The Downstate NY Blog

Having spent a good deal of my life on skis, I was always aware of that hole in my resume: nordic skiing. I resolved to fix it this season, with several opportunities for guiding on my winter calendar. I was looking forward to this trip, but I must admit, as an addicted downhiller, at first, I found it difficult to get excited for a nordic day when there was fresh pow in the mountains.

I’m familiar with Fahnestock Winter Park. I’d passed it so many times, both underneath it on Route 9, to get to the more popular Breakneck Ridge, and through it on the Taconic State Parkway.  I have hiked there many times and the trails are often empty.  The AT runs right through the park on its way to Connecticut, which in my mind, gives the place a little more character.

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I wasn’t around for the very beginning of skiing at Lake Minnewaska. But in 1980 or ‘81, when my best friends introduced me to skiing, they dragged me to Lake Minnewaska on a wicked cold January day. Back then, you had to arrive bright and early. The parking lot would fill up quickly and you were out of luck. “Don’t go, it’s too popular.”

The lodge was in the old Wildmere Hotel. Perched on a cliff overlooking Lake Minnewaska, Wildmere had been a graceful example of the grand nineteenth-century wood frame resort hotel. But by 1980, it was a tumbledown shadow of its former self. It had been closed to lodgers, most of the furnishings auctioned off. Pieces of old furniture blocked staircases because the upper floors were unsafe.

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