Kissing Bridge Ski Area 8-22-15

sugarloaf

I visited Niagara Falls last weekend and we also visited the Arcade And Attica Railroad. Along the way down south from Buffalo I stopped at Kissing Bridge Ski Area and took a few pictures.

sugarloaf

I want to visit Niagara Falls in January to see it during the winter. I’m planning on skiing at Kissing Bridge, Holiday Valley and Swain.

IBRAKEFORTBARS

That’s a place I’d really like to visit. Most of the central and western New York ski areas are located on ridges, as this one is.

sugarloaf

Suburban Buffalo and the surrounding countryside is fairly flat. Too bad as that area gets a ton of lake effect snow.

bmwskier

I grew up there and what I thought was big– well wasn’t. First clue should’ve been it only took us 15 minutes to walk up Tannenbaum T-Bar line at the age of 11 to “camp out” at the pond on Happy Wanderer. Lake effect can be really, really narrow. I once left my girlfriend’s house in Amherst in clear weather, got hammered by the Galleria and by the time I hit 400 going to East Aurora it was clear again. 

IBRAKEFORTBARS

Kissing Bridge had a Tannenbaum t-bar just like Holiday Valley?

sugarloaf

Is Bristol worth visiting? It seems like a fairly large ski resort for that area of New York State.

bmwskier

Sorry IBrake– no I grew up at Holiday Valley. Sorry for the very sad transition. Most of my parents’ friends started at Glenwood Acres and then moved to Holiday Valley when it opened. Two of the original ski patrollers at Holidav Valley are still alive and kicking– and still skiing!! 

sugarloaf

While driving past Kissing Bridge we noticed a mountain with a lot of trails on it around Sardinia, NY. We were in a rush to make the train in Arcade and did not take any pictures. Does anyone have a clue as to what ski area that may be?

mapnut

South of Sardinia? Did it look lost? That would be Bluemont.http://www.nelsap.org/ny/bluemont.html

sugarloaf

This mountain looked a lot bigger than Bluemont. It looked like a 500′ vertical drop version of Okemo and did not look lost with well maintained trails. There looked to be about 15-30 trails radiating from the summit. When I go back there in January, I’ll take some pictures.

IBRAKEFORTBARS

You might be thinking of Ski Tamarack, AKA Buffalo Ski Club, which has a 500ft vertical and is open.

sugarloaf

<blockquote class=“Quote” rel=“IBRAKEFORTBARS”>You might be thinking of Ski Tamarack, AKA Buffalo Ski Club, which has a 500ft vertical and is open.</blockquote>

That ski area looks to be too far west, this mountain was located between Sardinia and Arcade.

trackbiker

Bleumont looks to be in the right area.http://www.nelsap.org/ny/bluemont.html

mapnut

I think your memory must be playing tricks on you, sugarloaf. Look at aerial photographs at Google Maps or ACME Mapper and you won’t find anything near Sardinia or Arcade that looks like what you saw. Even Bluemont is quite grown in. There are ground-level photos of it on that NELSAP page.

NewEnglandSkier13

It does look like it must be Bluemont.

sugarloaf

I am 100% sure it was not Bluemont. I am not even sure it was a ski area. I’ll check on Google Earth when I get home from work.

NewEnglandSkier13

Various Views of Bluemont from near Sardinia:

sugarloaf

If it was Bluemont, than someone has done some recent trail clearing. I’ll check it out next January when I plan to ski in that area.

NewEnglandSkier13

Wel, would you look at that? Trail clearing has occurred! Look at the comparison of the Google Earth image to the newer Terraserver image!