Mount Sunapee and Bolton Valley

This past week I skiied Mount Sunappe on Friday and Bolton Valley on Sunday. These were both new new places for me.

Mount Sunapee:
This was a cool place. I was really surprised on how close it was to VT. You could easily see Okemo and Killington from the peak. Very nice views.
The trails were nice. Lots of groomers and a couple bumps here and there. But the conditions that day were really bad. The snow froze over, which meant no natural/glade skiing today. I was aware of these conditions before hand, so I was looking forward to their terrain park, which looks pretty good online. But, it ended up being a total dissapointment. The rails had very poor jumps leading up to them, the grooming was bad and a lot of the rails were busted up. Seemed kinda ghetto if you ask me.
We got a lot of laps in, thanks to the very quiet day. I think my favorite trail was Blast-Off.
I thought that the whole design of the base was bizarre. It seemed weired that they seperated the learning area off from everything else. And the high speed was a bi*** to get to if you were lapping the park or the other triple chair.
The "new" high speed was certainly an improvement. I liked the whoe sunbowl area. That quad that they had before it is scatter througout the resort. The Lift poles were in the back parking lot and the terminal and chairs were still at the bottom of sunbowl.
Overall it was a fun place. I think I'll take Ragged and Gunstock over it though. But I would certainly come back to this one.
Bolton Valley up next...

Bolton Valley FTW ... now I'm not a betting man but I'll bet day 2 of your trip was much much better.

canobie#1 said:

Mount Sunapee:
It seemed weired that they seperated the learning area off from everything else.

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I think this is a great way to do it. No one is skiing through the beginner area on their way to somewhere else.


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Like the separation but at Sunapee getting back to the base lodge can be a pain. Actually it's a pain from the North Peak area as well as the OP said.

Sunapee is certainly not alone in this regard, though...

hammer said:

Sunapee is certainly not alone in this regard, though...

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Butternut has a similar arrangement with the newer lodge about 40 feet higher than the old one, and the beginner area sort of behind and in-between. It's not hellacious to walk up to the upper lodge, but you can only ski there if you're riding the west triple chair. The up-side is that the upper lodge is much less crowded.

Used to love the upper lodge for races at Butternut back in the 90s, less crowd.

Yeah if memory serves me right most of Sunapee's crowd is NOT the park crowd. Hence why their park is, well, meh.

Agree on the tough slug from one end of the base area to the other.