Newcomb Ski Slope: Community Spirit

I’ve gotten my ski days this year but I haven’t done much to advance my goal to ski all the lift-served hills in New York. Life has required me to stay close to home this season, and it shows in the list of areas I’ve skied.

Early this year, I realized that skiing Central NY and Western NY wasn’t realistic. I made a separate list of ski areas ranked by their distance from our base in the Southern Adirondacks. I thought “what if I try to tick them off in order of distance?” It would be something at least, some progress towards my goal.

This brought two pieces of ripe, low hanging fruit to my attention: Dynamite Hill and Newcomb Ski Slope.

I skied 10 runs at Dynamite in mid-February and on this past Sunday morning, I drove north out of the Crick, towards Newcomb to see and ski the slope.

Both town supported hills are open weekends. The tbar/poma combo at Newcomb serves up 200 vertical feet of skiing from 10am – 4pm on Saturdays and Sundays, and any day the local school is closed for a holiday.

I arrived fashionably late, at 11:30 and the lift wasn’t spinning. I walked up to the lift and was greeted by Debbie Muscatello. She explained that they were indeed open, and to save electricity, the tbar doesn’t start spinning until the first skier arrives. Today skier that was me.

Debbie is a former ski instructor from Gore. She loves Newcomb, and sometimes works as a substitute teacher in the local school. (More on that later). She also volunteers as a liftie at Newcomb ski hill. I asked her about the history of the hill. She told me it first opened in the 1960s, and to her knowledge it had operated continuously.

She referred me to Lanette Chase, in the lift shack at the time, as the expert on the topic. The Town of Newcomb has owned and operated its free two-run ski slope and generations of residents have learned the sport here.

The terrain is a bit unusual, with maybe three fall lines, that I could count. There are two successive hills and if you want, you can “get off at mid-station” to avoid the steepest part of the pitch. If you continue on to the top of the headwall, you must quickly learn to ride a surface lift downhill. If you’ve never done it before, it’s not easy!

Once at the top, you’re left with a choice… the steepest line ultimately leads you to a bit of an uphill climb. I created a line that maximized my turns and pitch, without having to climb. As we’ve seen this week, the snow isn’t full on corn yet, it’s still sticky and I found that if I skied in my own tracks it was a lot more fun. I banged out 12 runs, and 10 of them were on that same line.

Newcomb has a wide main run and a side “woodsy” run. From the top, on a clear day, there’s a beautiful view of the High Peaks off to the North.

An interesting thing about the complicated fall line, I saw advanced beginners riding up to the mid-station and then skiing across the wide trail, and inventive way to create some very gentle terrain.

I met one other liftie, a high school age girl, she told me she was a senior. She had a Newcomb Women’s Basketball shirt on, and I asked her about it: “How’s the team this year?” She told me they were very good, and she was quite proud of the team’s performance in Section 7.

After my trip to the top, I stopped in at the at the summit shack, where Debbie was stationed, and asked her about the Newcomb school. If you live up here you know, every school system is doing what they can to continue to function with the declining enrollment that characterizes north country schools.

Debbie told me, the Newcomb school system has 40 total students, pre-K through 12. There is at least one child in every grade, and each teacher teaches two grades at once, for example 1st and 2nd grade, trying to customize the curriculum to each student. Those numbers alone illustrate the community spirit required to keep the schools open and independent.

Debbie is learning to crochet, and when no one is on the line she picks it up and adds a stitch. I was the last skier to leave at 3:15 and they shut it down before I was out of the parking lot, so I guess I skied bell-to-bell. Nice day.