Hidden Valley looking good for the weekend! (so is Laurel Mountain)

http://www.hiddenvalleyresort.com/resort-cams/

Any inside scoop on trail expansion? 

They've been talking about making snow on closed trails.  I'm kicking the tires on a Friday day trip.

My son, just turned 3 years old, as his first private lesson tomorrow at Hidden Valley.  The wife and I are skiing Laurel on Sunday (not interested in the Super Bowl).  Conditions look great!

I skied 7S yesterday and the conditions were very good. Gunnar had excellent coverage and they were making snow on Yodeller. I'd guess they were 75% open. This weekend should be the best conditions of this year. 

I skied Laurel on Monday and Tuesday. Visibility was terrible but the surface was excellent. Innsbruck and Broadway were the best for conditions. These trails are long and wide. Sparse crowds hardly ever ski it down to the hardpack. The Deer Path back to the chair was good too. Upper Wildcat was good. Lower Wildcat had not been groomed since first groomed out last week but there were patches of loose snow to turn in but sharp edges and good angles are required. I will probably go out tomorrow.

It's pretty far from DC, but Elk Mountain looked well-positioned to keep their trails open a few weeks ago.

Conditions on the newly opened Paradice and Upper Showtime at Massanutten were quite good late last week.  DJ has been open with side-to-side coverage since Opening Day in November.  They are hoping to start on Mass Transit and Yee Ha (connector between Lift 5 and Lift 6) during this week's cold spell.  Did have some snowmaking hours last night.

Hopefully the conditions will be able to be maintained through this next warm spell as there don't appear to be good snowmaking conditions at least for the next two weeks.

Have skied LM, 7S and HV in the last 24 hrs.  All very nice at the moment. Beautiful snow falling in the Laurel Highlands as of 1130 Saturday.

Correction: 7S today is soft mash and corn with bodies everywhere, including half the population of Washinton DC.  :-)

HVdad wrote:

Correction: 7S today is soft mash and corn with bodies everywhere, including half the population of Washinton DC.  :-)

Any day on the snow is better than not being on the snow ... but the season has, for me, been on the disappointing side so far.

Woody

I skied Laurel yesterday. Great conditions on all of their snowmaking trails but what I hunger for is the other half of the mountain. Dream, Laurel, the Kitty Cats, Snow Bowl, Hegan's, Doc's, Snow Bowl, Joe's, The Goat, and Lower Liftline taunt me every time I go there. Last season I was skiing Laurel, The Kitty Cats, and Snow Bowl often and usually found fresh tracks because the masses of powder hounds were busy devouring what powder survived the groomers at Seven Springs. For a few primo weekends, we had the entire mountain open and I was able to ski Dream the way I did back in the 1970s and 80s and for a very brief time the early years of this century. Also, for the first time in my life, I was able to bag the Lower Liftline. Now that was a thrill and much easier than my back then intermediate mind had imagined. At least we have Lower Wildcat.

Faithful Laurel lovers rue the day that the powers that be decided that what Laurel needed was a massive amount of earth moving to regrade Deer Path instead of putting that money into snowmaking. 

Weather dependent, I will be skiing at Laurel tomorrow(Sunday). Hope to see you there. 

Wife and I skied Laurel today, snow was great but I thought it was crowded compared to previous visit.
 

Only negative was the fact that the upper lift operator was on the phone and a gust of wind blew a large snow rake onto the exit of the lift. We tried to get his attention but wasn't successful. We skied to the left of it but a group of four (about six chairs after us) wasn't so lucky and a teenager ejected her self right before the chair turned back to go down the slope. She hit pretty hard on her 6 feet fall. She was ok but the left operator got a huge ear full from the ski patrol.  
 

love that mountain!

Hidden Valley looked beautiful on Friday and my just turned 3 year old son had a great first lesson! The weather pattern looks pretty unfavorable for Presidents' Day lesson but we are hopeful!

Timothy.grasso wrote:

Wife and I skied Laurel today, snow was great but I thought it was crowded compared to previous visit...

Sorry to hear about the lift incident and glad nobody was hurt. The lift operators at Laurel are among the best I've experienced. Nice to know that the patrol educated the operator on safety protocol. 

Yes, we thought it was more crowded than usual too. Once we actually had about a dozen people ahead of us in the lift corral. Well, that is a crowd at Laurel. Usually, the lifties wait on us to load the lift as we catch our breath or wait for our skiing partners. Our neighbors spent this past weekend at Snowshoe and a half-hour in the Ballhooter lift corral. I wonder how many of those people that say they don't ski Laurel because there is only one lift and only 3 snowmaking trails but spend their time at 7 Springs all day skiing off the backside Gunnar 6 and the 4 trails that it directly serves. That is great as long as Laurel stays in business, I can live with a 2 minute wait for a chair.

As for the crowds yesterday, I understand that an all-day ski school class came over from 7 Springs. The Mountain Adventure class and a bunch of 7 Springs instructors were on the mountain looking for a different adventure.

There were also a few race team groups practicing on Lower Wildcat. I thought they were not very good at practicing the safety code. Two encounters I had, both on Wildcat, should have been handled better by the adults in the group. In one encounter I was waiting as a group dropped into Lower from skiers right, skied to the skier left edge of the trail about 35 yards downhill then waited for the rest of the group to amass. I waited as the last adult at the top waved me ahead. Since they were bunched on the left, I decided to ski the right side of the trail. I pushed off and before I was halfway to them they decided to traverse, without looking up, one at a time, to skier's right side and stop right in my line. No harm, I avoided them as was my responsibility but they should have looked uphill first. The other was at the bottom of Lower. As each individual kid and trainer skied down to the lift practicing their drills, instead of stopping and amassing a little uphill above the slow signs, each skied to the bottom impeding egress to the chair from the majority of the skiers approaching from Deer Path. Again, no harm but still not to mindful of safety. I know that it is tight down there and there is virtually no run out but we can't change the design but we can change our behavior. I saw no violation of the safety code from the Mountain Adventure crew. On the whole, I was happy to see them all there.