Tomorrow, on my way home I am going to check out this place.

http://snowridge.com/index.php

It's little and relatively unknown. It sits on the Tug Hill plateau, catches massive lake effect off Ontario and almost nobody goes there. I have wanted to check it out for years. The old fart lift ticket is $16 and the lake effect machine has been running for a week now.

I don't know... 500 feet vertical seems a little on the "weak" side of things.
Looks like a cool little place though.
If you are looking to save some, and add a bunch of fun, try Timberline Resort or Canaan Valley Ski Resort during mid-week (like a Tuesday). You are almost sure to have the entire mountain to yourself, as long as you choose non-holidays.

heh, Denis knows CV .

Interesting place Denis; seems worth checking out if you are ever in "that neck of the woods." Which for most of us, the answer is that we are never in "that neck of the woods." Or remotely close.



Couldn't be any weaker than T-Line's lifts... People in glass houses...

I will take 500 feet of uncrowded vertical with short lift lines. Looking forward to your report Denis.

Couldn't be any weaker than T-Line's lifts... People in glass houses...[/quote]

nothing worse then a 1000 foot verticle ride on chairs that seemed to be powered the slowest motors in WV

Nothing better than skiing pow in the trees after that 10 min lift ride. In fact, I usually enjoy the extra break. Whether it be to cool down, rest the legs, or just to chat about how awesome the previous run was.

For a young kid, you sure are in crappy shape if you need that lift ride up to recover from that run down. How lame will you be if you get *lucky* (hah!) and happen to make it to the ages of Jimmy and myself? That alone should scare you into action.

I was there at Xmas, they had 7" of the smoothest, creamiest velvet snow imaginable. Like skiing vanilla pudding all day.

I never said the ride down wasnt awesome, the ride up is slow and cold. You would think they could install at least one high speed lift seeing how most all the mid-atlantic resorts have at least one by now.

Slow lifts keep the riff raff away

Until the riff raff get skins.

I came for powder and with a few caveats I got it. There was only one lift running and not much terrain open, 3 very wide slopes from which you could get to the lift by gravity. A 4th wide slope had the best powder but required a 200 yard mildly uphill skate to return to the lift. The right 1/4 or so of its width had been untouched by groomers for a while. Along the edge, within 20 feet of the trees, was a foot at least over old cut up crust. As I went further from the edge toward the middle of the slope the powder got rapidly thinner and the crust beneath got rapidly worse. The game was to stay close to the fall line, within 20 feet of the trees and hang on to your hat. it was a challenge and I took some falls.

Snow Ridge had an overnight low of -5 and it was +13 when I arrived near noon. There were at most 2 dozen cars in the lot ahead of me. The packed powder in the lot was cold, dry and squeaky. The place is in the middle of absolutely nowhere. On most of the 30 mile drive from Rome, NY to the Mtn. I was alone on the road. There are no signs to direct you there. It's a Mom and Pop feeder/breeder hill. They'd be wasting their money and probably committing financial suicide if they built faster lifts. Where would the people come from to fill the seats? There is a can beside the register in the cafeteria for donations to support the Snow Ridge ski patrol. At 3PM a couple hundred kids and parents arrived for after school race programs, which warmed my heart. I love to see them but would rather not be on the slope with them, its a little too 'exciting'. I took one more run and hit the road to knock a bit off the long drive home. I'm in Binghamton tonight.

Worth it? When I am again visiting my sister in Rochester, I'll have an ear cocked for SR powder alerts. Otherwise no. The good news and the bad news is that it's a Bryce on steroids. Better pitch, wider, but no higher and a long way from anywhere. I looked at woods and they were choked everywhere with saplings.

I've been interested in that place for years too after hearing about the area so much on White Grass' site. There's a ttips regular poster that uses Snow Ridge to access all kinds of deep tree lines outside the bounds.

It sounds like a really cool place to me, and I'd love to be growing up there like one of those hundreds of race kids

Snow Ridge is a great place so ski! I usually ski there over Christmas when I head north to visit my wife's family. Like Denis mentioned, it is out in the middle of nowhere, which is great because there's never anyone there.

I had a sweet powder day there last Thursday, December 27th - I would say anywhere between 18-20" of fairly light powder fell overnight. They were supposed to start spinning the lifts at 9 that day, but just like Canaan often does, first chair wasn't until 9:30 or so.

I was able to get fresh tracks on the main slopes pretty much all morning, and then started exploring to the far skier's left of the lifts in the afternoon, definitely some nice tree skiing over there, including a fun "gorge" that you can ski into...

I know Jay Peak often claims to have the most snow in the east, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if this place gets more snow than Jay most years...

Parking lot around 9:30 in the morning, about 10 cars total:


Skier's left of the two main lifts:


Fresh tracks all morning:


Empty lifts:


Found a nice powder stash in the afternoon:


Nobody else liked skiing the trees that day

Abe, thanks for the info. I'll file it away. It looks like today would have been a better day than yesterday, but I am home in VA now. Oh well, you can't have all the powder all the time. God does not like that. Yesterday they had only those 4 wide boulevards open. I was alone, no new snow and no previous knowledge of the area so I stuck with the open slopes. Can the sidecountry you described be seen from those open slopes? Because I did look and sure didn't see anything like that. I do recognize your second pic. That was as far skiers left as I got.