Black Mountain Friday March 7, 2025
We had a great day skiing at Black this past Friday on the Indy Pass. We drove up to the North Conway area on Thursday, and were going to ski on the way over at Ragged, but after pouring rain on Wed-Wed night, and continued fog and showers Thu, we skipped skiing and visited both Ski Museums to say hi to everyone and had a nice lunch with one of our staff members, Kay, at Reklis Brewing in Bethlehem.
We stayed at the Eastern Slopes Inn, downtown. On Friday morning the winds were howling and temps had dropped below freezing. For breakfast on Friday, we finally got to eat at Sunrise Shack in Glen, halfway to Black. There was a large pine tree down just north of North Conway and they were working to clear that. At breakfast, the winds were gusting to 50mph and at one point gravel from the parking lot was being blown into our cars like a sandstorm. Highly recommend the Sunrise Shack - got a ham, pepper, and Swiss omelet, homemade toast and homefries:
Made it over to Black just before 9, and got a front row parking space. The winds were less here, and it was sunny, and temps below freezing. We got our tickets and headed up the triple. We could hear the roar of snowguns as we approached the top. As we usually ski Black one day in March, we have never seen snow made at Black. To see them making snow this late in the season, wow! How awesome is that -
Snowmaking on Maple Slalom and next to the Alpine Cabin.
The snow had drained overnight, and was groomed, and honestly pretty nice considering the crazy recent weather. The ungroomed trails softened up within an hour or so with a corn like surface. Crowds were light and it felt like we had the whole mountain to ourselves.
East Bowl to Spruce
The double was on wind hold, but did open late in the morning. This is such an iconic lift:
Sun Valley trail and double
For lunch, we met up with Erik Mogensen, Indy Pass Director, Black Mtn GM, and Founder of Entabeni Systems, up at the Alpine Cabin. We discussed the ski industry, the role Indy is playing, all the upgrades and new aspects of Black Mountain, and more. Erik is also a fan of ski history and has enjoyed NELSAP for decades so we talked about that too.
Scott, me, and Erik at the Alpine Cabin:
We took a run down together, and then halfway down he got the call that the power was out. There was a huge outage across the area with the power not back on until mid-evening. They got backup power to the lifts going to get everyone off. That was it for the day as the power did not come back on. Totally out of their control and the power outage wreaked havoc at downtown restaurants, events for our Hannes Schneider Meister Cup events planned for Fri night, etc.
While in the lodge we did see Mrs. Ski_IT and also saw the base lodge improvements as we were shown around by their staff.
The changes at Black, in my opinion, fit in well with the mountain. The unique aspects of the mountain - the narrow and twisting trails, iconic lifts, great views, and vibe are all there. New aspects like the Alpine Cabin serving fondue, pretzels, and champagne, modern ticketing, brown bag area in the lower level, expanded bar seating, new handle tow, and running the double each day as long as the weather permits enhance the skiing experience. This should set the mountain up well for the future.
