Jack Frost – 42% advanced terrain

A couple of years ago I noticed there were a lot of ski resorts between New England and Colorado. Since we drive from the east to west coast each year, we thought it would be fun(ny) to incorporate skiing them into our trip. I realized we could easily hit 8 resorts between Pennsylvania and Missouri without deviating much from our route. We knew these would be a far cry from the resorts out west or even in New England, but it would be an adventure! For example, most of them are less than 100 acres (to put in perspective, Vail has 5,300 skiable acres). However they all have night skiing until at least 9pm, which is great for our travel schedule!

So after a 48-hour rain delay, we were back on the slopes for our first “mid-Atlantic” ski mountain. Our first stop was Jack Frost and Big Boulder. The same resort, but two ski mountains about five miles apart. We were going to ski both (one yesterday and one today), but both were closed Sunday and Monday due to rain. A few fun facts about Jack Frost

• There was no visible ski hill when we arrived at the parking lot. Turns out, you start at the top of the mountain, so you ski down before riding the chair lift.
• At less than 500 feet per ski run, we knew we wouldn’t get our typical 10,000 vertical feet ski day minimum. We independently set our own thresholds for the day. I set a minimum of skiing for two hours and Jeremy set a goal of 10 runs. Ironically (sadly?) 10 runs took two hours.
• I maintain an elaborate spreadsheet of all the Epic and Ikon ski resorts (shocked, right?) One of my data points is the difficulty of the terrain. Resorts classify all of their ski runs as green, blue, black, and some double black (beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert) terrain. Jack Frost claimed to be 42% black/advanced terrain. You can see our photo of the day is warning sign for the steep headwall.

Joking aside, we had a fun time! Hoping the weather improves and we’ll be able to get more skiing in along the way!