I’ve never been skiing anywhere but Jiminy Peak since I first started skiing at Maple Ridge when I was 6. I’ve been skiing the same trails for almost 6 years now. But today, I was offered an opportunity to ski at Plattekill Mountain in the Catskills with friends, so I bought a one-day lift ticket to the mountain.

Plattekill is about an hour and a half away from where I live in Albany, and the car was packed with all of our gear. The ride down seemed like forever, and I passed the time by playing with various Rubik’s cubes on the way.

We arrived at the mountain around 10:00 AM and were dropped off right outside the lodge. We quickly got our gear on and headed outside.

When I got outside, I was… confused. Plattekill was different from Jiminy. Very different. Luckily, my friends were Junior Ski Instructors there, so they knew the mountain like the back of their hands.

Soon I was seated on the triple chair, headed up the mountain. If you ever go there, look up when you’re under pole #8. There’s a green Gatorade bottle lodged in a triangular slit above the lift. I tried to hit it down with a ball of ice. No luck. Props to anyone who can.

Anyway, when we got to the top, we went down Powderpuff, which was the easiest way down. It was also the only green circle open. Interesting, I thought. It was the best snow I had ever skied on, nice and fluffy but not loose. It was really nice.

We went up the triple again for our next run. No luck with the Gatorade bottle. Oh well. This time, we went through a trail in the woods that cut down to Lower Face, a blue square. After that, we did Upper Face to Lower Face. Upper Face was a black diamond. It was kind of like the black diamonds of Jiminy, and it put me right at home.

The next time we went up the mountain, we took the double lift. In front of the entrance to the lift, there was a sign that read, EXPERT SKIERS ONLY. I started to get really excited, and my only complaint about Plattekill is that the lifts are kind of slow. The ride took forever, but we finally got to the top.

At the top, it was like a completely new world, covered in fog and clouds. I just followed my friend closely since I hadn’t had time to look at the Plattekill trail map. We ended up doing the double black diamond North Face, and then we did Plunge, another double black. For our final run before lunch, we did the hardest trail on the mountain, Blockbuster, which is also on the list of Top 10 hardest trails in New York.

For lunch, I had some ramen and an egg salad sandwich while my coat, snow pants, and mittens were drying by the fire. But soon we were back outside and headed up to the top of the mountain on the double lift.

We must’ve skied every trail on the mountain at least twice before going back inside. I still hadn’t hit the Gatorade bottle, which I was kind of annoyed at. I’ll hit it next time I come, I thought to myself.

In the bathroom, I stuck the nozzle of the hand dryer inside of my mittens, one at a time. A stream of water came shooting out of the bottom of each one, and my hands were shriveled up prunes from sitting inside them for hours on end.

Once we were all dry, we got hot cocoa in the lodge. The bartender was really nice, and he was great at whipped-creaming. He even put a cherry on top of the whipped cream that was piled up on top of my cup.

It was time to leave after that. It was 4:00 PM, and we had been skiing for nearly 6 hours, so when I got home at 6:30, I crashed. I sat down, ate some more ramen (because why not) and went up to bed.

So that was my adventure today. I was very pleased with Plattekill Mountain, and I would definitely recommend it to any skier or snowboarder. Definitely.

Thanks for reading, everyone.