Skiing New York not unlike Skiing Indiana
Monday, January 11, 2010 at 12:02PM When I was in high school and junior high, the closest ski hill to us was a tiny place called Big Birch in Patterson, NY, just 70 miles north of the city off Route 22 in Putnam County. When I arose to a beautiful, crisp, bluebird morning this past Saturday, I was itching to ski, but it was already too late to contemplate the two and a half hour drive from Brooklyn to Hunter or Windham. So it seemed like the perfect time to indulge my fascination with mom-and-pop ski areas by revisiting this place. An hour and a half later, I was making turns.
Big Birch is now known as Thunder Ridge, and while I'm not sure when this rebranding occurred, it reeks of a bunch of olds trying to figure out how to attract today's video-game-addled youth to their hill. It turned out I wasn't the only one who preferred the stoicism and, uh, overtones of the old name. As one guy I rode the lift with put it, "Big Birch is a great name: simple, masculine. Thunder Ridge sounds like an XFL team or something." Other than the name change, the place remains precisely as I'd remembered it, down to the no-frills base lodge locker-room (bring your own lock), the creaky lifts, the wobbly first-time skiers, and the friendly staff. In other words, skiing Big Birch is a lot like skiing in Indiana (see below).
I spent most of my day on "The Face," the one pitch with enough slope to allow you to get up to speed and make three or four nice turns before you're back at the triple chair. Not much, but it was enough to stretch my legs and prepare for bigger things later in the season. And it's the perfect getaway for those days when the most important thing is just getting out of the city and into the fresh air for a bit. Metro-North even runs a ski-train to the place, with a shuttle right to the hill. If you've got your own wheels, be sure to stop by the classic (opened in 1964) Red Rooster Drive-In, a few miles south of the hill on Route 22, for some pre- or post-skiing cheeseburgers, seasoned fries, and milkshakes.
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