North Creek, New York · Since 1934

Ride up, and slide down into North Creek.

In 1934 a committee of skiers talked the Delaware & Hudson into running a train to a village of six hundred people, because none of them owned a car. Four hundred came on the first one. Ninety years later we're rebuilding the bottom of that run — a place to work, a distillery, and a courtyard to stand around a fire in.

Five skiers in vintage red, green, blue and yellow ski wear walking into town with skis over their shoulders

The short version

Ride up, slide down.

It was the instruction on the platform in 1934, and it is still the whole idea. The mountain has never been the problem here. Getting people to slide to downtown North Creek is.

Skiers gathered around a hot dog stand on the slope at the North Creek Ski Bowl in the 1930s, with the Adirondack range behind them
“Sunshine, Mountain Air and Hotdogs at North Creek, N.Y.” — the Ski Bowl in the snow train years.
  1. 1932

    The Olympics that started it

    Lake Placid hosted the Winter Games and the Adirondacks caught winter-sports fever. North Creek locals came home and started cutting ski trails on Gore. A group watching from Heart Lake formed the Snow Train Committee, with one goal: make a mountain reachable for people who didn't own a car.

  2. 1934
    –1942

    The snow train

    March 4th, 1934. The Delaware & Hudson ran the first Snow Train in the country from Schenectady to the North Creek depot — in at 10:30 in the morning, nearly four hundred skiers aboard, a dollar fifty round trip. By 1936 they were leaving Grand Central after midnight: ski two days, back at your desk Monday. Local trucks hauled everyone up to the trails and they skied back into the village to catch the train home. Ride up, slide down. It filled the hotels straight through the Depression, and the war took the locomotives.

  3. 1964

    The mountain moves

    New York State opened the current Gore Mountain outside the village. Main Street kept the depot, the name, and progressively less of the traffic.

  4. 2011

    The Ski Bowl reconnects

    The original hill was stitched back onto Gore. For the first time in decades you could ski from the summit to the edge of the village again. The run came back before the town did.

  5. Now

    The bottom of the run

    Four buildings on Main Street and Ordway Lane. A coworking space that's open, two lofts, a distillery and a winter courtyard that aren't yet. The 1936 customer left Grand Central after midnight to ski two days and be back for Monday. We are building for exactly that person, ninety years later.

Getting here

Four hours from Manhattan. Six hundred people.

North Creek sits in the southeastern Adirondacks on the Hudson, at the foot of Gore Mountain. It is not a resort town and we're not trying to make it one.

From New York City
≈ 4 hours by car, I-87 to Exit 23
From Albany
≈ 1 hour 15 minutes north
Gore Mountain
5 minutes — 107 trails, 2,537 ft vertical
North Creek Ski Bowl
60 seconds — the original 1934 Ski Bowl and the brand new lodge