Well Joy and I successfully made it to and from Holiday Valley. The drive from Kitchener to Wainfleet (in the Niagara region) wasn't the fastest due to the amount of snow falling in the Kitchener area and all the way to Hamilton. For that leg of the journey we were limited to about 70-90 km/h. However, once we went over the Niagara escarpment the weather got much nicer and the trip from Hamilton (the point at which we transferred from 6 onto the 403) until we arrived at Joy's parent's house was much nicer...and quicker.
Saturday morning had us up and on the road to Holiday Valley by 10am--not as early as we hoped but we got a nice visit in with Joy's parents. During the 130 km trip we were presented with rain and such, but by the time we had arrived at the ski resort it had shifted back to snow.
The conditions on the hill were alright. It was hard-packed snow however there were a fair number of places where the snow had been scrapped off, by boarders and skiers alike), leaving ice. This was much better than last time when we went to Holiday Valley, which consisted of mostly man-made snow and ice patches. It was a fun day, and enjoyable increase in run variety and length (Chicopee is just a convenience).
There were a couple things we noticed different about the patrons. There seemed to be a significantly lower percentage of snowboarder (Chicopee had around equal representation), and much less people wore helmets, whereas at Chicopee the majority had helmets. We'll have to take a census at Blue Mountain to add to the sampling before drawing any significant comparisons.
The trip back from Wainfleet from Holiday Valley was slower going due to the fact it was now snowing throughout NY state (or at least the parts we saw). I don't think that the US219 highway had any kind of preparation for the snowfall since the lanes weren't cleared and didn't notice any salt/sand on the roadway. Which was very apparent once we crossed into Canada and we could hear the salt on the road (oh and we actually saw the trucks out ploughing and salting/sanding). With all that we only saw one crazy SUV/minivan driver go into the ditch, however I suspect if we spent any more time on that road we would have seen more.
Oh, the roof-racks work marvellously. It is so much nicer to just stick the boards on the roof and not have to cram them into the back of the car. It was definitely a good purchase.
5 comments:
Your drive didn't sound like it was very much fun. I hope that the snowboarding was worth the trip.
I've had much worse drives. It really wasn't too bad. And the snowboarding was indeed worth the trip.
Glad you had fun ----our ideas of fun have shifted dramatically over the years !!! I don't like to think of any of my "family" out on the roads in bad weather--mostly because of the insane behaviour of some drivers !! Glad you are safely home.
Grandma
P.S.
We were out on the roads then too --also saw some terrible drivers !!!
I don't think it is possible to drive in bad weather and not come across at least one "bad" driver.
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