Ellicotville

Over the weekend of Jan 8th and 9th, the team had its first races of the season, a giant slalom at Holimont and a slalom at Holiday Valley. Both areas are right in Ellicotville, NY. If you have not been there before, it is something to see. The town is totally tourist; nice restaurants, ski shops, specialty shops..even a brew pub. The town is complete with all parking spaces taken and fancy, beautiful people everywhere. While I guess this could be construed as negative, I do like to go there.. if is fun. Holimont lists itself as 700 feet of vertical. I don't believe you can ski all 700 in one run. I bet it is measured from the top of the easternmost lift to the bottom of the westernmost lift. That said the area is pretty wide and has a nice but a relatively tame assortment of trails. It starts right the edge of town and is built along a ridge. It must extend a mile up the valley at least. The resort is a private club with many members coming from Toronto and Ohio as well as parts of New York. The area is jammed with houses and condos some of them absolutely gigantic. The race was held on Fall Line which is their race trail. The first course was set wickedly tight (not a lot of distance down the hill to the next gate) and there was a rumor that there were too many gates for the hill so I did a little research. The rule for the maximum number of gates in a GS course is 15% of the vertical drop in meters. Fall line is listed as 143 M of vertical drop. This means 21.25 direction changes. It turns out both courses were too many turns....

Holiday Valley is on the edge of Ellicotville and is, for me, the nicer of the two areas. While its vertical drop is similar to Hollimont, the variety of terrain and the layout make for better skiing. The race trail is pretty steep, so pretty challenging for 13 and 14 year olds. It was another cold day. The snow was hard but carvable. I was the second run course setter for the women. It was a good set but second run of a 2 race really cold weekend produced a lot of mistakes by athletes but it was good to be racing.