in Poughkeepsie and all we do is sit around and <BR>talk about whether or not our department is going to be sold, so I figured we could do it just as well on the lifts. <BR> <BR>Great spring snow all around. Coverage was good, a few bare spots were starting to show. Lots of bumps (first time attempting them on a snowboard). We had a blast. <BR> <BR>Sunday we went again for a charity race (read: ability to get cheap tickets and tax deduction at the same time). Saturday was much like Friday except warmer. Much snow was lost. Then it froze hard. OUCH! They could have held the Olympic <BR>downhill here and saved all that money injecting water into fine Utah snow. <BR> <BR>Didn't phase my 3 year old daughter though. She has been skiing by herself ever since our trip to Smuggler's, and now apparantly she doesn't even want us to ski anywhere near her. If I even got into her peripheral vision, she would complain <BR>(loudly) about how she needs to be first. Problem was that she's going down an icy slope at typical 3 year old speeds with typical 3 year old turning abilities. I was trying to figure out how close I had to be to remain out of her <BR>peripheral vision and still be able to move in at a moment's notice to avoid impending danger. <BR>Handled herself great though - was amazed at her ability to maintain balance even when hitting little (sometimes bigger) bits of ice. The second time down, she even insisted I didn't help her get over the pure ice at an unplanned <BR>water collection point. <BR> <BR>Belleayre claims that their closing date is April 14th. Signs all around the mountain proclaim this in huge letters with 5 point font at the bottom saying "weather and conditions dependant". They ain't going to make it. They're going to be lucky to make it till their normal closing date of end-of-March. I don't know how much of the mountain will be skiable between now and then though. They were making snow on some trails though. <BR> <BR>Some excitement - they called the state troopers apparantly on some guy that was offering tickets to people in the parking lot. When he offerred to me, I assumed he was just someone that had gotten tickets for the race and didn't plan on <BR>skiing in these great conditions. But why would they call the police for such a simple problem? I wonder if he had obtained more than just a few tickets... There was also a rather bad injury from some kid that was watching the race on the <BR>wrong side of the control fence and got hit by a skier after she got through the finish line and <BR>was trying to stop (and probably look up at the time). The kid got taken away in an ambulance - hope he's OK.