Belleayre 3-30-17

Arrived mid morning under partly cloudy skies and the temp hovering around the freezing mark. Heading over to the west side on Howes Highway I noticed how good the coverage was on the trails I crossed, though the designated "official" glades appeared to be closed. Did a warm-up on Deer Run:

(That's Platty in the distance.) Dot Nebel had terrific conditions as the sun loosened up what had frozen last night:

I took a chance and ducked into the trees off Seneca:

The woods had the goods, so poachers gotta get while the gettin's good. Hopefully it will be even better by Saturday, after the 6-12" dump the radio news is predicting up there (*fingers crossed*). By late morning the clouds burned off and the temp rose, softening up conditions such that I stayed on the shady sides of the trails. Lift 7 wasn't spinning, which meant I had Yahoo, Onteora and Area 51 all to myself:

Sweet. By 2:30 a cloud front had moved in, casting shade and dropping the temps a bit, preserving the snow-cover on trails like Mohawk:

Let's here it for Ski Patrol!
All in all an excellent day to grab a ton of vertical and a good work-out.

Pretty dam pleased that Bell is on the Max Pass next year along with Windham. Going to be nice to have 2 day options along with the weekend options up north and the good stuff out west.

Alex

Lake Hopatcong, NJ

Nice. A good day to be out on the hill. Glad to hear they'll get some snow out of this next system.