Four-bedroom Tobyhanna homes for a January ski week

Three of our Tobyhanna houses have four bedrooms, and the choice between them comes down to one question you can answer before you look at a single photograph: are you a group of ten or a group of twelve, and does anyone need a hot tub at the end of a cold day? Lake view Theater Playground Kayak Pet Friendly sleeps ten and has a proper movie theater. Hot tub Gym Pool Lake Golf Karaoke Firepit and Hot tub Games Lake Golf Course 20% OFF both sleep twelve and both have a hot tub. That is the whole shortlist, and the rest of this page is about which one fits the week you're actually planning.

Camelback, over in Tannersville, is the closest big mountain to Tobyhanna: a drive of roughly twenty minutes to half an hour depending on where in the township you start. Jack Frost and Big Boulder sit further south toward Blakeslee and Lake Harmony, a longer run of around half an hour to forty minutes. All three homes are in Tobyhanna, so all three put you inside that radius. Nobody should be picking a house here on ski distance. Pick it on how your group lives indoors between four in the afternoon and bedtime, because in January that's most of the trip.

Ten people, one screening room

If your party tops out at ten, Lake view Theater Playground Kayak Pet Friendly is a genuinely good winter house despite being written and photographed for summer. The basement is set up as a private movie theater with a game lounge beside it, and there's an arcade machine and a game console down there too. On a day when the wind is coming off the lake and nobody wants to put boots back on, that basement is the reason the trip still feels like a holiday.

It sits steps from the community lake, with a wraparound porch that looks across to the water and the playground. Keep your expectations seasonal: the kayaks are on the property, the beach is across the street, and neither matters in January. What matters is the fireplace, the fire pit outside if you arrange wood, the heated house, and the fact that it's pet friendly, which is not nothing when the dog would otherwise be boarded for a week.

The trade worth knowing: this is the only one of the three without a hot tub listed. For a family with small kids who are going to be driven home from the slopes half-asleep anyway, that may be irrelevant. For a group of adults who ski hard, it isn't.

Twelve people, and the two houses that take them

Both twelve-sleepers sit inside Pocono Farms Country Club, a quiet wooded community in Tobyhanna, and both have a private hot tub, a fire pit, a game room and a gym. They are closer to each other than either is to the lake house, so the deciding details are small and practical.

Hot tub Gym Pool Lake Golf Karaoke Firepit has three full bathrooms plus a half bath, which is the single most useful fact about it when twelve people are peeling off wet layers at the same hour. The primary suite has a soaking tub and a walk-in shower. There are two living rooms, each with a fireplace, and the lower one carries the karaoke rig, the poker table and the sound bar. The deck is doubled and looks into forest, with the hot tub out there and parking for six vehicles, which matters when a group arrives in four cars.

Hot tub Games Lake Golf Course 20% OFF is the one to take if the group's evenings revolve around a game room rather than a sofa. Pool table, ping pong, darts, air hockey, an arcade station, mini basketball, a record player. There's a separate fitness room with an exercise bike and yoga mats. The bathroom count is lower, two full and a half, so a dozen adults on the same morning schedule will feel it; a family group with staggered wake-ups won't.

Both sleep twelve on the same arrangement: a king, two queens, and a bunk room with two twin bunks. That bunk room is why these houses handle three or four children without anyone sleeping on a sofa, and it's also why a group of twelve adults should look hard at the bed list before booking either.

What Tobyhanna State Park actually gives you in January

The park is built around Tobyhanna Lake, and in winter the Lakeside Trail is the main event: a five-mile loop on a hardened base, blue-blazed, open to hiking, cross-country skiing and snowmobiling. Budget a good half-day for the full circuit on foot or skis, more if you stop. There are restrooms and picnic tables at the trailhead, which is more than most winter trailheads offer.

Skating is allowed on the natural ice near Parking Area #3, in a marked area of about an acre. Nobody measures the ice for you. The rule of thumb the park gives is four inches for a single skater and seven for a small group, and if you're not confident reading it yourself, don't.

For a longer day, the Frank Gantz Trail runs red-blazed from the Lakeside Trail across to Gouldsboro State Park, hiking only and rated most difficult. From Parking Area #5 at the campground, linking the two trails out to Gouldsboro Lake takes three hours or so. The Range Trail is the quieter option, running from the Lakeside Trail out to a small lot on Route 196 through Bender Swamp and a boulder field.

This is the piece most ski trips here miss. You've got a lake loop you can ski or walk on an off day, twenty-odd minutes from the house, with no lift line and no ticket.

The January facts that change how a stay feels

Four-wheel drive is worth having. We recommend it for winter stays, and at Hot tub Games Lake Golf Course 20% OFF there's salt and a shovel at the property for emergencies. Plowing of the community roads is handled by the township on their own schedule, not ours, so plan arrival and departure with a little slack rather than a tight connection.

A few other things that are true of a January week in these houses:

• Community amenities run on their own calendar. The lake beaches, pools, kayaks and golf at Pocono Farms are seasonal, and the fitness centre and golf course require a separate purchase. Winter access, hours and closures are set by the community, not by us.
• Firewood is not stocked. The fire pits at all three homes are usable in winter, but wood is arranged separately. Ask when you book and we'll have it on site.
• The HOA form matters. Both Pocono Farms homes need it submitted at least seventy-two hours before check-in, and the community charges a late fee if it isn't. At the lake house, you stop at the community office on arrival with your licence, vehicle registration and pet records.
• Everything here is pet friendly, all three four-bedroom homes included, with the paperwork noted above.
• Check-in is keyless, so a late arrival after a long drive from the city doesn't involve meeting anyone in the dark.

One more, and it's the one guests mention afterwards: in the Pocono Farms houses, water pressure can wobble when everyone showers at once. Space them out and skip running the dishwasher at the same time. After a ski day with twelve people it's the difference between a good evening and a grumpy one.

Where your budget lands

Peak January weekends price differently from midweek, and a four-bedroom house over a holiday weekend is a different number from the same house on a Tuesday. We don't publish a January rate on a page like this because the only figure worth having is the one tied to your actual dates. Send us the nights and we'll quote the home, the cleaning, and anything the community charges on top, all in one answer.

Booking direct with us is the straightforward route: we're a family-run team managing these homes ourselves, so the person quoting you is the person who knows whether the plows came through last week.

If four bedrooms turns out to be the wrong size

It often does. Groups book four bedrooms because that's what the search box asked for, then realise two families and a set of grandparents need more room than that. We have two six-bedroom houses in Tobyhanna, and both work in deep winter in a way most big rentals don't.

Poconos Luxury Resort: Pool, Theater, Games sleeps thirty-two across six bedrooms and six and a half bathrooms, with an indoor heated pool, an outdoor hot tub, a twenty-two seat movie theater over two storeys, and a private walking trail that loops the property in about ten minutes. The dining table seats twenty, which is the detail that makes a group that size actually eat together.

NEW Indoor lounge pool, hot tub, Glamping, karaoke sits on nearly three acres and sleeps twenty-five in winter. The indoor plunge pool is heated year round, there's a karaoke stage that converts into a movie room, and a hot tub outside. The glamping tent and the outdoor pool are summer things and are closed in snow season, so don't count them in your January plans.

How I'd choose

A family of eight or ten with young kids, skiing two or three days and wanting the other days easy: take the lake house for the theater and the fact that the basement will absorb an entire afternoon of weather.

Twelve people where several are adults sharing a bathroom schedule: Hot tub Gym Pool Lake Golf Karaoke Firepit, for the extra full bath and the two separate living rooms with fireplaces.

Twelve people who will spend every evening in one room competing at something: Hot tub Games Lake Golf Course 20% OFF. The game room is the reason to be there.

And whichever you take, build in one day that isn't about lifts. Drive over to the park, walk or ski the lake loop, come back and get in the hot tub. That's the day people talk about in March.