The entire hill was covered in snow and they had 6 runs open, it wasn’t like any early opening I have ever seen, the conditions were as good as they are in the middle of the season and the lift lines were super short. At one point we had a group of 10 riding/skiing, it was a good time.

That’s it, we beat last year by 2 days and it feels good…

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.

Why Mount St Louis Moonstone Is Awesome

• It has 3 high speed 6 passenger chair lifts and 1 high speed 4 passenger chair lift. This makes for pretty small lift lines.
• The unloading zones at the top of the lifts are gradual and big. There are very few spills and lots of room to strap in without some lady yelling at you to move further down the run to strap in (Horseshoe).
• They move a lot of dirt to alter their runs making them smooth and fast with very few flat, slow spots.
• The steep West and East Peak Runs make it easy to start your run off super fast.
• They have the best park in Ontario which I’m sure I’ll be into if I ever work up the nerve to try it out.
• They have a huge (the biggest) beginners area in Ontario. This is great for teaching yourself butters or learning to ride switch. It has a huge gradual green run that is separate from the more advanced runs so you’re not being run off the hill by some loser speeding by you while you’re trying to learn on a slow run.
• It is 20kms and 30 minutes closer than Blue Mountain.
• It’s right off the 400 and very easy to get to.
• It has the feel of a small ski village and doesn’t feel all corporate and weird (it’s family owned and operated).

The only reason I don’t have a seasons pass at MSLM is because they don’t have night skiing. If they had night skiing they would be unstoppable! If anyone is ever going up to MSLM please let me know, I need every excuse I can get to go there instead of using my Blue Mountain seasons pass like I should.

It looks like this year we will finally get a normal winter, a winter that includes December.

Board: 2007 Burton UnInc. 158

Boots: 2007 Burton Hail 10.5

Bindings: 2007 Burton Mission (Black – Purchased Last Season)

While we are grateful that you pioneered the idea of going down a snow covered hill, please don’t forget that snowboarders took that idea to a whole new level of coolness. Stop trying to dress like us and stop trying to steal our tricks, you make me laugh way more than “x-treme rollerbladers” ever will. Please stick to your one piece ski suits, “funny” hats, and “snow plow” awesomeness. You got so mad when people started building half pipes on your precious ski hills and now you think you should be allowed to use those half pipes as comedic props? Skiing a half pipe shouldn’t be an Olympic sport, it’s a joke!

Thanks.