By Paul Post
Co-owners Spencer and Sara Montgomery, and financial backers, have spent nearly $20 million on capital upgrades since purchasing West Mountain 10 years ago.
In preparation for this winter they’ve added a $500,000 Winch Cat to the large fleet of grooming machines and covered base lodge floors with safe, clean carpeting.
But the biggest investment is in personnel with a new food and beverage director, rental shop manager, snow sports person, full-time ski tuner and a larger, more skilled snowmaking crew.
“It feels like we’re getting some really good professional people in here,” Spencer Montgomery said. “Hiring has been really tough the past three years. Now we’ve got a good overnight snowmaking crew. Really robust, hardworking guys. That makes all the difference because nights are when you get all your production. Someone always has to be watching the pumps, pressure and guns.”
“Hiring and mild weather were very challenging last year,” he said. “We got through it and this year feels good. We’re looking forward to an awesome season.”
The Queensbury resort plans a Dec. 16 opening to get all the kinks out and be ready for Christmas week.
One of West Mountain’s biggest economic impacts is a $2 million annual payroll. It employs 350 people at peak times and has a full-time, year-round staff of 30.
“We try to provide hourly and salaried full-time positions now so we don’t lose people in the off-season and then have to try to find good people again,” Montgomery said.
The center sells about 100,000 lift tickets, but a recent study estimates that another 150,000 people such as parents watching ski races, and guests at West Mountain’s summer attractions (ropes course, children’s camp), come on the property each year. The racing program is led by Thomas Vonn, who coached his wife Lindsey to an Olympic gold medal, and former World Cup racer Steve Lathrop.
While anticipating a strong winter season, the Montgomerys are eagerly awaiting development of a roughly $200 million project that would make West Mountain one of upstate New York’s only true ski-and-stay resorts.
Plans call for a 60-80 room hotel in a village-type setting with a full-service ski store, grocery market, spa, athletic club, coffee shop and restaurant surrounding a new high-speed chairlift, all located near the existing Northwest base lodge. Additional phases working up the mountain would include condominiums, timeshares and custom-built, single-family homes.
The Montgomerys hope to submit a 250-page Planned Recreational Development proposal to the town board in January. Ultimate approval must come from the town planning board following extensive review.
“The earliest groundbreaking would be fall of 2024,” Montgomery said. “We’d probably start with the hotel and conference center. It’s complex because there’s a lot of moving parts. Some people from Glens Falls and Queensbury, such as empty-nesters, will want to downsize, get a nice condo and live in a resort-style development. It’s a real lifestyle type of thing. Then there’s the tourism element where people buy a condo or timeshare they can rent out when not using it.”
The business model hinges on being able to siphon off even a small percent of the many downstate residents who pass through Warren County en route to Vermont ski resorts each winter. By having a hotel, guests could unpack their bags and ski without ever having to leave the property.
“You can have a full resort experience similar to Stratton Village,” Montgomery said.
Gore Mountain in North Creek opened Thanksgiving Weekend and with more than a foot of fresh snow had over a dozen trails open to the top of Bear Mountain where the gondola unloads, heading into mid-December. Summit trails will open as the season progresses.
Gore, with four peaks and seven separate areas, has the most terrain of any ski center in the state. A new conveyor-load quad near the base is twice as long as the Bear Cub Poma Lift it replaces, allowing people to access more trails. “It’s great for beginners, first-timers and folks getting back on the mountain for a quick little warm-up run,” Marketing Manager Julia Johnson said. In addition, Gore has also upgraded many of its tower snowmaking guns.
“We add more every year,” she said. “They’re high efficiency, low energy guns that put out a lot more snow, a lot faster. They’re state-of-the -art so they can be turned on automatically and simultaneously. Crews can turn on a whole trail all at once. And they go directly into pipes, there are no hoses so crews don’t have to connect everything. They just spin out the towers and they’re ready to go.”
Looking ahead, a spring groundbreaking is expected for the North Creek Ski Bowl Lodge, a new Hudson chairlift, and zip coaster. The lift is projected to be available for the 2024-25 ski season and the completion of the lodge is slated for 2025.
The new lodge, which replaces the historic lodge destroyed by fire in 1999, will be an 18,300-square-foot facility with a restaurant and two levels of patios with slopeside views. The lodge is positioned to become a popular destination for additional summer activities. The innovative zip coaster will be a unique attraction that combines the features of a zipline and rail system.
A recent economic impact study said Gore Mountain generated $31.3 million in direct spending in fiscal year 2022-2023.
“The Ski Bowl project will provide a year-round boost to the business community of North Creek,” Johnsburg Supervisor Mark Smith said.
This winter, Gore is marking the 90th anniversary of the first-ever Snow Train that carried 378 skiers from Schenectady to North Creek in March 1934, ushering in a whole new era of winter tourism. Business owners, historians and ski enthusiasts are commemorating this historic event with a variety of season-long events such as walking history tours, screenings of vintage films, presentations, concerts, artwork exhibitions, fun races and commemorative giveaways.
For information and an event listing go to: www.tannerypond.org.
At Whiteface, crews have installed a new detachable quad lift from the Bear Den Learning Center to a point just beyond the Legacy Lodge at mid-station. It will help skiers and riders at the Bear Den access additional beginner and intermediate terrain while also providing access to upper mountain lifts and advanced terrain.
This innovative lift, named The Notch, is the only one of its kind in the East. Because it’s actually two lifts in one that operate together seamlessly, riders can unload onto the Boreen trail or continue farther upward to access other trails and the Legacy Lodge.
This summer, crews added 150 new high-efficiency snow guns to the mountain’s powerful snowmaking system, which last year allowed Whiteface to have summit-to-base skiing for the first time ever on opening day.
Two new Pisten Bully 600W cats have been added to the grooming fleet and a power line on the Victoria trail has been buried to remove it from view and keep it from being a potential obstacle to grooming equipment.