Gore Mt., NY 12/20/00

[Jimski]

I don't usually get down there before the first of the year but judging by the weather reports from the night before that were stating more to the South and East I convinced my buddy Greg to skip work and head South with me. After a little digging out and getting stuck in Greg's driveway we were able to get going and finally got headed up the gondi by about 9:45. The place was fairly deserted so parking pretty close to the lodge was not a problem. <BR> <BR>They had gotten about the 6 to 8 inches that were called for and it was a good thing as we were told that Monday and Tuesday were pretty bad from the rain activity on Sunday. The woods were covered but no glades open, of course; and there was a firm but more scratchy than icy base under the fresh snow. I would rate conditions good due to the snowmaking rehab that had been going on. The first thing I noticed was that the trail that goes from the top of the gondi to the base of the summit quad was totally skiable from side to side and not all ice. Last year on my first trip I found this trail barely skiable on one thin line and difficulty avoiding the stumps and rocks. From the top there were only two trails skiable, Hawkeye and Cloud that goes back down to mid station. Hawkeye was very good, but not excellent, and was getting hammered by the few that were there. We took one run and found it a little rough being our warmup run. The sporadic dispersion of the dense piles of rearranged top snow and the more slick spots that were getting skied off made for a hard time of staying balanced properly. When going up the gondi we saw the new trail that had been cut from the top of Bear Mt. down to the farthest skiers right trail called Sunway. We headed for a full top to bottom run to catch the gondi back up and try that one. It's rated blue square but has a fairly steep drop where it traverses the cliff area where the gondi makes the final rise to the top. I think if they are going to call the other trail that goes down to mid from the top of the gondi a black diamond then there's no real difference between the two. Greg tried to climb high on the ledges to follow another skiers tracks and get a different line on that headwall and got stuck on a 20 ft. drop. Discretion got the better part of valor and he back tracked on a traverse to get down. I could envision Matt Duffy or Jerm flying off that sucker and putting on a show for the gondi riders and Greg thought it would be do-able with a little more snow to land in. <BR> <BR>The three main ways down on the lower part that were open were Sunway, Showcase and Wildway(I think). Conditions were excellent on these trails and we had a great time picking interesting lines on these cruisers most of the day. The thermometer at the top of the triple read about 5 degrees and the liftie at the top of the gondi said winds were sustained at 25 to 30 and frequent gusts to 40. On a 1 to 5 scale I rated the day at a 3 due to the wind-chill and few trails open even with the good surface conditions. The last run we took we saw the gondi stopping several times and since we had covered all there was we split early around 3:00. Gotta get back to homeowner type chores so I can head to Whiteface tomorrow.