Big Vanilla at Davos

Big Vanilla at Davos, a ski area about a mile north of Woodridge, New York, opened in 1959 under the name Davos, borrowed from the Swiss resort. It was the biggest ski hill in Sullivan County at a time when the Catskills hotels were adding rope tows and snow guns of their own, and a December 1961 snow report listed seven slopes and two trails, two chairlifts, two other lifts and a tow, snowmaking, and tickets at $3 on weekdays and $4.50 on weekends. The area was built upside down: the parking lot and the lodge sat on top of the hill, and skiers started the day by going down.

By 1970 the ski guides listed it as Big Vanilla at Davos. In 1971 the Davos Corporation merged with Mount Snow in Vermont. Through the 1970s the hill grew to about 17 to 19 named runs and nine lifts, including three double chairs, four T-bars and rope tows, with night skiing on the main trails. The trail names went with the vanilla theme and then some: Pink Cloud, Blushing Bunny, Mr. Teacher, Purple Passion, Plum Crazy, Bloody Mary, Cha-Cha, Twist and Nose Dive. A 1974 listing advertised an open-hearth restaurant and a fur-lined discotheque, and by 1980 the Alpine Lodge offered ski weeks with wine and cheese parties, gong shows and ski movies. The ski patrol was run for years by Werner J. Kuhn, whom a 2018 Skiing History article called Mr. Big Vanilla.

A 1988 brochure promoted 23 slopes, a new quad chairlift, two T-bars, a J-bar and a double chair, a new lodge with a cocktail lounge on top, cross country trails and Davos Village, a development of homes beside the slopes. Ski guides still listed the area, by then simply as Davos, in 1993. It closed around 2000; a 2026 local report placed the closing about 25 years earlier, but no source found gives the last season. After it shut down, its lift towers and bullwheels were left standing in the brush on the old slopes.