Ski Column: “Powda” in the Zone

by Albert Neubert

A strange foreign substance coated the slopes for the President’s Holiday weekend and week.  It landed on ski areas throughout the Northeast in amounts that varied from a few inches to two feet way up north in Vermont.  That rarest of rare stuff was natural powder.  It was light and fluffy and fell throughout the holiday weekend and provided skiers and snowboarders with the best conditions of the season. We had “powda” in the snow zone and it stayed that way for the entire weekend and the following week with cold temperatures and low humidity.

I skied at the Windham Mountain Club, in the northern Catskills, last Thursday after they got a couple inches of natural snow a day earlier.  When combined with the manmade surfaces, the groomed in natural snow created one of the best surfaces I have skied this season. Virtually the entire mountain was open and I was able to ski the East Peak which features some really gnarly terrain including Wing’n It that runs adjacent to the East Peak high speed quad chairlift and Wicked, a broad counter fall line run with a steep and extended pitch at the top. 

The East Peak also has one of the best, long green circle trails from the summit of any mountain in the East with the Wanderer trail.  Neither Belleayre, nor Hunter, have any novice terrain from the summit with only Plattekill having its Powder Puff trail from the top.  There aren’t many novice trails from the summit of New England ski areas but Wanderer is one of the best since it is wide and with only one minor drop and turn along its length.  The East Peak is actually the higher of the two summits at Windham which is located on Cave Mountain, the original name for the ski area.

In between the East and West peaks is an area called the “saddle” and there are two of the newer trails at Windham located in this heavily wooded section.  They are Wolf’s Prey and Wildcat and both were open with manmade snow coverage.  The trails are…