Day Tripping from NYC to Hunter in Early December: Is It Worth It?
Day tripping to a mountain a short drive from New York City in early December? Is that a crazy idea? Last weekend, we found out for ourselves.
This past Sunday, we went to Hunter Mountain, which is about two-and-a-half hours from the city with no traffic. This was our first time visiting the East Coast for skiing since early 2020, and our first time at Hunter ever, as we look to expand our reviews into the Catskill Mountains. So was it worth it? Let’s take a look.
On the day of this recording, there were only five trails open—pretty much all of them were top-to-bottom runs from this Catskill Flyer lift. It was mainly intermediate and advanced terrain, but there was also a lower mountain green run serviced by a more beginner-oriented lift. We did all the runs in an hour and a half, so it was nowhere close to taking up our whole day. Hunter’s a pretty family-friendly mountain, so it doesn’t really have an aprés vibe, at least this early in the season.
The first thing you’ll notice this early in the season is that the overwhelming majority of the mountain is just green. On the places that aren’t open trails, there’s absolutely no accumulation. The backdrop here is typical fall Catskills, so many of the surrounding trees are still kind of in the late fall stage. The majority of them have lost all their leaves, but there are still a couple that have red leaves on them, making for a somewhat striking background for a ski area.
This day was actually pretty good for early December at Hunter. In a lot of seasons, you can get rain, which can freeze over and turn into a sheet of ice for days on end. So we lucked out, because we had some actual snowmaking powder. Now there’s no mistaking snowmaking powder for real powder like you might get in the Rockies or the West Coast, but it’s about as much as you can expect from a mountain in this area.
On every run at Hunter, especially this early in December, snow guns line the trails. These snow guns are what allow Hunter to operate. Even during the core season, there usually isn’t enough natural snow to fully open the mountain, so it’s artificially produced. Here in the Catskills, the amount of time it takes for the trails to open often primarily depends on how fast a mountain can get their snow guns on every trail. It’s not really until you get to Vermont that you have trails that reliably open without snowmaking—but here at Hunter, which is only about 100 miles north of New York City, it’s not north and cold enough to get a natural snowy base that is practical to ski on.
So if you’re in this part of New York, it’s actually pretty uncommon to be able to ski in conditions this good in early December. It’s not great, but for the time of season, at this low of a latitude and elevation, this is stellar. If you want just a normal ski vacation and you’re looking to go to Hunter for that, you’ll probably be disappointed and you’ll likely want to wait at least a couple weeks. But if you want to go just as a day trip from New York City just to scratch the skiing itch and you can make it on a day like this one, an early December Hunter trip may not be a bad way to go.
We look forward to returning to Hunter later in the season to conduct a full review.
