That always blows my mind: six hours from DC and five from Baltimore to ski at Greek?!? I guess the big upside was that they could take I-81 and avoid hideous traffic on the way to Vermont or upstate NY via the NJ Turnpike and NYS Thruway.
Probably will get to it, but not high priority for the moment
I recall lines on Chair 1 in the early 80's that were longer than that, IMO. More like 30-40 minutes at the worst times. As many as 40-60 charter busses each weekend. So it was not a small number of people coming up from the big cities. Volume is hugely decreased, but still a number of folks from Philly/NYC areas trying to skip out on the Pocono's and Hunter crowds that come to GP.
No, it's still there, but reconfigured with a cafeteria and no more bands at night (those are now upstairs in Trax in the Katalima for that stuff).
True enough for quite a while now...
Yes for the handful of real runs they have put in, but no, many listed 'trails' are actually supposed to be glades that follow the MTB trails they put in. Weird thing to list MTB trails as ski runs. Gives you lots of trails to claim on a brochure, but then given snow conditions in recent years, the snow report says you are only half open even if all your real sized/snowmaking trails are actually open...
People didn't blithely hop on planes back then like we do today, although that began to change after deregulation.
I guess you're too young to remember the original Frontier Airlines, a full-service carrier which thrived at its Denver Stapleton hub (approx. 40% of the airport's traffic at one point!) until airline deregulation in 1978. Below is the livery most people remember from its salad days. To avoid a thread hijack, I'll add the rest of the Frontier story to the ski-air travel thread.
That makes sense. I guess I was viewing it through a 2024 lens where long-distance destination ski trips aren't "only for rich people," as was the case 40+ years ago. Still, driving up to six hours in each direction to ski GP is a tall order, so I agree with the props to the sales/marketing people. Similar to how Killington reportedly got large groups of British people to fly there for vacations instead of the Alps or western Canada.
While I believe that the vert is more in the 900 range, Greek Peak was/is the Vail of CNY ski areas!
I think that the sweater might even be Spyder brand. The Red & White on the arms is thick 'bump' padding for hitting bamboo gates. I think this was either 1982 or 1983.
There was a ~3 foot tall ridge from snowmaking on Odyssey (so coming across from the T-Bar across the connection up top between Illiad and Odyssey). So an inadvertent kicker built by the ski area itself, lol. I always found it ironic that in the 1970's there were huge jumps built out of dirt (think todays biggest sized jumps) on 'Apollo's Hollow' (see trail 26 on the 1979 trail map) which today is the very bottom of Olympian trail. They even served that huge jump via a poma lift on the lookers left just above the race shack building... Then the 80's came along, they bulldozed the jump flat, removed the poma lift and became militant on no jumping, putting safety bars down, etc...
It is less than 900, Something more like 830 verts top of 4 to bottom of 5. Even less for Chair 1 at something like 750 vert. It's very deceiving, looking at it, since it looks like more.
Both agreed and not. It's obvious that they want(ed) people to be able to find them on a driving map! Especially back in the day...
No kidding, could the current one be any more nondescript? It looks like Windows 98! Credit where it's due -- at least the gentle outline of the hills is more or less accurate.
Which made sense back then. I wonder why they still use Cortland as their official address after more than two decades of online maps? Is GP a Cortland exclave?
Pretty simple. There is no post office in Virgil. So even if you live in the tiny burg itself you have a Cortland mailing address.
? Looks like fall foliage season to me!
Yes, but......