A full-service, quarter-share condo hotel, the Mountain Club features a bar, a spa, a fitness room, an indoor/outdoor heated pool and hot tubs. And Van Winkle’s, an outstanding restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, all overseen by Culinary Institute of America-trained executive chef Tim Lang. Our dinner there Friday night included spicy Thai chicken stir-fry, hearty beef stew and a not-to-be-missed dessert that proved big enough for the four of us: warm bananas foster bread pudding with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream.
On Saturday, before skiing at Windham, we stopped in the resort’s eponymous town for breakfast at the Catskill Mountain Country Store and Restaurant. As the family’s designated breakfast lovers, my son and I were in our element. The morning menu is creative and long, including eight kinds of pancakes, banana pecan French toast and a dizzying variety of omelets, and the portions are big, the better to fuel time on the hill.
At Windham, where 50 percent of the terrain was open, we encountered all that we’d appreciated missing at Hunter a day earlier: crowds, lift lines and a target-rich environment of skiers and riders to avoid on the trails.
Windham has always been a more sedate and polished experience than Hunter, attracting more affluent skiers and snowboarders. It began as a private club in the 1960s; many of its founders were New York stockbrokers. It’s dotted with several condominium complexes and ski-in/ski-out single-family homes, many of McMansion scale.
Windham has the same 1,600-foot vertical drop (and nearly 100 percent snowmaking coverage) as Hunter but not as much terrain variety or challenge. Its 49 trails (including eight open for night skiing and riding, a Catskills exclusive, on Fridays, Saturdays and select holidays) and five terrain parks cover 269 acres. The trail breakdown: easiest, 30 percent; more difficult, 45 percent; most difficult, 25 percent. Its 10 lifts include two high-speed detachable quad chairs.
The resort’s East Peak has four long cruisers (intermediate World Cup, and black diamonds Wicked, Wing’n It and Why Not) and Wanderer, a two-mile-long beginner run with great views of the countryside. West Peak, the main mountain, offers intermediate cruisers and several double-black diamond trails. We particularly enjoyed Upper Wraparound, Whiskey Jack, and Upper and Lower Whistler.
Foodwise, there’s a base lodge cafeteria, a coffee bar, the mid-mountain Wheelhouse Mountain Lodge restaurant, the outdoor slopeside BBQ & Bar, a sushi bar and Legends, an airy second-story bar and grill with large picture windows facing the mountain.
On Sunday, we considered traveling about 20 miles south of Hunter to ski at state-run Belleayre Mountain, for a unique weekend trifecta. But we opted for Hunter’s better conditions and greater vertical instead. Hoping for a couple of hours of relatively uncrowded skiing, we made it a point to be heading uphill by 9 a.m.
I’m happy to say that our hopes were realized.
Curtin is a freelance writer in New Jersey.
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