Cascade XC: New Owner Prepares for Winter

With the recent purchase of Cascade XC, there’s a palpable stoke in the Tri-Lakes ski community. Ever since the sale of the ski center by the Adirondack Mountain Club, people have been talking. Will it open this winter? What’s going on with the trails and the lodge?

Cascade Ski Center
Cascade Ski Center

My first exposure to Cascade XC was in the late 1990s. My wife and I drove to Mt van Hoevenberg over the Saint Lawrence Winter Carnival weekend. Organizers cancelled Saturday’s races because the temperature was way below the FIS legal limit. So cold, in fact, that the pipes in the old lodge froze solid.

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Dewey Mountain Springs Eternal

If you don’t like the weather in the north country, just wait 20 minutes.

Recently I went for a walk on Dewey Mountain. A few years back, I wrote about skiing at Dewey, my local right here in Saranac Lake — OK, it’s just outside the village, technically in Harrietstown. But let’s not quibble over details.

Dewey Mountain Trail Map

After knocking back an espresso at Origin Coffee, I drove over to Dewey. Three months post knee replacement, running is off the table and it ain’t coming back. It’s too hard on the prosthesis, and my surgeon bluntly told me, if you come back in, like, 8 years, and the prosthesis is messed up from running, I’ll probably decline to do another surgery.

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Cross-Country World Cup Finals in Lake Placid

“This is a proper ski race,” one British athlete said to me in the mixed zone.

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” my editor warned me.

And I got two scoops this week! I’m almost a real reporter! We’ll get to that later.

As we approached the World Cup finals weekend in Lake Placid, Nordic Insights, another news outlet I write for, made plans to cover the action. Being local, I’d be boots on the ground all weekend. My colleague Adele would come from Yale University on Saturday. I’d write up all the men’s races. Adele and Gavin, my editor, would write the women’s races.

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