Peace returns to the Catskills?

The lions may not be lying down with the lambs just yet, but it appears private ski resorts in the Catskills may be declaring a cease-fire after several years of complaints that Belleayre Ski Resort was undercutting their ticket prices.

As you may recall, Windham, Hunter and Plattekill ski areas have complained that the state-owned Belleayre was not operating the mountain profitably — that taxpayers, in essence, were paying for super-cheap tickets at Belleayre and helping the mountain snatch skiers from the other resorts.

Anyway, today we got word that a press conference is being held in Kingston tomorrow afternoon announcing “a historic agreement between the five Catskill Mountain Ski Areas to promote spring skiing.”

We’re not sure what the five areas are. Assuming the above resorts are all included, other options include one of the two diminutive ski resorts, Holiday Mountain and Sawkill Mountain. Trust us: neither of those resorts are going to be stealing business from Windham or Hunter anytime soon. There’s also Catamount, but that’s not technically in the Catskills.

It’s even possible that Belleayre isn’t included in this agreement, although “the five Catskill Mountain Ski Areas” in the press release would seem to indicate that it is. We weren’t able to reach anybody on Tuesday at the mountains to discuss the issue, but we’ll have more info tomorrow. In the meantime, now that they’ve apparently made peace with each other, perhaps they can make peace with the weather gods and get us some more snow!