Blue Mountain is often considered one of the best places to go if you’re in the Philadelphia area. With it getting added to the ikon pass last year, that makes it all that more appealing.
Setup
Blue Mountain has both its base and summit lodge accessible via car. The summit lodge is the one advertised as the main entrance, and it’s set up to let people get in and get on the slopes quickly. Even with needing rentals, it’s a pretty quick transition between stepping into the lodge and getting out on the trail.
The parking is a bit more limited, if you’re early or lucky enough to be close or are willing to pay $4/Hour for the premium parking a locker is actually pointless.
Trail Navigation
For the most part, everything was well-marked and easy to understand. Blue Mountain seems to favor trail merges over intersections, which is a very good thing for those new to the mountain or to the sport in general.
The trail ‘Paradise’ does have a mandatory turn to stay on the green and not get dropped into a blue with freestyle terrain that could use improved signage, but it’s not too bad.
Trail Difficulty
Overall, things were as expected for a Pocono mountain. The difficulty curve seemed pretty normal when it came to the mix of green, blue, and black.
However, a prolonged flat segment between Burma Road and Shuttle is particularly painful. It’s perfectly fine if you manage to keep your speed up; however, given that it’s the only real way down from the summit lodge and green, it can be a bit dense and filled with stopped people. This makes the prospect of keeping your speed up to sail through the flat and small uphill sections a bit more dangerous.
I’m guessing it’s a recent change, but adding freestyle terrain features to Barb’s Way creates a bit more anxiety among new riders.
Après-Beer
The summit lodge was lovely. Both the indoor and outdoor bars had a decent number of taps and a range of beer to cover all tastes. It was definitely the kind of place where you could relax and enjoy, but it was also not worthy of a second round of drinks.
Service
The biggest failing is a combination of staff confusion, inattentive life attendants, and impatient instructors that dampened our most recent trip.
While ultimately, all of these things are pretty easy to fix, at least if there’s a will to fix them.
That said, not including a helmet with an equipment rental seems like a very odd choice, and I don’t agree with it. This is even worse because the UI for the online rentals doesn’t make it very clear with its ‘Helmet Only’ label. Additionally, the two biggest competitors in the area, Jack Frost and Camelback, have packages including a helmet coupled with their ‘Helmet Only’ rental. Ultimately, the pricing is practically the same: Blue Mountain’s Package + Helmet is $68, Camelback is $69, and Jack Frost’s is $67 on the day of. This decision results in unskilled people riding without helmets; if they are lucky enough to realize they should have one they then have to scan a QR code, order a helmet online, walk outside to scan another QR code, print a pass and take it back into the rental area.
If Blue Mountain wants to let people opt out of safety gear or select a board/skis-only option, I’m okay with that. I think it should not be the default path.
Cost
Ultimately, a few areas had me raising an eyebrow around trip cost. Admittedly not including a helmet in the package was a big one, until I compared prices with Camelback and Jack Frost.
While premium parking has always irked me, it might be a cost savings. With premium parking, your car will be about as close as the lockers. Of course, it’s only a savings if you’ve got food, snacks, and drinks in your car, so you don’t have to purchase them. At $4/Hour, it will pay for itself if you can grab lunch from your vehicle instead of the cafeteria.
Overall
Blue Mountain is a solid Pocono Mountain; I’m concerned about the services provided by the staff, especially for beginners.
If you are skilled enough not to worry about lift issues, have enough control to ride intermediate trails without worry, and have your own gear, the problems we encountered at Blue Mountain will all be non-issues. Which means you’ll likely have a great time.
If you’re renting gear, please get a helmet if you don’t own one.