Report from Saturday, January 18 – Sunday, January 19, 2025
For somebody who has by no means skied Whiteface earlier than, you positive hear lots about what this place is like as an East Coast skier. It’s icy. It’s completely freezing. It’s obtained an even bigger vertical drop than most West Coast ski areas. It affords among the most difficult in-bounds snowboarding on the East Coast. It hosted the Olympics. Twice. With all of those concepts and tales in my head, it was about time I really obtained up there and skied the place.
Fortunately, for my first time visiting the Lake Placid staple, I skilled neither of the 2 depressing issues (ice and chilly) this unimaginable but difficult mountain usually throws at skiers. Heat climate hovering just under freezing greeted skiers for the weekend on a soft-packed base that consisted of good-quality synthetic snow combined in with a gradual accumulation of pure snowfall.
Fast Information & Historical past
- Date Opened: 1958
- Multi-Vacation spot Cross: n/a
- Variety of Trails: 94
- Skiable Acres: 334
- Vertical Drop: 3,166′ (lift-served), 3,430′ (mountaineering) – most on the East Coast
- Base Elevation: 1,220′
- Summit Elevation: 4,867′
- Common Annual Snowfall: 181″
- Terrain Breakdown:
- Newbie: 22%
- Intermediate: 32%
- Superior: 25%
- Professional: 21%
- Variety of Lifts: 12
- Evening Snowboarding: no
- Possession: State of New York
- Different Actions:
While you take a look at a path map of Whiteface, the resort appears slim, and that’s as a result of it’s. As a skier, it’s simple to constantly wind again up on the identical fundamental trails that funnel skiers down this large vertical drop. For the primary couple of runs on my first day, as I started to familiarize myself with the mountain, I discovered myself doing precisely this, ending up on the Higher/Decrease Valley, Northway, or Boreen, time and again and over. However when you get extra of a way of this mountain, you start to know the way to keep away from this widespread pitfall and go locations on the mountain the place most individuals don’t ski.
Whilst you actually solely need to journey 5 lifts to most effectively entry all the mountain, Whiteface affords a dozen, and I discovered that using on among the gradual, redundant lifts offered the area and time to acknowledge the way to get among the hard-to-find trails on the mountain. For instance, I loved using each the Freeway and Higher Whiteface doubles, since they gave easy accessibility to a set of blacks with a pleasant constant pitch that almost all skiers in any other case missed. Mountain Run and Higher/Decrease Wilderness had no crowds all the day and stayed in nice circumstances late into the afternoon.
Because the day went on and I continued my exploration of the mountain, the one factor largest disadvantage of Whiteface that I noticed as an skilled skier the place the shortage of a various set of double black diamond trails. The mountain has no minimize path double black diamonds, with the 7 trails with that ranking being reserved for glades solely. Whereas among the groomed black diamond trails may simply be double black diamonds at different resorts, I craved extra selection when it got here to skilled trails, particularly when there may be not sufficient pure snowfall to open any gladed terrain.
Whereas The Slides and different gladed terrain reminiscent of Sugar Valley Glades and Deer Valley Glades bolster Whiteface’s declare as an East Coast superior skier’s haven, these trails require vital snowfall to fill in and are usually not simply lapable.
The opposite bizarre half about Whiteface’s format is that it feels small as a result of it’s an odd concept to solely ski half of an East Coast resort’s vertical at a time. Whereas it is vitally widespread out West to only lap the summit chair, or ski the decrease mountain throughout dangerous climate, it took me some time to knock my behavior of all the time making an attempt to ski the total vertical to benefit from the mountains on the East Coast. It actually doesn’t make sense to try this at Whiteface and more often than not you received’t be spending a complete run snowboarding the kind of trails you need to be on.
Given Whiteface’s notable popularity on the East Coast, I used to be not optimistic when it got here to what I assumed the crowds can be like throughout the MLK lengthy weekend. But to my full shock, elevate traces by no means exceeded 10 minutes, even for the Face Elevate and Cloudsplitter Gondola. The shortage of crowds can possible be attributed to Whiteface not being on any multi-mountain move merchandise, which frequently trigger excessive crowding throughout peak holidays. Whereas I’m positive many Ikon and Epic move holders want they might ski Whiteface without cost, if its enterprise mannequin works with out a multi-mountain move within the equation, I solely see it benefiting present season move holders and skiers, and making a go to to Whiteface a extra nice expertise.
Situations
Climate Outlook
Extra Photographs
Total, Whiteface is a terrific mountain that deserves to have its identify etched in amongst the highest East Coast ski resorts. Not solely does it provide a powerful ski expertise on paper, however its format, location, environment, and historical past make it a ski expertise which you can get nowhere else on the East Coast. On the similar time, its lack of company consolidation and resistance to becoming a member of any multi-mountain ski passes preserve crowds cheap even on the busiest vacation weekends. For all of those causes, I’ll be again to Whiteface someday quickly, whether or not it’s to lastly tick The Slides off of my bucket listing or just get pleasure from one other lengthy weekend within the Adirondacks.
For extra data, try Whiteface’s web site.
