March 1, 2020, Harriet Hollister, WNY

I finally poked around in the woods below the local xc ski park located 40 miles south of Rochester NY, where I now live.  The skinny skiing isn't bad here, and there's places literally in my backyard to do it.  But I hadn't found much in the way of touring in WNY, and with a toddler running around in the house, it's been hard to explore the Adirondacks or the Greens.  But as it turns out, there are legit powder turns to be had!

Harriet Hollister is on state land on one of the ridges that separate the glacially-carved finger lakes, and if you squint right at some of the lake inlets (which I believe were glacial termii a few thousand years ago), it almost looks like terrain in the Cascades, though only with 1000 feet of relief. It's in a snow belt, topping out at 2000 feet.  Perhaps it also catches some lake effect off of Lake Erie at times.  The woods to the NE of the groomed trails offered around 300 vf of reasonably open skiing through hardwoods, perhaps 35 degrees.  I was a bit skeptical about how much base would be required, but 8 inches of spongy frozen snow with 5 inches of slightly damp powder on top was more than adequate.

Not a bad place to contemplate the unity, and ephemeralness of all things.