It’s not perfect in Colorado all the time either

“Won’t be long now; they’ve already got snow in Colorado!” That’s what my friend Mike declared, in late September when I was contemplating my final ocean dip off Sea Bright, before the autumn leaves swarmed, the earth froze, the sky grayed and the notion of skiing was vaguely made manifest. But Mike’s the inveterate type. His enthusiasm can sometimes mess with your head. A downpour on the slopes is “Hey, it could be raining,” and a wind that blows small children back up the mountain is a “pleasant breeze.” So what if there isn’t any sun. “Hey, it’s not perfect in Colorado all the time either,” he’d say.

Last winter he whipped out an 18th-century-looking pocket clinometer to measure the pitch of the icy narrow slope we were about to descend. Mike is a physicist; he knows the data. We were looking at 30-something degrees. Super steep is 55 degrees plus. “Hey, I’ve seen ice in Colorado and there are lots of trails there that aren’t much better than this,” he yelled and off we went. It’s true the trail wasn’t long, and the snow wasn’t exactly knee-deep powder, but after all, this was New Jersey. Who would have thought?

Amazingly, at one time the state boasted some 20 lift-served ski areas. Included were such alpine gems as Snow Bowl in Milton, which opened in 1962 and closed in the ’70s, and Craigmeur in Newfoundland, which shut down in 1998. (For an in-depth look at New Jersey’s skiing past, see the aptly titled book by Elizabeth Holste, Skiing in New Jersey?). Today, only a handful of ski centers have survived. There’s Campgaw in Mahwah (18 skiable acres with a summit elevation of 720 feet and 270 feet of vertical drop), and Hidden Valley in Vernon (36 skiable acres with a summit elevation of 1,435 feet and 620 feet of vertical).

The ski areas Great Gorge in McAfee and Vernon Valley in Vernon merged in 1974 to become Vernon Valley/Great Gorge, and in 1998 were repackaged by new operators into Mountain Creek. In the where-else-but-Jersey category there’s Snowdome, a 250,000-square-foot indoor ski resort (with 112 feet of vertical) in the Meadowlands Xanadu complex in East Rutherford that, barring further delays, is scheduled to open next summer.

The Creek is only an hour drive from New York City. This is sweet for New Yorkers, especially the snowboard crowd, but makes the rest of us cringe, though it’s where we go anyway because we can, the boys: three middle-aged ski duffers out day-tripping for some mid-week grins — Mike, me and a third friend, a former high school psychologist called Jumper for his flair at getting air (generally three to five inches) off any sized bump, accompanied by his signature sonic-boom “woop!” Jumper can be a witty foil for Mike’s rabid optimism. “I think I just saw Donna Weinbrecht,” he needles Mike on the chairlift. Donna Weinbrecht, who grew up in West Milford and often skied at Hidden Valley, won Olympic gold at the 1992 games in Albertville. “Heh, heh, heh,” says Mike, “no doubt,” and throws back that Danny Kass, reared on a snowboard right here at Mountain Creek, was a 2002 Olympic silver medalist.

A “stat” war ensues as we get off the lift. Jumper’s got the skinny: The Creek averages 65 inches of snowfall a year, spread on 170 skiable acres with 43 trails; the highest summit (one of four connecting peaks) is 1,480 feet, with a vertical drop of 1,040; the longest run is nearly two miles. Steamboat Springs (in Colorado, of course) by comparison has six peaks, a top summit elevation of 10,568 feet with 3,668 of vertical; there are 165 named trails more than 2,965 acres, and the longest run is more than three miles. “Oh, and did I say, the annual snowfall is 331 inches?” Jumper adds smacking his helmeted head, which sports a “How you Doin’?” sticker.

Mike fiddles with his bindings (an obvious stall tactic, we figure). He smiles. “But we’re here,” he says. That does shut us up. We follow Mike’s mittens as he moves them Tai Chi across the panorama, which isn’t Colorado but is quite spectacular nonetheless, here being the glacial lakes and hills of Northern Sussex County. Vernon Township’s Web site claims 50-mile vistas, and I believe it. Out there to the east, we’re told, are the Wawayanda and Hamburg mountains, and to the west, Pochuck Mountain.

On the way home (about an hour and 40-minute drive) we’re too tired to recap the day’s marvels and mishaps or even quip with much snap: “I think I just saw Bode Miller,” Jumper says softly. And yeah, we’re not somewhere else — but we sure had an awfully good time. NJC

Cort Smith is a freelance writer and former newspaper and magazine editor. He lives in Holmdel.

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