Freshly groomed trails on Belleayre Mountain yesterday. Photo from the Belleayre Mountain website.
One Catskills ski resort opened for business this weekend, and two more -- Windham Mountain and Hunter Mountain -- expect to have their opening days this week.
But Belleayre Mountain beat the pack by opening yesterday. That's a rare piece of good news for a state-run ski mountain that is feeling more than its fair share of painful cuts this year.
YNN's camera crew at Windham MountainWindham Mountain has spent the weekend making snow for a planned opening on Saturday, December 4, according to a post on its Facebook page:
We are making SNOW! And we will continue to make SNOW as temperatures allow. The forecast does predict a warm up for next week...however we are hopeful that we will be open for skiing and riding by Saturday December 4! Stay tuned and keep thinking cold.
In the meantime, Windham got some love from local TV station YNN, which filmed the snowmaking process on the mountain for a segment that aired yesterday. The above photo is of the YNN team filming the segment, via the Windham Mountain Facebook page.
As for Hunter Mountain, they're dealing with a nasty weather report that is pushing their showmaking plans to Wednesday of the coming week. They explain their reasoning on a post on their Facebook page:
Our decision is to wait until Wednesday because there is a significant rain event in the forecast for Tuesday and Tuesday night. Check out the weather report below to see what we're looking at. Looks like great weather on Wednesday night...and we'll start with a vengeance then. Stay tuned!
11/30/10 Update: Whoops, should've mentioned Plattekill Mountain's plans in this roundup. The Roxbury ski resort has a few new snow guns this year, according to a story on First Tracks, an online ski magazine:
Resort co-owner Laszlo Vajtay has invested in 22 more tower snow guns to the already expanded fleet, pushing the grand total to close to 100, and putting more snow on the trails faster.
According to its Facebook page, Plattekill plans on firing up the snow machines this Thursday and opening on December 11.
