The Gang Goes to Holiday Valley, NY 2022
In the US northeast, cold weather is with us about half of the year. It can be miserable sometimes, but it doesn’t have to be. For me, skiing and snowboarding is one of the best ways to get excited about wintertime. After our excursion to Seven Springs last spring, my friends and I excitedly booked another ski trip as soon as we could.
Located an hour south of Buffalo, just above the NY/PA border, lies my new favorite ski resort- Holiday Valley. Since it’s a pretty popular place, we had to book our Airbnb about two weeks in advance. With the reservation in place, all we had to do was wait.
Disaster Strikes Early
Thursday morning, with about 12 hours before we hit the road, I wake up to a message on my phone. It says the pipes burst in the Airbnb house we’re supposed to stay in. Long story short, our booking got canceled. We already bought our lift tickets for the weekend, so we couldn’t back out now. We had to find something.
My friend quickly reached out to another house on Airbnb, and we were hoping for an answer that same morning. Luckily within those couple of hours we booked a new place and avoided sleeping in the back of the Walmart parking lot. Thanks again David and Sandy!
With the new house confirmed, we avoided what would have been a huge disappointment. The drive up was much more peaceful than it otherwise would’ve been.
Friday Chillin
Since our lift tickets weren’t good until 3:30pm, we lounged around the homey and comfortable cottage the first half of Friday. One of my friends was getting his hair cut by our friend in the meantime, which reminded me I should get my hair cut. Over the summer last year, my friend gave me a tasteful mullet, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I decided that now was the time for the tasteful mullet round two.
We get to the resort after 3:30pm, and it was the warmest point of the whole trip. The weather was around 15℉ during the day, but quickly dropped to the single digits as the sun fell behind the mountain ridge. In terms of actual skiing, our group was all over the place. The trip included people who’ve been skiing for over 10 years, and some who haven’t ever skied 10 minutes.
Five of us went up Thursday night in order to hit the slopes on Friday. The rest of the group arrived at the Airbnb by the time we made it back from skiing that night. Our faces gave our exhaustion away as the new group tried to rile us up. Luckily nobody objected to going to bed early that night; we all had a long day of skiing ahead of us the next day
The Main Event
Saturday we wake up and don’t waste any time as we eat breakfast and gear up. We’re able to gather everyone and their equipment and get to the mountain before noon.
In all we had three skiers and six snowboarders. After we rent some skis and boards from the shop, we take the trucks to get parked together so we can tailgate for lunch later.
The weather, while sunny all day, had us in single digit temperatures the entire day Saturday.
Positive Imaging Success
As I said before, my friend had never skied before. I’ve been listening to him for months complain about how anxious he is about skiing.
On his drive up however, he tried something different. He listened to the summary of a book I referred to him titled “The Power of Positive Imaging” by Norman Vincent Peale. After listening to the book, he transformed his anxiety into excitement. He imagined himself going down the mountain, having a good time no matter how well he does or what happens to him.
It was a smashing success! After only a few runs down the mountain, he was confident in his skiing abilities and he was having a great time. While most people would get frustrated about falling over, he remarked “If you aren’t falling down, you aren’t learning!”
It's all fun and games until...
Unfortunately, one snowboarder couldn’t escape the oh-so-common wrist injury while on the mountain Saturday night.
It was a bad sprain in her left wrist, and she got taken to the local medic at the resort. They put her in a sling, threw some ice in a ziploc bag, put it on her wrist, and sent her on her way.
Despite the injury and an exhausting day of 8+ hours on the slopes, we still found time to party that night. We played a few drinking games and, as it turns out, the girl who sprained her wrist won the drinking game!
Overall, the trip was better than what I could’ve asked for. The mountain was great, I hit a few jumps and rails, I skied with friends I haven’t skied with before, and the best part was that we didn’t have to spend our nights huddled around a dumpster fire in a random parking lot.
