North Creek, NY – Gore Mountain, in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York, is making its most dramatic improvement in snowmaking coverage this year since the Hudson River was first tapped as a snowmaking source in 1996.
A huge acquisition of 130 new high-efficiency tower guns will be added to Gore Mountain’s inventory this winter. These 30-foot guns will be concentrated not only on Gore Mountain’s core terrain of trails such as Sunway, Otter Slide, Sleighride, 3B, and Quicksilver, but also on newer terrain offerings including the Wild Air Terrain Park and Burnt Ridge Mountain’s expert Sagamore trail. In addition, the purchase of 30 shorter 10-foot guns has been prioritized, with those to be reserved for Gore Mountain’s signature Showcase trail. The shorter length of these guns facilitates their use for Showcase’s location, which is on the high-speed Adirondack Express lift line.
The new snowgun supply will allow Gore to relocate some of its existing tower gun inventory to the North Side, to family-friendly cruising trails including Pete Gay and Sleeping Bear. New fan gun outlets for the base area Arena trail will provide powerful snowmaking capabilities in that location, while allowing ground guns that were previously used there and on the North Side to move to Gore Mountain’s summit trails more quickly.
“With all the terrain expansion we’ve had, you need real cooperation from Mother Nature to get the entire mountain open by mid-January,” says Mark D’Amico, a regular Gore Mountain skier and founder of nyskiblog.com. “Gore will be taking it’s game up a notch.”
All told, Gore’s investment in new snow guns this year will cost more than a half million dollars. A grant from National Grid covers half the cost, with the remaining funds coming from the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA) which operates Gore. According to Gore Mountain’s general manager, Mike Pratt, the new guns will allow the ski area to nearly double its snowmaking output.
Also, skiers and riders can look forward to the unveiling of the new natural Hudson trail and Hudson glades on Little Gore Mountain, which are located north of the new Hudson Chair’s lift line. The Hudson Chair, which opened in January 2011, completed Gore Mountain’s interconnect with the historic North Creek Ski Bowl.
A significant extension of the new lower-mountain Chatterbox Glades all the way to the 3B trail is also presently underway. The purchase of a new Pisten Bulley groomer just five months ago will also enhance the ski area’s grooming capability.
Gore’s improvements this year will not take place just on the mountain. The Tannery Pub & Restaurant is being completely renovated and will feature an-all new deck to seat over 100, an updated kitchen, reconfigured seating, improved menu options, and silverware and flatware replacing disposable plates and utensils. A new outdoor grill on the north side of the sundeck will offer convenience foods and specialty items for breakfast, lunch, and apres-ski and will replace the patio barbeque currently used. Guests should also look for new single-stream recycling.
Another base area improvement will be a new patio at snow grade level placed off of the locker room at the lower level of the Base Lodge, which will provide a safe and convenient entry and exit for guests at that location.