Favorite small to midsize mountains

[Warp Daddy]

Excellent ..an AZ meet up. I will make it a point to be there when you are ..

Kewl !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Warp Daddy]

Excellent ..an AZ meet up. I will make it a point to be there when you are ..

BUT you GOTTA BRING that damn BIG wrench !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOT

 

[PA Ridge Racer]

Small - Jack Frost and Elk (although Elk feels a lot bigger)
Medium - Stratton
Big - Whiteface

 

[deadheadskier]

Small - Jack Frost and Elk (although Elk feels a lot bigger)
Medium - Stratton
Big - Whiteface

another example of people's differing views on ski area size. Stratton is nearly triple the acreage of Whiteface, yet Whiteface is 1400 vert higher than Stratton.

 

[darent]

small- king pine,black, gunstock
med - burke, sunapee,pico,cranmore,bretton woods

 

[PomfretPlunge]

Small:
Suicide Six, VT (grew up there )
Roundtop, PA

Medium: Whitetail, PA

 

[vt121]

magic

 

[PA Ridge Racer]

another example of people's differing views on ski area size. Stratton is nearly triple the acreage of Whiteface, yet Whiteface is 1400 vert higher than Stratton.

yup. I was going purely on vert alone. I didn't even consider width or acreage.

 

[highpeaksdrifter]

another example of people's differing views on ski area size. Stratton is nearly triple the acreage of Whiteface, yet Whiteface is 1400 vert higher than Stratton.

You make a good point DHS, but your math is off. WF reports 282 acres and Stratton 583, so it's a little more then double.

I also find acres reported to be suspect from ski area to ski area. Doesn't Smuggs advertise 1,000? Also how many acres at some areas are really worth skiing. I think you need to ski a mountain yourself to see how big it skis.

 

[deadheadskier]

You make a good point DHS, but your math is off. WF reports 282 acres and Stratton 583, so it's a little more then double.

I also find acres reported to be suspect from ski area to ski area. Doesn't Smuggs advertise 1,000? Also how many acres at some areas are really worth skiing. I think you need to ski a mountain yourself to see how big it skis.

Went off of stats from skitown.com which lists Whiteface as having 225 and Stratton 600, must not have been updated recently.

Smuggs does list 1000, with 250 of that being 'trail acreage'. On the same token, Sugarloaf lists 1400.

I think we had a thread about this topic once where it was agreed that acreage matters more with Western resorts as out there boundary to boundary skiing is doable at most places, where here in the east without cutting it's really not possible.

Do agree with your statement, in that yes indeed you need to ski a mountain yourself to see how it big it is.....to a point. Never skied Whiteface, but the couple of times I've driven past it in the summer I've always said, 'Damn that's a big mountain'. Stratton, which I have skied once, I feel the same about driving by, only there I marvel how broad it is.

 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

I think of Whiteface as bigger than Stratton..

 

[eatskisleep]

Black Mountain, NH
Pat's Peak, NH

 

[highpeaksdrifter]

Went off of stats from skitown.com which lists Whiteface as having 225 and Stratton 600, must not have been updated recently.

The 225 was before Lookout Mountain opened. When that is finished WF will be in the 300s somewhere.

 

[4aprice]

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I was impressed with Camelback. I skied there twice at the end of March, because they had free lift tickets for season passholders from any other ski area. The one thing I was not used to was the High Speed Quads on 800 ft. vertical. The HSQ's shoot you up to the top in only 3 minutes. I like to do a lot of runs in a day, but I overdid it there. I did a total of 6 hours of skiing each day - but with the high speed lifts 4 ot 5 hours would have been plenty of runs.

As a season pass holder at Camelback I'm glad to hear you had a good time there. A couple of things that I appreciate about the resort.

1. Elevation. With a base at approximately 1200 ft and the summit at 2000 feet it allows for colder temps, more snowmaking, and a due north exposure that holds the snow quite nicely. Important down here in the banana belt of skiing The Pocono's.

2. I've heard it called big horizontally and thats true. If one starts at one end and skis each way down it takes alot of time to go across and then make the return. There are approximately 15 ways down so to do the "sweep" as I call it one can get in thirty runs.

3. Believe it or not it is a destination resort (Particularly for people living down in the Mid Atlantic) and there is life beyond the slopes. I spend alot of time there even when not skiing.

4. (for me) location. Right off route 80. Easy to reach from home and family house up on the Pocono plateau.

Before children my wife and I had some great weekends combining Camelback and Elk. It made for some very entertaining weekends. My sons now on the CBK ski team and daughter teaches in the ski school so I unfortunately I don't get to Elk as much.

I will continue on my mission to get more mogul terrain on Camelback. Management that I have had contact with seemed receptive to the idea.

Alex

Lake Hopatcong, NJ

 

[tarponhead]

Blue.

Camelback is nice too and definately holds snow better then blue. But I prefer Blue more so. The trails just feel "bigger/wider" and the steeps are ok too (pocono steeps anyway).

Its all good. Wish it was November already....

 

[tipsdown]

Can't go strictly by vertical. No way Mt Snow and Stratton qualify as mid-sized (Stratton actually has only 1900 vertical). And though Saddleback ekes out 2000 vf with flat trails below the base lodge, the two main lifts have only 1150 and 950, so the mountain feels mid-sized.

As a New York area resident I have to ski mid-sized areas if I want to do any day trips. The closest 2000-footer is 3-1/2 hours. I like Berkshire East, Jiminy and Catamount, and recently discovered Camelback which skis pretty big for its vertical.

I think of Saddleback as a big mountain. It looks huge which is normally a good benchmark, although it seems subjective... Also, it will gain lots more acreage and 2300 ft. vertical with development.

I don't like to strictly use vertical because that can be very misleading. Take Sugarloaf for example, which is a very big mountain, claims over 2800 ft of vertical. But almost 500 ft of that vertical is below their base area…Saddleback may have 150-200 ft. below their base area. Other ski areas have more than 1 peak that service completely separate trail networks so vertical is not continuous which makes it ski much smaller. Sunday River claims 2300 vertical but the runs at Saddleback are definitely longer than Sunday River because no peak at SR has more than 1600ft of vertical.

When I think of size 2 things come to mind:
1. Real vertical drop (which I've defined as amount of continuous vertical ft that's at least blue terrain). This seems to be the best measure for how it really skies as run-out should be discredited.
2. Skiable acreage (not boundary-boundary) as someone mentioned is also deceiving.

Comparing the 3 areas, here is a rough estimate of how they stack up:
Sugarloaf Real Vert.= 1,900ft. real vert.
Saddleback Real Vert = 1,700ft. real vert.
Sunday River Real Vert = 1,400ft. real Vert.

 

[deadheadskier]

Tipsdown,

I'm going to have kindly disagree with your assessment of Saddleback's vert. I think the trails at Sunday River ski longer than Saddleback because for the most part, I think people don't link the top of Saddleback with the rest of the mountain on a given run. You're either skiing the Kennabago Chair or the Rangely Double for the most part; 960 vert and 1177 vert respectively.

The runs at Sunday River ski quite a bit longer to me. I agree that the 2300 vert claim is a farse, even though you can ski it all if you so chose. That said, a number of Sunday River's pods do afford longer runs over more vertical than Saddleback. Jordan, Barker/Locke and Whitecap all ski longer than the Rangely trail pod.

 

[mls3]

Berkshire East the hidden gem of the Berkshires!

 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Blue.

Camelback is nice too and definately holds snow better then blue. But I prefer Blue more so. The trails just feel "bigger/wider" and the steeps are ok too (pocono steeps anyway).

Its all good. Wish it was November already....

Blue owns Camelback FWIW..but Camelback stayed open longer..

edit...by own I don't mean they own the resort as in property but that they're signifacantly better..

 

[jerryg]

I think of Saddleback as a big mountain. It looks huge which is normally a good benchmark, although it seems subjective... Also, it will gain lots more acreage and 2300 ft. vertical with development.

I don't like to strictly use vertical because that can be very misleading. Take Sugarloaf for example, which is a very big mountain, claims over 2800 ft of vertical. But almost 500 ft of that vertical is below their base area…Saddleback may have 150-200 ft. below their base area. Other ski areas have more than 1 peak that service completely separate trail networks so vertical is not continuous which makes it ski much smaller. Sunday River claims 2300 vertical but the runs at Saddleback are definitely longer than Sunday River because no peak at SR has more than 1600ft of vertical.

When I think of size 2 things come to mind:
1. Real vertical drop (which I've defined as amount of continuous vertical ft that's at least blue terrain). This seems to be the best measure for how it really skies as run-out should be discredited.
2. Skiable acreage (not boundary-boundary) as someone mentioned is also deceiving.

I was with you till here...

I
Comparing the 3 areas, here is a rough estimate of how they stack up:
Sugarloaf Real Vert.= 1,900ft. real vert.
Saddleback Real Vert = 1,700ft. real vert.
Sunday River Real Vert = 1,400ft. real Vert.

Name of the game is true continuous vert, which is what places like SR, KMart, and Okemo lack.

While by-in-large, 1400 is the vert on 4 of the peaks at SR, if you ski from the top of White Cap to the base, it's a few feet shy of 1600 and it you ski from the top of Locke, which is quite legitimate, with a few good long continuous runs, is 1750. Nonetheless, your other assessments of SR's vert are fair as it's stacked like Killington, which may have over 3000 feet of vert, but continuous doesn't even come close.

As for Sugarloaf, I agree that there is about 400 feet below the base, but 1900 if super-off-base. The SuperQuad itself has 1800 and it starts at the base and terminates far-below the summit. Spillway East alone has over 1400 feet, pretty impressive. Sugarloaf's continuous vert from summit to base is almost 2500. Check it out on Google Earth. Vert below the base is less than 400 feet. Sugarloaf is huge!