Short of snow, cash, smaller ski areas remain shuttered

Temperatures are cold and the season is in full swing, but two small, storied Adirondack ski centers remain closed this winter as they struggle with a lack of snowmaking capacity and insufficient cash.

Operators of Hickory point to rising insurance costs and government regulation, saying on their Facebook page that "Hickory simply cannot sell enough lift tickets (even in the best of winters) to cover the rising costs of overhead."

Farther north, Big Tupper is the centerpiece of a proposed real estate development, known as the Adirondack Club and Resort, which envisions more than 600 cabins, condominium units and luxury "great camps" on 6,000 acres around the slopes.

Undeterred by the slow progress of real estate development, a group of Tupper Lake-area residents got together in 2009 and ran the ski lifts on a volunteer basis.

Big Tupper was also closed during the 2012-13 season but it got a financial boost when Paramount Pictures rented the area to film a scene for their "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie.

[...] most of the 240 generally smaller ski areas that have closed across the country since the late 1960s have done so because they had no snowmaking, noted Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association, a Colorado-based trade group.

Hickory dates to the 1940s when winter sports enthusiasts including GE employees from the Schenectady area built it and sold stock to fellow skiers.