Blue Knob, Pennsylvania, United States

4NotALostWanderer 5:00 PM May 21, 2020

Ski weekend in PA
We went skiing with a group over a holiday weekend in Feb. It's a very affordable area with nice trails and friendly lodge. There was a band playing in the afternoon and a brewery was offering tastings of their beers. Kids had a great time, despite the frigid temps! Good choice for a long ski weekend with the family!

4LauraRW 5:00 PM Feb 19, 2013

The Good, the Bad and the Mismanaged
OK, first the good. Blue Knob has a terrific vertical descent. Some of the runs are nice and long—nearly a mile. There are really no crowds to speak of—and I write this having visited over President’s Day weekend. We practically walked on to every lift. However. The list of bad is much longer. I have skied in quite a few eastern seaboard locales. Wisp, Whitetail, Roundtop, Snowshoe, Liberty, Timberline. Most of these have invested, recently, in their infrastructure. Blue Knob has the look and feel of a place that has not spent any money on itself since the early 80s. Example-the lift from the black runs was a painfully slow two man chairlift. Nearby was another two man chairlift that never ran the entire weekend. (A holiday weekend!) Upon enquiry it turns out that it is in need of a part, and will probably not run at all this season. The existing two man lift is therefore the only one to get you back up to the top from the black runs. And it takes almost 12-15 minutes. Longer if it stops. Which it does. A lot. Many of the runs were so icy as to be unpleasant. Extrovert—a black run that is highly publicized as being one of the most challenging runs on the eastern seaboard, was two solid blocks of ice. And I mean so much ice that they had that a yellowish tinge to them. On the third day we were there, rather than groom the run, Blue Knob closed it. It wasn’t the only run that was closed, or closed over the weekend, despite snow falling almost constantly on Sunday. And yes, they ran the snow machines all day that day as well. Snow machines were running full blast during the entire weekend, but as Blue Knob has the older snow machines, this was kind of like skiing at an airport, and having the noise of jet turbines in your ears. Annoyingly, one of the snow machines was pointed directly at the slow two man chair lift mentioned earlier, giving already chilled skiers that extra brutal blast of cold of snow right at the end of the ride. Safety is a worry. The first day we thought it incredible that another snow machine was positioned to hit the cable and chair of the non-operating chairlift. It caused both to develop so much ice, that it broke off while we were on the other lift, thumping to the ground, and narrowly missing a skier. This wasn’t a few icicles, but about 70-100 lbs. of ice—enough to hit the ground with a solid thump. When I reported it to a staff member, I saw the machine being “redirected” a few hours later, but it was still hitting the chair, and forming a 10 x 1 foot long jagged “tooth” of ice. And people were still skiing under it. On the two man chair lift I noticed that one chair had orange plastic tied to it, and that staff would not let you use it. Why? Because it is “kind of broken” and “falls off.” How comforting. Entrances to lifts were icy, but no attempt was made to cover them with snow. I hope you are not hungry when you come to Blue Knob. The cafeteria area probably seats a couple hundred people at best, with orange tables that look right out of the seventies, and worn brown carpet beneath. It is mostly taken up with people who have brought picnics from home. Woe unto you if you stand in line to get a slice of pizza, cocoa and chips (about the healthiest selection available), and then have…nowhere…to…sit. Signs. Someone went crazy making signs at the Lodge. There are signs for nearly everything. Whoever that person was, they disappeared when it was time to label the runs. Going down Jack Rabbit, you have a choice of turns towards the end. Left or right. I skied there three days and I still don’t know which run I was on if I went right. Mambo was the same. Upper Mambo was signed, so was lower Mambo, but then the signage ended, and a number of choices presented themselves. No idea which was Mambo and which wasn’t. Many, if not most of the blue and green runs are undersigned. Did I have a good time? I can’t say I didn’t—no lines and long runs will compensate for a whole host of other failings. But the failings here are all things that other nearby resorts have successfully addressed. It mystifies me why the resort hasn’t upgraded the lifts, had all the runs open, over a three day weekend.