This was my second trip to Holiday Valley in the last 2 years and I continue to be a fan of the place. Here is a brief TR.
On the day I visited, it was as if someone said..."I'm gonna take all the crap that intimidates wanna-be experts, drop it in one place, and then tone it down a bit".
We had 2 days of constant snow before I got out there and there was about 8 inches on the slopes in the morning and more in the woods. So I got about the right amount of powder to practice in, I had trees, I had bumps and some whales on an intermediate hill and even did my first NASTAR runs. The groomers were hit and miss with some being pretty icy. The one long groomed trail, a blue called Mardi Gras was still in good shape when I finally tried it near the end of my day.
The mountain is very spread out and has a great lift system. There are 3 large day lodges and excellent customer service. I would highly recommend a visit if you are in shouting distance of the place. The locals I rode the lifts with did tell me it was a zoo on weekends...but then most areas are. The only thing to know going in is that the longest trail is 4400 feet but that is an aberration. Most are much shorter. It has a vertical of around 850 and so if you are wanting to pound down long steeps all day it will not be your cup of tea. But its pretty, and there are lots of woods.
The bumped up intermediate was nice because the bumps built slowly as you went until there were some good size whales near the bottom...it was about 2500 feet.
I was directed to this intermediate lift line trail 2700 feet long called CCC by a helpful rental tech. I skied it for about an hour using the high speed quad with about 15 other people until it was trashed:
According to a young guy I rode the lift once, they have recently declared all the woods within the resort boundaries open for skiing...and they have a fair amount of woods. This was an area called Happy Glades that was next to the CCC trail I mentioned earlier. I played in here for a long time:
