Afew years ago, I hiked up a trail behind the Wilmington reservoir and came accross the lift line for Marble Mt. It was way over towards W'ton so it wasn't close to Whiteface. I heard/read a story that when the state decided to develop a ski area, the choice was between Marcy and Whiteface and they chose Whiteface cuz it was already "developed" with the rd and the castle. Didn't hear Marble mt mentioned even tho they had a lodge (now rebuilt as weather/other). I guess the decision had to do with vertical drop and terrain. I'll check with somebody with a few more years one me.

Marcy wouldn't have been too good a choice for many reasons. Whiteface was probably the best choice, overall.

I found some more information regarding the original Whiteface Ski Area in James Burnside's Exploring the 46 Adirondack High Peaks. Originally, runs ran down a northern face of Marble Mountain. Snow at that location/elevation was inconsistent so some trails were cut up at a higher elevation on Lookout Mtn. extending to Esther and the shoulder of Whiteface. One of the reasons the area was abandoned was due to high winds that scoured the terrain, as evidenced by the number of "flag" trees.

My dad has always been interested in the "lost" ski areas of NE and the ADKs... I was curious about Marble Mountain and went out searching for some more info... The site below doesn't have Marble information yet, but maybe in the future.

http://www.nelsap.org/ny/ny.html

-ADKSara

I'm not familiar with the written history of Whiteface. Whiteface ski area has a nice pictoral layout throughout the main loj. The stairwell going up to the admin offices has some large photos, so does the new coffee shop. I would imagine that the new Adirondack Museum will have some history when it opens.

So how much of this expansion talk is reality? I haven't seen anyone talk about timeframes or whether there is a solid, approved proposal with the APA. I would love to see additional lift-serviced terrain on WF. I just am not clear how ORDA has permission to embark on this project.

What is the most likely location of a new lift servicing this area? From the top of Face Lift, there is a wooded valley looking up to the right that I believe is the proposed expansion area. Am I right?

Hey guys, I've always been interested in lost ski areas, mostly for the hopes of finding some cool backcountry runs that i could hike to, so i've done considerable research into marble mountain. Heres the deal as far as i know:

Marble mountain was originally developed sometime in the late 30's, prior to that all skiing was done by a sno cat driving up the whiteface memorial highway and dropping skiers off, so marble mountain was the first real established area (along with some much smaller rope tows, i believe one was in saranac) Anyway, the state started looking into developing a bigger area in the early 50's and they did Tests on where snow accumulated most between marble, whiteface, and i believe marcy was involved as well, but was pulled out of the running early based on accesibility issues. Anyway, Whiteface won over marble and lookout based on snowfall, and the state abandoned marble once what we now know of as whiteface was opened in 1956.

I hope all my dates are right, i read the article quite a while ago

This is all very interesting. So, if Whiteface wasn't developed until the 50s, where were the ski events in the Olympics?

levolorman wrote:

This is all very interesting. So, if Whiteface wasn't developed until the 50s, where were the ski events in the Olympics?

There weren't any alpine ski events in the 32 olympics.