Seven Springs

TomWhite

Lift Blog
@liftblog
Vail Resorts has officially transitioned the Seven Springs mountains to use the same website as the rest of VR. All three are missing trail maps though.
https://7springs.com
https://hiddenvalleyresort.com
https://laurelmountainski.com

I grew-up skiing all three throughout the 60's. My memory is, Laurel Mt. boasted a 900' vertical. My 1969 ski atlas says 810'. Their home page (part below) says 761. I went on each home page. Openings are SS 11/25 and 12/23 for LM n HV.

Not only does Laurel Mountain boast the highest vertical drop on the Laurel Ridge in Pennsylvania at 761 feet, the mountain is famous for its double diamond Lower Wildcat Slope, the steepest in the state which averages near 60% slope.

LaurelHillCrazie

Laurel's advertised 900 hundred vertical feet that you remember was the vertical drop measured from the highest point within the state park boundary (the ski area is a state park) down to the original double chair installed in 1967. The top 150 feet or so of vertical was not skiable. In other words, it was marketing hype that was widely accepted because Laurel skis bigger than it is. The 810 vertical feet claim was a little closer to reality but slightly exaggerated. I don't know where the White Book got that stat.

A trail map from the early 1960s lists top and bottom elevations that would yield 750 vertical feet. A Constam T-bar was the main top to bottom lift at that time.

The current vertical drop listed at 761 feet is an accurate stat of the vertical rise of the Skytrac quad installed in 2016. However, the bottom of Lower Wildcat was backfilled to create a novice trail grade to the new chair. The Skytrac load station is perhaps 20 to 30 vertical feet higher than the double it replaced.

It is worth noting that before WW 2, Laurel's vertical was closer to 1000 vertical feet. The trail that Hannes Schneider laid out ran down to Rolling Rock Creek on skier's left side of the mountain below Midway Cabin. The lower portion of the original trail was abandoned after the war.

If you are interested, on Laurel's website, select The Mountain on the top menu, then click on Mountain Info. You will find a history of the ski area. I wrote the bulk of that. The recent history from 1999 to 2016 was compiled by Alex Moser, who at that time was Seven Springs' Marketing Director. All the information in that narrative was from newspaper articles or other published accounts from the ski area's first manager, Len Bughman.