Whiteface Mountain

The lake is still open, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t good skiing at Gore, West Mountain and Whiteface.

On December 30, the Saratoga and North Creek Railway re-introduced the snow train to North Creek after an absence of five decades.

The train leaves Saratoga Springs at 7 am every Friday, Saturday and Sunday through March 31.

Shuttles are available from the North Creek station to the Ski Bowl and to Gore Mountain.

At the Ski Bowl, the 800′ lift-serviced tubing lanes reopened on Friday, January 6.

“People are excited to ski and snowboard here and we’re prepared to deliver a quality product,” said manager Mike Pratt. “The new snowmaking guns we invested in and the diligent work of our snowmakers and groomers have made us successful at overcoming many of Mother Nature’s challenges during the first 31 days of this season.”

Gore Mountain presently has miles of terrain open for all ability levels, with 4 miles of consistent skiing available between the Gore summit and the primary base area.  The black diamond “Open Pit” trail opened today, and the double-diamond “Lies” trail was scheduled to re-open before January 13.

Last season, Whiteface was open for 138 days and skiers and riders enjoyed 247 inches of natural snowfall. Weather experts are predicting another snowy season this winter and most are even calling for another La Niña, with potential record snowfall, marking just the second time in the past 65 seasons that there have been back-to-back La Niñas.

Snow Train

Whiteface opened for the season on November 25.

“Crews have done a great job in putting down snow with marginal temperatures,” said mountain manager Bruce McCulley. “Most of our snowmaking has occurred at night, when it’s much colder. We’ve built some great coverage on Upper Valley and Lower Valley and we’re up and ready for opening day.”

The folks at West Mountain are also looking forward to expanding snow coverage areas and trail count as the temperatures drop and the weather permits better snowmaking.