Ask any ski writer.
   Tours of new buildings at ski areas are usually, well, uneventful.
   “This is nice. Wow, a cafeteria. Cool rental shop. Love the ticket windows. Can we go ski now?”
   A recent walk through the new Northwoods Lodge at Gore Mountain was different.
   Gore Mountain general manager Mike Pratt was our tour director, and he was obviously proud of what had been done to an old gondola building that had been a big boxy eyesore since the lift was shutdown in 1999.
   To loosely quote an old song, they could have torn the gondola building down, and put up a parking lot.
   Instead, they dramatically changed its appearance, and put it to good use.
   It is now an attractive, multiuse structure housing the Snow Sports School desk, ski and snowboard rentals, Kids Klub Children’s Program, Bear Cub Den Daycare Center and group sales, all formerly taking up space in the main base lodge.
   The opening of the Northwoods Lodge means added convenience to families, especially to those looking for rentals and an easy dropoff of their kids.
   Now, patrons can enter the Northwoods Lodge directly from the parking lot, rent their equipment, sign up for lessons, put their children in daycare and step right out to ski or ride. Right off the new lodge is the Beat Cub Run trail, re-graded this season to make it easier for beginning riders and skiers. The gentle slope has two lifts, one a slow-moving poma and the other a 100-foot conveyer lift for small children.
   The building was constructed in partnership with Lincoln Logs Ltd., a national company with corporate headquarters in Chestertown. As a result, it has that cozy, Adirondack Great Camp look on the outside. And if you don’t believe it was once a gondola building, just step inside.
   Some of the original beams, iron girders, weathered siding and big chunks of the lift mechanism were left in place and/or incorporated into the new construction to preserve a bit of history. And it is a history worth preserving. Gore’s “Old Red Gondola” (replaced by the Northwoods Gondola in 1999) was the only gondola in New York state when it was installed in 1968, and it remained the only one for 30 years.
   Some of the old red gondolas were cut in half, and are now serving as tables in the Tannery Pub, which is located in the base lodge. Sixty-five percent of the gondola building’s walls, floors and roof were retained or used in other places, so there was a minimum of wasted material during the conversion.
   With the Northwoods Lodge up and running, skiers and riders are finding more elbow room in the base lodge.
   Some 7,500 square feet of space in the larger building has been remodeled, meaning there is more seating, lockers, storage space and hooks to hang stuff on.
   Gore is already a sprawling resort with plenty of terrain for all levels of skiers and riders, but Emily Stanton, the mountain’s marketing manager, described some big plans for next season. She said a whole new trail complex, Burnt Ridge Mountain, should be open one year from now. Burnt Ridge will include five new trails in the intermediate/expert range with a total length of about six miles. The new runs will be serviced by a high speed quad.
    In the afternoon we headed down to the Village Slope at North Creek where a new triple chairlift, the “Village Chair,” was officially opened. The new triple services some very gentle terrain at the bottom of what once was the North Creek Ski Bowl.
   Talk about skiing history.
   The old Ski Bowl, which dated to the mid-1930’s, was where people skied when they rode from Schenectady on the snow train. A 3,000-foot T-bar installed in 1946 serviced three main trails called the Oak Ridge, the Ridge and the Hudson. The Hudson, with its steep “headwall” right next to the T-bar lift line, was one of the best known racing trails in the East.
   Speakers at the short ceremony were Pratt, Olympic Regional Development Authority vice president Jeff Byrne, state senator Betty Little and Johnsburg town supervisor Sterling Goodspeed. First up on the new fixed-grip lift were Bob and Kelly Nessle. Bob Nessle once managed the Ski Bowl. His wife now works in the racing department at Gore.
   The original trails and the T-bar lift line are all grown over now but, if all goes as planned, a new chairlift will go up near the old T-bar and new Ski Bowl trails will be cut. And, sometime in the future, it will be possible to ski from the top of the North Creek Ski Bowl, over to Burnt Ridge Mountain and the trails to Gore Mountain.
   The North Creek Ski Bowl is owned by the town of Johnsburg and operated by Gore Mountain. In 2000, the state legislature passed an amendment to ORDA’s charter, allowing the authority to expand its operation at Gore to include management of the North Creek Ski Bowl. The Ski Bowl also includes a tubing area with several 800-foot-long, lift-serviced chutes, lighting for night tubing/skiing and a terrain park with a half-pipe.
   The facility will operate during weekends and holiday periods from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. During non-holiday weeks it will operate Thursdays and Fridays from 3:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

XMAS SUPERS

    Gore Mountain hosted two USSA Christmas super-G races last weekend and several area competitors, all skiing for Gore, had top-10 finishes. In the first race, Melissa Dombroski of Clifton Park and Gore Mountain was fifth and Kelly Blackhurst of North Creek was sixth. In the boys’ race, Paul Dreyer of Saratoga Springs was sixth.
   In the second race, Blackhurst and Dombroski tied for eighth. Will Dreyer was seventh on the second day, with his twin brother, Paul, finishing eighth.
   The field included skiers from Whiteface Mountain, Northwood School, National Sports Academy, Hunter Mountain, Windham Mountain, West Mountain, Bristol Mountain, Labrador Mountain, Snow Ridge, Jiminy Peak, Mass., and Pennsylvania.