Drumlins: Syracuse’s Lost Ski Hill

Mention the word “drumlin” to most people and the response will at best be a blank stare.

In Syracuse, however, it’s a familiar geological term describing the long, rounded hills left behind by glaciers during the last Ice Age that shape much of the region’s landscape.

Drumlins Country Club ski hill

Drumlins aren’t unique to that part of the state (they’re found throughout New England and the Upper Midwest); however, conveniently for this article, the term also lends its name to a well-known country club in the area with two golf courses — one public, one private — and a distinctive 1920s clubhouse.

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Suicide Six Pilgrimage

The second coolest thing about Suicide Six is it’s name. Suicide Six. It sounds gnarly and dangerous. According to legend, it got its name when the original owner was contemplating moving his rope tow from a smaller, low pitch parcel across the road. Somebody looked at the steep face of hill number six and declared that trying to ski it would be suicide. That’s a great story.

Suicide Six

The coolest thing about Suicide Six is that it’s where lift served skiing began in the United States, all the way back in the nineteen thirties. It’s the site where the engine from a Model T Ford was re-engineered into a rope tow for the first time – in the United States at least.

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The Ski Wing Murders

I learned about the Ski Wing Murders in a roundabout way. This summer we’ve been working on the NYSkiBlog Guide, our directory of all kinds of historical data. One goal is to make progress on our Western NY Ski Areas section during this offseason.

In the process, we’ve come across information about some great looking NY ski areas that are now gone. Places with Holiday Valley vertical and more than 100 inches of snow in an average year. This peaked our curiosity.

This story is about a NY ski area that was best known as Ski Wing, even though the area had three different names from 1958 to 1993. The story is both tragic and incredible.
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