Hidden Valley Resort: 20% Discount

Our Home--Available for Your Vacation

Our home at Hidden Valley is located at The Summit, a community located at the very summit of the mountain. The Summit sits between the two ski areas that make up Hidden Valley. The two areas are connected by the Crossover Trail, which is about a hundred feet from our front door. So from our front door, you can choose to ski either the Valley Side slopes, where the lodge is located, or the North Side, where the slopes are more advanced. If you're visiting on one of those questionable weather days, that we have in Pennsylvania, and only one side of the mountain is open, you have direct access to that from our residence.

The condo has two bedrooms and a loft, and two full bathrooms. The master bedroom has a queen-size bed and the other bedroom has two twins. The loft has a sofa bed, and the couch in the living room is also a sofa bed. All together, if you're all friends, eight people can spend the night. There is china and glassware for eight.

We don't have air conditioning, because in the Laurel Highlands you don't need it! We find that the temperature at the Summit at Hidden Valley is usually about fifteen degrees cooler than in our home outside Washington, D.C. That means that when it's in the nineties at home--as it is much of the summer--it's in the low eighties at Hidden Valley. We bought our place for the skiing, but now we enjoy even more during the summer than during the ski season.

This photo shows a front view of our home during the summer. We visited over the Fourth of July weekend, and enjoyed temperatures that were in the mid-seventies, while at home the Washington, DC area sweltered in the low nineties!

We took a day for the most beautiful bike ride we know, Ohiopyle to Confluence. This ride goes along a converted rail trail that's quite flat. The ride is ten miles along the Youghigeny River. For most of the ride you don't see any civilization at all; just the bike path with woods on one side and the gorgeous river on the other side. There's a train track across the river, so now and then you hear the distant sound of a train's whistle or the clackety clack of a train going by.

We don't have air conditioning, because we have great cross-ventilation and there is just no need for air conditioning. There is always a breeze at the top of the mountain, so you just open the windows and the breeze drifts through.

Here's another photo of the same scene, taken during the ski season. Often, when there's been recent snow, you'll be walking through a channel dug into the snow. When you rent our place, you rent from the resort, so the walk to the front door will be shoveled for you before you arrive.

In addition, the Resort management fully supplies all of the sheets, blankets and towels you need, and we have provided plenty of pillows. So you can just move in, and don't have to bring linens and bedding with you.

The Crossover Trail, that provides access to both major ski areas on the mountain, is about 100 feet to the right as you face the front door. It's on the other side of another row of residences--which is helpful, because sometimes the noise of snowmaking goes on all night, not to mention the staff who go back and forth on their snowmobiles all night long getting the snow ready for the next day's skiing. We appreciate their work, but we've learned that it's pretty noisy, so we are glad that we're not directly on the Crossover Trail.

What you can't see in either of these photos is the firewood bin that's just to the right of the entrance, about 30 feet from the front porch. It's always stocked with good firewood, mostly oak, cut to the length of the fireplace. Even during spring and fall, not just winter, it's nice to enjoy a fire in the cool evenings.

In fact, we enjoy a fire so much that we made a major upgrade to the original fireplace, and had this big fireplace built with glass doors, with a raised hearth to make it more visible and make it easier to build and tend the fire.

The resort does a good job of maintaining a woodpile of good firewood about twenty feet from the front door. Use our log carrier to bring in fresh supplies of firewood. Be sure to check the What to Bring page to be well-equipped to enjoy a fire when you arrive.

That little cat on the fireplace is a favorite of ours. We found him in a little gift shop in the Laurel Mountains. Here's a closeup of this little guy on skis.

We say that he needs to attend the Hidden Valley Ski School--his weight isn't forward. However, in all the years we've seen him on skis, we've never seen him fall even once!

Here's the dining table on a nice, bright day. You can see that it seats six in great comfort, and you can pull up the two chairs you see in the background to seat eight.

We have enjoyed a lot of great meals at that table. In the winter, it might be spaghetti after a day of vigorous skiiing, with a nice fire in the fireplace. In the summer, one day with friends we cooked a meal of all local ingredients--lamb from a local farm, trout from the trout farm that we caught that afternoon, local vegetables and herbs from the Ligonier Farmer's Market and Putman's, with a raspberry pie for dessert from Sand Hill Orchards. We even had local wine from Stone Villa Winery nearby.


Here's the living area. The fireplace is behind the camera to the left, and the dining area is to the right out of the picture.

Because this is an end unit, and because it's on the top floor, there are windows on three sides and skylights in the roof, so it's very bright and seems more like a stand-alone house than an apartment.

To the left of the photo are two Amish chairs made of hickory that are popular in the area. They don't look comfortable, so you'll be surprised when you take a seat in one of them. The rocker is especially comfortable.

There's a photo of just the Amish hickory chairs below.