A day of skiing at Hunter mountain with Donnie is always fun – but since we do it so often, I was doubtful that this one would qualify as an adventure. The day however, had its own surprises and an adventure it indeed became. Let me explain…
Donnie and I have been friends since I was a teenager, when he taught me to parallel ski back at Big Vanilla (a tiny, upside down ski resort in Woodridge NY) on a USY trip in the 1970s. We have shared ski houses and have thousands of runs together at Killington, Gore, Hunter and many other mountains. Now that we’re both retired we’ve rekindled that old friendship, spending time together and with each other’s families on outings in the city, lakes and ski mountains. Don helped me to complete the Howie Ski awards (more on that in another post) for the last three years and we arranged to get together on Friday for my first ski of 2025.
After a nice dinner and over-nighting at his summer place in Coxsackie, we made our way (a little later than normal) to the slopes at Hunter. We gathered our gear and got outdoors pretty quickly, making our way to the Kaatskill flyer detachable lift to begin our first run.
Before we were even 20% of the way up, I dropped my pole – for the first time in my life – onto a steeply sloped, but accessible section of the mountain. When we reached the top, my warm up run was a bit different – I’ve never skied with only one pole before and it felt a little like dancing with a partner but only using only one hand.
I had a good sense where it had fallen, and skied below onto a service road and climbed up the steep slope to rescue the pole. I found it pretty quickly, then needed to find a way to get down. I realized immediately that wearing slippery ski boots, going up was much safer than going down. Luckily, I found an area with good snow cover and a break between the rocks, and used the ground as a flume, sliding down the slope on my back.
The snow makers were running all day. The very next run, at high speed, I ran over a freshly blown mound of snow. My left ski stuck to the snow, sending me flying head first down the slope. Shaken, I managed to climb back up and got the ski back on. I found I could not ski because of the freshly blown ice had hardened on the bottom of the ski and I needed to scrape it off with my pole handle.
The rest of the day was fun and without further incident. We covered nearly every open trail, including two I had never been on: Rips Return and Twilight (a new favorite) both on the North side. It was exciting to see these runs finally open.
We finished around 1PM with 14 runs and 16,528 vertical feet. A new adventure with a great friend.
