Whiteface, NY's Olympic mountain, is 50

By JOHN KEKIS, AP Sports Writer Mon Jan 28, 8:39 AM ET

WILMINGTON, N.Y. - Jim Hoyt slid to a stop on the new-fallen snow and looked skyward at the icy face of his favorite place.

"It's the love of my life," said the 70-year-old Hoyt, a member of the ski patrol at Whiteface Mountain Ski Center for longer than he cares to remember. "I've skied it mostly every day."

It's been a half century since Gov. Averell Harriman came here on Jan. 25, 1958 to celebrate the opening of what would become New York's Olympic mountain.

"When they opened it, that was the real deal," said 85-year-old Bob Wall, who used to write a ski column for the Syracuse Herald-Journal. "There weren't many places to ski and Whiteface was like a real mountain. It was like going out West. Everybody loved it. These other mountains were like pimples, with a vertical drop of 600 or 700 feet."

Nearby Lake Placid had already hosted the 1932 Olympic Games that featured ice hockey, ski jumping, cross-country skiing, figure skating, speedskating and bobsled, along with three demonstration sports — women's speedskating, curling and sled-dog racing.

It was the genesis of winter sports in the United States, but one thing was missing — Alpine skiing. It gained Olympic status four years later at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and its soaring popularity soon took the gloss off Lake Placid's image as the place to go for winter sports.

Ski areas began sprouting everywhere — from New England to the Rockies — and the ski crowd steered clear of Lake Placid because its offerings paled in comparison.

The Lake Placid Club developed a ski hill at Mount Whitney on the back side of Mirror Lake in the village. There also were smaller hills with rope tows, and there was a downhill racing trail at nearby Mount Jo, a pimple indeed with an altitude of 700 feet and no match for the long trails offered at Stowe in neighboring Vermont or Sun Valley, Idaho.

The dream of a winter season in Lake Placid comparable to European resorts in the Alps seemed destined to go unfulfilled unless a world-class ski center could be developed in the Adirondacks.

Whiteface, which towers over Lake Placid like a lonely sentinel, became the logical choice because it already was well-known as a tourist destination when the snow wasn't flying. The Veterans Memorial Highway, a Depression-era public works project under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had opened in 1935, allowing families to drive to within 300 feet of the mountain's 4,867-foot summit and experience some of the most stunning panoramas in the East.

There was one significant drawback — all potential sites were inside the vast Adirondack Forest Preserve, protected by the state Constitution's "Forever Wild" provisions that forbid state land from being leased, sold or exchanged or taken by any corporation. Trees cannot be "sold, removed, or destroyed."

Nevertheless, ski enthusiasts in 1941 persuaded the state Legislature to adopt an amendment to make a ski area constitutional and voters narrowly approved an unprecedented change in the "Forever Wild" article to allow for building ski trails. Initial work stopped after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and resumed after World War II along the east side of Marble Mountain, a shoulder of Whiteface.

Once completed, the ski center was billed as the biggest in the East, but it was ill-fated from the start. Its January 1949 opening had to be postponed because there wasn't enough snow and was canceled again in December by rainy weather. The center didn't begin full-time operation until 1951.

Caroline Lussi's father, Art Draper, helped build Marble Mountain and was the first manager of Whiteface.

"It was all side hills and my father didn't believe it was the proper terrain," she said. "But that was where the state wanted it."

And it was primitive, with a single T-bar and a rope tow on a side hill for beginners.

"I skied Marble a lot," said 77-year-old Natalie Leduc, a former physical education teacher at nearby Paul Smith's College. "It was so archaic by today's standards. They didn't groom the trails, they didn't watch out for obstacles — that was up to you."

Not surprisingly, Lake Placid remained an afterthought to skiers and Marble Mountain eventually was abandoned.

Everything changed when Harriman was elected governor in 1954. Three years later, the son of a railroad baron and an avid skier who had built Sun Valley in the mid-1930s, signed a law authorizing development of the present Whiteface Ski Center. It opened in 1958 with two chair lifts and a vertical drop of 3,216 feet, longest in the East.

Looking back, it's doubtful Lake Placid would have been able to host the 1932 Winter Olympics had skiing been one of the sports. And if not for Harriman's love of skiing, perhaps America wouldn't have celebrated the U.S. hockey team's "Miracle on Ice" in 1980

"We would never have been able to hold the Winter Olympics in 1980," Lussi said. "My father wanted to make sure anything they built could be used because he was sure the Olympics would come to Lake Placid again."

Today, Whiteface boasts 76 trails, 10 lifts and a vertical drop of 3,430 feet, highest of any ski resort east of the Rockies, and hosts World Cup events every year. In an average year, 200,000 people will ski here. Although it has had to endure its share of criticism — icy conditions earned it the nickname "Iceface" — snowmaking technology has changed the landscape and Whiteface remains a signature destination for skiers.

"There might have been a time in the early 1980s where some people had some just cause to complain," said Sandy Caligiore of the state Olympic Regional Development Authority, which operates the Olympic sports venues in the region. "But in the current scheme of things, it's laughable. We wouldn't be hosting World Cup freestyle or snowboarding if the product were lousy. These people come here for a reason."

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On the Net: http://www.whiteface.com