Gore Mt., NY 1/23/00

[Jimski]

<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 1/24/00. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>After the fantastic four day experience I had over last weekend I have developed an appetite for trails with a little more "flavor" than I usually find at Whiteface and decided to wander down to Gore and see if they have made any progress since I was there I month ago today. What the heck, it's part of the same pass and I definitely ate up most of my traveling ski budget last weekend. <BR> <BR>As I traveled south through the back roads of the mountains I found the snow banks to steadily decrease in size the closer to North Creek I got. It's too bad that Long Lake doesn't have a major ski area as it really looks like winter when you drive through there. <BR> <BR>I am usually quite impressed with Gore's snowmaking capabilities but all there was open off the summit were Hawkeye and Lies and Open Pit. All these were definitely hard and icy. Lies was like a frozen waterfall and shouldn't have even been open IMHO. A patroller I talked to said they were going to start making on Rumor tonight and it takes four straight days of 24 hour blasting to cover it enough to open it. There definitely isn't enough snow to open any of the glades IMHO but then again they probably would if they had a MRG philosophy of management. Most of the blue squares that were open were pretty icy in the middles and very little to work with along the edges. Over the past several years I have always been impressed with how much better the conditions would be at Gore than at Whiteface at any given time and having been at whiteface on Wednesday I can honestly say that Mountain Run has better surface than almost any trail at Gore and that is pretty amazing. Based on what I found 30 days ago I will say that they continued to improve the two runs off the gondola that are used by everyone to access anything else at all. These were both well covered with no bare spots and really the least amount of ice compared to any other trails. There was only one trail each to ski off the High Peaks double or North Quad. They do have a nice half pipe and terrain park open and those items probably have eaten up a lot of their snowmaking efforts. At this point I don't intend to go back there until they receive a good dump and open some of the glades. Manmade conditions have been pretty good at Whiteface and it's a lot closer to me.