This New Year's weekend proved to be some of the best skiing I've ever seen in northeast PA. With all the cold weather every trail covered by snowmaking was open and in great shape.

Day 1: Elk
Started the weekend on Friday at Elk, consistently the best ski mountain in the area. It began a little worryingly with a 20+ minute line to buy tickets, but despite this, the lift lines were never more than 5 minutes. The skiing was fantastic with temps in the high 30s and low 40s nicely softening everything, especially the bumps on Tunkhannock.



And Yours truly, just before heading into the bumps.


Day 2: Sno Mountain
Saturday, New Years Day, we moved on to Sno Mountain. Another warm day with soft snow. Despite the holiday, the crowds were nowhere to be found. I had to stop in disbelief and pull out the camera for this shot of the longest liftline we saw.



After a few warmups we headed over to White Lightning. Here's my wife at the entrance.


The warnings aren't entirely unwarrented, it's one of the steepest trails I've seen in the northeast, even if it's only for 3-400 vertical feet. Today it was in great shape and bumped up. Here's a shot from the top.



About a minute after taking this, four ski patrollers started down the trail. The third one slipped, went down and tobboggened down the entire trail head first on his back with the other patrollers screaming at him to get his skis under him. He wasn't able too and bounced off moguls the whole way down before careening into the woods. Luckily he missed all the trees and walked out on his own. Here's a shot from the bottom to give an idea of the ride he was in for, though it looks less impressive in the picture.



And cap it off with a shot from the top of one of the easy blues at the top looking over Scranton, PA.

Day 3: Elk
Sunday we were back at Elk. No crowds on this, the last day of most people's vacations. The day started off warm, with a cloud sitting right on top of the mountain.


By the time we got to the top, the fog was clearing and it was the start of another beautiful day.


The temperature dropped throughout the day, and things began to firm up by late afternoon.

Day 4: Camelback
Our last day was spent at Camelback.



We had been wanting to go back to this mountain, but past experience told us to not even bother on a weekend, much less a holiday due to crowds. Today was much colder resulting in a hard freeze. The groomers did a great job overnight leaving everything with a top coat of sugar snow over a hard, but edgeable base. Despite feeling like the Disneyfield version of a ski resort, it is still a very nice ski mountain.

Awesome pictures and a great report. Looks like there's some pretty good skiing in NE Penns. I may have to stop by sometime if I'm ever in the area.

Thanks for sharing. I love Elk, and from the sounds of this I need to pay a visit to Sno Mountain. Nice Pics.

"Disneyfield version of a ski resort?" Why do you think so?

It's a general feeling I got while there as a result of a few things like skiing through the giant waterpark to get back to the lift. They also have music playing everywhere that's interrupted every couple of minutes with commercials for their discount cards, daycare, lockers, etc. It ends up feeling like more of a manufactured experience, compared to somewhere like Elk or Timberline that are set up just to get you up a mountain to ski and nothing else.

Edit: Also because the closest parking lot is a pay lot.

The smiles say it all. Great report and pics! Thanks

That looks like pretty nice terrain in the pics of Elk and Sno Mtn. I heard from someone who grew up at Sno (when it was named something else) that the headwall is pretty respectable. Have you ever been to Blue Mtn? If so, how would you compare the terrain to that of Elk and Sno?

Curih, when you respond to JohnL, also respond to this. I have been to Elk and Blue, but never Sno. If you only had one trip and one day in this area a year, would you skip Elk to hit Sno?

JohnL, my 2 cents, using TL as a comparison

Blue has a couple three good runs off the highest part of the mtn. comparable in length and vert. to the front of TL serviced by a HS lift. Another few decent shorter blues and blacks serviced by twin doubles in the center hollow, and the rest are dreadfully crowded greens and blues. In fact, I think I would rate Burma Road as the most dangerous ski trail on this site. Parks and terrain trails looked like some of the best I have ever seen in the Mid-A. No real bump runs, just sections of trails. No real snow, I think Liberty gets more annually, but decent snow making. Lots of Yankees.

I think lbotta did an article or a TR a few years back.

Elk is definately the best resort up there followed by Sno then Camelback. After that they get smaller as you head towards Philly. IMO Elk has the best terrain in PA and second best in the Mid-A

For those asking for comparisons, here it is. For reference, in Northeast PA I've skied Elk, Camelback, Sno, and Jack Frost. Outside of that, the snowtime resorts, Timberline/CV, better than half the mountains in New England and a dozen or so out west.

Elk: For an intermediate or better skier, hands-down the best in Northeast PA. For those more familiar with West Virginia, the first time I went to Timberline last year my initial reaction was that it was very similar to Elk. It's got the longest vertical drop in the area and offers 14 or 15 real top to bottom runs. Half black, half blue, with always at least one bump run. Crowds are rarely bad since it's an hour further for people coming form the big cities. The blacks have a good pitch. The blues are fun as well, particularly Kickapoo which is extremely twisty (at least 4 switchbacks) with highly banked turns. There are two weaknesses. First, as with everything in the region natural snowfall is only 60 inches or so. Second, the terrain is a little limited for the advanced beginner. While the bunny hill is good, there are only two greens off the top. The easier one has no snow making and is rarely open. The other, Tioga, is a fun trail with banked turns but would be a blue at most places. I think it's marked green just so there will be a green from the top. It's also worth mentioning that there's nothing on offer but skiing and nothing else nearby.

Sno: Sno Mountain is a real oddball. It had a mid-mountain base and really skis like two smaller mountains stacked one on top of the other. The top half is greens on skiers left and blues on skiers right. Even the blues are quite easy, though still fun especially since they have a very rolling terrain. The bottom half of the mountain is at the other end of the spectrum and is much steeper. Still with fun rolling terrain (leading to unintentional jumps in some cases), it goes from more difficult blues on skiers right to steep diamonds in the center and White Lightning on the left. It should also be noted that the new owners put in tons of fan guns and Sno has the best snowmaking system around. The bad thing is the layout and the lifts. Sno has the slowest lifts ever invented by man. Noticeably slower than the 60s vintage doubles at Elk. And also, since there are rarely any crowds, they never run the only top to bottom lift requiring two slow chair rides to do a top to bottom run. On a one day trip, I'd never pass up Elk for Sno. But for a change of pace on a two or three day trip, it's definitely worth a look. It's also a good choice if some of your group doesn't ski as it's right in town with a big mall lower down the mountain and has tubing.

Camelback: Camelback doesn't have quite the vertical of Elk but probably has slightly more terrain due to being on a wide ridge. It's got good challenging terrain and is the only one in the area with high speed lifts. The bad part is the crowds. I won't even bother going on a weekend after experiencing 20+ minute lines for the high speed lifts in the past. But on a weekday, go for it.

Jack Frost: Jack Frost one has 600 or so vertical, but makes good use of it. Every trail is top to bottom with nothing wasted on runouts, so it skies bigger than it is. The terrain gets progressively steeper from skiers left to skiers right. I like the mountain. Based on the number of lifts I saw, almost one per trail, I'd be hesitant to go anytime I expected crowds. The only other thing of note I saw was that Jack Frost seemed to encourage skiing off trail and has several places where the trees were thinned in such a way that the snow making system could provide cover to allow some bump/tree skiing in there even without natural cover.

Curih, thanks for confirming my woes as I drive by Sno heading to Elk.

Wow, slower lifts than the doubles at Elk!

I never skied Sno/Montage but I've skied Elk, Blue and Jack Frost. I'll take Elk for vertical and variety, top to bottom trails and a least one dedicated bump run. I don't recall anything steep like Extrovert at Blue Knob or Wildcat at Laurel.

Is the steepest terrain at Sno?

The single steepest trail is at Sno. Beyond that Camelback and Elk have a good variety of slightly less steeps.

I was thinking about trying blue. I have to take my son to some weekend events in Philly area over next few months and was thinking of hitting a slope fairly close. I have hit elk before and really enjoyed, so I will debate the distance but assuming I stay withing 1-2 hours of Philly, Blue looked the best on paper. Thoughts?

I have skied Elk, Blue and CB but not JF. To me Blue has four somewhat distinct areas. There are some nice long 1,000 vert runs of the high speed lifts on the main face. Nothing too steep but some pitch and they undulate which is nice. I think typically these are not allowed to bump up. There is a center section (sort of in a hollow) serviced by twin doubles (if I remember correctly) with a mix on very nice blacks, blues and terrain trails. The headwalls on the blacks are a little short but nice, and one of these runs is allowed to bump up at least on one side. The vertical is a little shorter in this area, around 800 feet I would say. Then there are two learning areas by the lodges. It will be more crowded than Elk, but does have two high speeds.

There was a decent article on Blue with some pics here is a link:
Blue Article

On the one hand it is certainly no Elk, on the other it is a legitimate 1,000 foot vert resort in the Mid-A and is worth a visit even if only for checklist purposes.