Ok...so who hear has heard of this one? <BR> <BR>Oak Mountain, located in Speculator, NY is a classic. A true classic. It operates with no snowmaking, no chairlifts, and one packer. Its also a little hard to get to...but thankfully, NY roads have a speed limit of 55mph...so even when you're not on the highway, you can go fast. Its about 1hr 15min from where I live near Lake George. <BR> <BR>The area operates with 3 t-bars, including a Constam Model...from the mid 1940's. Must be one of the oldest operating lifts in the country. Constam made other T-bars like Cannon's, Pico's, and Hogback's. <BR> <BR>From the main long T-bar, 2 main wide, low intermediate routes send less advanced skiers to the base. From these two runs, several narrow trails, with a few brief drops and many turns helped keep things interesting. <BR> <BR>Another T-bar (which wasn't open) gives similar, but shorter skiing, with one wide bumped up run. A beginner T-bar rounds out the area which serves a wide slope. <BR> <BR>Ticket prices were awesome, just $16 for a full day. Why can't more of these areas be around? Thats less than a 1/3 of larger areas! <BR> <BR>Conditions were a little weird at first, a very firm "packed" snow (not packed powder, but machine packed, not groomed) with balls of frozen snow. This softened by midday once some skiers had ground it up. <BR> <BR>Base lodge was cozy, with great prices on food...$1.50 cheesburgers, $1.00 fries, $1.00 drinks...about 1/3 of larger areas for the same food! <BR> <BR>To see a Terraserver picture of this area, check out this link: <BR> <BR><A HREF="http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com/image.asp?S=11&T=1&X=1379&Y=12046&Z=18&W=2" TARGET="_top">http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com/image.asp?S=11&T=1&X=1379&Y=12046&Z=18&W=2</A> <BR> <BR>I'd recommend this area to try out if you're wondering what it was like to ski about 45 years ago, or if you'd want to save some big bucks. Areas like this give modern skiers an example of what it was like at many closed ski areas on my website, http://www.nelsap.org.
Oak Mountain, NY 1/21/01
- Thread starter nelsap
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