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Review: Horseshoe Resort

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
December 16th, 2007
Posted In:
Snowboarding
Comments:
2 Responses, Join The Conversation.

Horseshoe SucksThis past Saturday I decided to take advantage of $20 lift tickets, a free BBQ and an Atomic demo at Horseshoe Resort just North of Barrie, Ontario. I have been to Horseshoe once before when they were the first resort to open this November, back then they had only 2 runs open and it was our only option so it was as good as it gets. This time around was different and much worse.

The Lifts

Horseshoe Resort has a serious problem with lift unloading areas. All of their lifts end with a slightly steep drop off and a very small area for strapping in. The second you step off their only high speed lift there’s an attendant yelling at you to “move out of the way!” and “strap in and get out of here!”. It’s the worst experience ever and it results in a lot of beginners who are already scared of the chair lift becoming more intimidated and falling. When they fall and the lift is stopped. A lift can be as high speed at it wants but it won’t get you up the hill faster if it stops 3 times per trip.

The yelling only happens on the main high speed lift but the rest are equally bad. I didn’t experience one lift ride where the lift didn’t stop because the unloading zones were not properly taken care of and people were bailing.

The Runs

Horseshoe Resort is small, everyone knows that and short runs are what I expected. What I didn’t expect was the poor quality of the runs. While trying to find some more challenging runs I headed over to the Highrider chair where the runs were all black and blue. It was a huge let down to find that 95% of the black runs lasted for 10 seconds and then shot you out onto a green run that was super flat. Then you’d ride flat based for 30 seconds back to the lift.

The People

When camping in the summer I always found that the closer the camp ground is to Toronto the more likely it is to be full of people who don’t know how to camp. This past Saturday I discovered that the same holds true for ski resorts. Horseshoe Resort is the closest of the bigger resorts to Toronto and it’s the easiest to get to. As a result it was full of people who had no idea how to ski or snowboard and it didn’t seem like they had any real desire to learn. They were all over the hill on runs of all levels of difficulty and in everyone’s way. Don’t get me wrong, I know what it’s like to be a beginner and I have no problem at all giving people the space they need to learn, but it gets a little annoying when you’re flying down a blue or black run and there are 15 people lying around on it trying to figure out how to snowboard. This never seems to happen at Mount St. Louis Moonstone or Blue Mountain, maybe because their blue and black runs are more intimidating.

The Demo

The whole reason we went to Horseshoe Resort instead of Blue Mountain was the free Atomic demo. There were a few Atomic boards that had caught our attention and we thought it would be awesome to try them out for a few runs. Here’s the catch, even though Atomic makes bindings they only brought 3 or 4 pairs to the demo, so they wanted to take my bindings off my board and have me use my own bindings. Sure it was a bit of a pain in the ass, but it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. The problem is that my binding discs only have 2 holes and are not compatible with Atomic boards. So I took a board out with their bindings. The bindings came loose on the first turn and I had a horrible run, awesome. Alison did use her own bindings and when they put them back on her board they set them up wrong. When she tried to adjust them she realized they had used a power drill, tightened the screws too tight for her to unscrew and stripped one of her screws, wow.

Needless to say we won’t be doing another demo day like that again and we probably won’t be buying Atomic boards any time soon.

Conclusion

Horseshoe Resort is small and crowded with poor runs and the worst chair lift experience ever. Drive the extra 15 minutes to Mount St. Louis Moonstone.

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Comments

  1. Alison Says:
    December 17th, 2007 at 12:33 pm

    Re: The People

    Not only are the blue & black runs at Blue Mountain more intimidating, but they also have more than two green runs. The “main” green run was flat, and the other was all intertwined with the blue & black runs by the Highrider chair. (there probably are actually more than 2 green runs, but it would be nice for them to make a “beginner’s area” so that the mess can stay out of my awesome way! ahahah)

  2. sookie Says:
    March 10th, 2008 at 10:33 am

    I agree, Horeshoe’s kinda lame (short & slow) but I did like the quasi-beginner rails & pipe. Blue always seems too busy/intimidating. Too bad about the Atomic demos, that’s what I was searching when I ended up here.

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