Mt. Whitney Ski Area
Lake Placid, New York1938-1980s
Shop Mt. Whitney Ski Area tees, long sleeve tees, hoodies and crewnecks. The Lake Placid Club opened a downhill ski park here in 1938, and its records list the first run as Sam's Slide. Crews packed the slopes by sidestepping on skis, and one winter tradition was cooking pancakes outdoors on twelve-foot griddles. Pick a style below, and the full Mt. Whitney history is further down. Every shirt is printed to order in the USA and carries the memories of bygone places and teams.
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Mt. Whitney Ski Area History
Mt. Whitney Ski Area in Lake Placid, New York, was the Lake Placid Club's own downhill hill, on the slope of Mount Whitney at the east edge of the village, reached by Mount Whitney Road off Mirror Lake Drive. The Club, a private resort founded by Melvil Dewey in 1895, opened a downhill ski park there in 1938, and its records list the first run as Sam's Slide. Like several other small hills around Lake Placid at the time, it started with a rope tow. It has nothing to do with Mount Whitney in California.
A T-bar replaced the rope tow in 1946 or 1947, a cost that the chronology in a 2008 history of the Club says drained the company's resources, and a 1947 Club pamphlet announced the opening of the Mt. Whitney Ski Center for the 1947-48 season. The Club's Bruce Fenn Ski School taught on the hill, and races were held on Washington's Birthday and for the Arena Grill Cup at the end of each season. Crews first packed the slopes by climbing and sidestepping on skis, then with rollers, and later with two small snowcats. Each year they cleared more rock from the top of the slope beside the T-bar, and one winter tradition was cooking pancakes outdoors on twelve-foot griddles.
In 1962 the Club built a new lodge with a butternut interior, opened the Hovey Trail and added a second T-bar. The old lodge was cut into three pieces and hauled away. In the early 1970s the Club drilled a well that could have fed snowmaking, but the board chose to light the hill for night skiing instead. A 1978 brochure promised two high speed T-bars and a half dozen groomed slopes and trails, among them Hicks Trail, Rock 'n' Roll, the Main Slope and Hovey Trail, and it labeled the lodge Ski Loj, in the simplified spelling the Club used for its buildings.
The Club's hotel shut down on March 30, 1980, a few weeks after the Winter Olympics, but the Mt. Whitney files kept at the Lake Placid Public Library carry lift ticket reports for 1981-82 and accident reports for 1983-84, so the T-bars kept running into the mid-1980s. The last season has not been pinned down. A fire destroyed the Mount Whitney Ski Lodge in May 1995, and the 174-acre Mount Whitney property was later sold to a private owner. The cut of the old slope can still be picked out from the summit of nearby Little Whiteface.