Road trip to Whiteface, NY: Longer is not necessarily better

One of the advantages of being a Ski Pro free agent is that you can book mini-ski trips between contract work.

Having just finished my third Level 1 course at Earl Bales ski park I had a free weekend before starting my fourth course at Mount Saint Louis Moonstone (MSLM).

With Sasha busy running the Nancy Greene program at Alpine, I recruited my ski friend Harry Burke and did a road trip to Whiteface in Lake Placid – the site of the 1932 and 1980 Olympics.

After nearly 7 hours on the road (including 40 minutes to get through the border), we arrived at the Olympic Village of Lake Placid.  Lake Placid has great charm and feels like a ski town from the 1970s. Lots of great restaurants (we enjoyed the Steak & Seafood restaurant) and the mountain was only a few minutes away.

Why Whiteface?

Boasting the longest vertical skiing drop in the east at 3,430 feet and peak elevation at 4,867 feet, the lure of long vertical runs was too overwhelming for us to ignore!

We skied our brains out on the first day – from the first gondola at 8:30am until the last one up the mountain around 3:30pm. We stopped only once for lunch – despite temperatures hovering around -30 at the top.

We skied until our legs went to complete rubber on day two – which was around lunch time and a good sign that we had sufficiently satisfied out thirst for vertical for the weekend.

Although Whiteface boasts more vertical than anybody else in the East, we found that a lot of the vertical is in the run-out down the middle.

Skiing the run-out is like skiing on the 401 – but with more ice. That’s great for intermediates, but not so great for advanced or expert skiers looking for long & steep terrain – like what we can find at Ste-Anne.

Having said that, their newly opened terrain on top of Lookout peak offers some of the best vertical consistency top to bottom. You won’t find anything that steep – but the pitch is consistent and winding so you can get about 2,000 vertical feet of high flying dynamic turns and feel some satisfying thigh burning by the end of it.

The resort is in the process of clearing out a few more trails off that same chair that promise steeper and more gnarly pitches.  The park received permission to clear those trails only because they used to be real trails – even though nobody has been able to ski them since the 1950s.

Looking around Whiteface you can’t help but think there is massive untapped potential to make this an even bigger destination. It could easily be the Whistler of the East if the State had the will and the $$$ to make it happen.

Two other things really surprised us about the mountain:

1. Snow coverage wasn’t that great compared to Quebec or even Southern Ontario. Although they have some snow making (and the snow guns weren’t protected by padding!), there was lots of exposed blue ice on many of the runs. The most interesting looking runs weren’t even open yet. They’re called the Slides and locals were telling us they likely won’t open until March. In fact we were surprised that at this point in the season only 85% of the mountain was open.
2. Grooming was inconsistent. I like long cruisers as much as the next guy – but first tracks on groomed runs were bumpy and dodgy – so we could never really let our skis just go down the fall line without fear of hitting a rut, big ice patch or uneven grooves.  It was big mountain skiing – which we really enjoyed, but we forget how spoiled we are in places where there is more emphasis on getting that right.

Are you a ski pro? We were really impressed by how they treated us. All we had to do was flash our CSIA membership card and we received 50% off the lift ticket prices… which allowed us to increase our budget for apres-ski.

Would we go back?

Yes – in fact I’m hoping to go back in late March (with Sasha) when all the terrain is open. Its close proximity to Toronto, small town charm and big mountain terrain makes Whiteface a good choice for those who don’t want to travel 10+ hours to go deep into Vermont or Quebec City.