Happy last day of January everyone! As some of you may know, yesterday was my 23rd birthday. That’s right, I’m 23, I can’t even believe it. For my 23rd birthday my oh so kind and generous boyfriend decided to take me to Mountain Creek in Vernon, NJ. Not familiar with Mountain Creek? Well it’s largely known for it’s water park, snowy slopes, zip lines and golfing. Not only did my boyfriend decide to take me skiing, a first for the both of us, but he also decided to take this birthday celebration one step further by getting us a night at The Appalachian resort.

Prior to Skiing:

Prior to going on the trip, my boyfriend and I decided to watch YouTube videos on how to ski. We watched a couple of videos on how to stop (fellow skiers know to do this you “pizza”), how to turn right, how to turn left and of course how to even get into the skies. After watching several videos we felt pretty confident; we both are pretty good ice skaters so how hard could skiing really be? We switched off the YouTube and went onto Netflix to watch Higher a documentary on professional American snowboarder Jeremy Jones. We were really trying to get into the whole mindset of being on a mountain. 

The Skiing:

We arrived at Mountain Creek, parked our car and started our journey to find the rental spot. We waited in massive line for roughly 20-30 minutes before finally being able to sign up for our rentals. We got our ski boots, which were majorly uncomfortable, got our skis and poles and were ready to go...or were we? 

Once we got all of our stuff and walked onto the snow we were kind of baffled on what to do next. We opted out of the lessons, which probably wasn’t the brightest idea. We didn’t know how to take the skies apart which seemed to be locked together so we spent about 10 minutes trying to do that. After getting our skies apart we thought going to the Bunny Hill for some practice would be our safest bet. We attached our boots to our skies and we started sliding down the hill…Andrzej, lucky enough figured out how to stop quickly, I fell within seconds.

We got on the tiny little conveyor belt that brought us to the top of the hill and just like that we started sliding down the slope. As I went down I just kept saying “pizza..Pizza…PIZZA” in my head. I was super determined to remember how I was suppose to stop. First time down the slope and we didn’t crash into anyone so we thought we were doing pretty good. We waited online for the conveyor belt and boom…I fell…don’t ask how I didn’t fall coming down the slope but I manage to fall when I was completely still…somehow I did. After many laughs, I got myself up and went on the belt and then back down the hill again. My boyfriend and I thought this skiing thing isn’t so bad after all! Sure we had fallen a couple of times because we didn’t want to hit a child zooming by but other than that we were doing pretty well.

After several easy trips down the Bunny Hill we thought we were most certainly ready to go to the Sugar Mountain since it was the next level. Neither of us felt confident enough to take the lift to the top of Sugar Mountain so we opted to walk up the mountain a bit and then ski down to get a feel for this slope. We got to a comfortable range from the bottom and attempted to put our skies on which proved to be a lot more difficult to do on a slope rather than on a flat surface. Once we were locked in we tried going down…this time, I was screaming “PIZZA!!! PIZZA!!! PIZZA!!!” in my head because no matter how much I “pizzad” I couldn’t seem to slow down, forget about stopping! So of course, I opted to fall instead of barging into another skier or snowboarder. A couple more times of this failed attempt at Sugar Mountain and I began to feel less and less and less confident, my boyfriend too. We had took such hard falls on this mountain simply because stopping wasn’t working that our hips and knees hurt. After a few success’ and many failures, we decided we needed to go back to the Bunny Hill.

We traveled our way back to the hill only to find out that once again we were pros! We were zooming passed students taking their lessons, swerving right, swerving left and most importantly, S-T-O-P-I-N-G! For some strange reason we could do the Bunny Hill with ease, but not the Sugar Mountain. We called it a day because we were so exhausted of 5-6 hours of skiing.

Pros of Mountain Creek:

• Many beginners so you don’t feel too left out for not being a pro
• Mixture of real and fake snow so you never have to worry about not having soft fluffy snow
• Not too far from where I live
• Good looking equipment (skies weren’t run down and raggedy)
• Two bonfire areas outside
• Indoor fireplace with sofa area
• Heated seating area outside
• Variety of food to eat at the mountain lodge

Cons of Mountain Creek:

• Lack of signs telling you where to go if you do or don’t have a ticket already
• Overly crowded computer area (computer area is used to fill out personal information prior to getting rentals)
• Pricey lockers (I mean come on, $10 for a small locker?) 
• Super crowded eating area (my boyfriend and I had to eat outside on a ledge without heating because there wasn’t enough room inside)
• Unfriendly/unhappy workers (while on the Bunny Hill, the people working the conveyor belt seemed BEYOND miserable, I asked one guy for tips and he stayed silent giving me the death stare)
• No mountain between Bunny Hill & Sugar Mountain (I definitely think it’s necessary, especially for those people who have never been on a lift and may need practice getting on and off a smaller version)

Woahh, this post has gotten so much longer than I expected. Stay turned for Part II of Mountain Creek where I will go into more detailed on where we stayed and what we did after skiing!