Whiteface Lodge Is a Winter Wonderland in the Heart of the Adirondacks

You know that particularly New York City-centric version of winter malaise? When Manhattan is spitting down with freezing rain—or simply freezing in that snowless purgatory of city winters? Head just a few hours upstate to Lake Placid, and you can live out a bucolic winter dream of pond skating, giant firs draped in thick lashes of pure white powder, and thousands of vertical feet of downhill skiing up above it all. You’re still in New York, technically, but it feels like you’ve entered another dimension of it—almost 19th-century in mood and atmosphere. (Driving from the city and need a halfway hotel for a quick, chic stay? The Adelphi in Saratoga is newly renovated and perfectly located.) It’s more than an Adirondacks vibe up here: You’re in the midst of the 6.1-million acre Adirondack Park, roughly continuous with the area of the Adirondack Mountains. And it’s heaven. 

If you know about Lake Placid, it’s likely because it was home to the Winter Olympics in 1932 and again in 1980—along with Innsbruck and St. Moritz, it’s one of the only cities to host the Winter Games twice. Along the way, it transformed itself from a sleepy hamlet (the population is still barely over 2,000) to a world-class winter sports destination. Odd trivia: A lot of that early heavy lifting in terms of sports and tourism infrastructure was done by Melvin Dewey, the man who invented the Dewey Decimal System and later devoted himself to putting the town on the map. (Bonus trivia: Lana Del Rey grew up here.)

Drive down Main Street and you can’t miss the spiritual heart of the whole operation: Herb Brooks Arena. In 1980, it was the site of one of the most legendary moments in American sports history, the so-called Miracle On Ice, when a ragtag group of American amateurs and college students defeated the feared and fearsome Soviet professional team en route to securing the Cinderella-story gold medal. Walk into the building at virtually any moment of the day and you’ll see middle-aged men and their families standing in the Observation Deck looking out silently (and occasionally tearfully) at the ice.

But we’re here to do stuff—to create memories, not relive them—so my family and I checked in at the nearby Whiteface Lodge, just outside the hustle-bustle of the main drag. While the rustic but still imposing structure is modeled on the Great Camps built in the Adirondacks by prominent families in the late 1900s, it actually only dates to 2005. (The original owner was, perhaps inevitably, a member of the American Olympic luge team.) Inside, more timber, more Great Rooms, and a welcoming suite, all of it reminiscent of either Yellowstone, Twin Peaks, L.L.Bean, or Teddy Roosevelt, depending on your preferred cultural references.