As the winter season approaches and the snowflakes begin to flurry down, we all look forward to bundling up and embarking on a winter getaway for some skiing and snowboarding…that is until we see how much it costs. And considering NYC is already one of the most expensive cities in the world we can’t exactly be shelling out hundreds of dollars just to shred the slopes.
With that being said, New York is home to many ski resorts filled with trails, lodging, and everything you need for that perfect winter trip. And believe it or not one of those ski resorts is actually the most affordable one in the country–and it’s also the biggest one in the state with a vertical drop of 2,537 feet!
Vacation property rental company HomeToGo recently crunched the numbers when it came to ski resort accommodation prices alongside lift pass rates to determine the most affordable U.S. resorts for ski vacations, and New York’s Gore Mountain was awarded the top spot.
Nestled in the Adirondacks in the small town of North Creek in Warren County, Gore is home to 115 trails. To take a trip down memory lane, the resort’s first snow train carried 378 winter enthusiasts to the mountain in 1934 for a round-trip fare of just $1.50–imagine spending that little today?! Even more, the state’s first gondola was installed at Gore Mountain in 1967, and it remained New York’s only gondola until 1999.
Gore Mountain’s lift ticket price came out to $107 per day for an adult, $81.15 cheaper than the average daily cost of a lift ticket at resorts included in the survey, which came in at $188.15. Gore’s cost of a night in a vacation rental came in at $88.02 per person per night, much cheaper than the median cost for a vacation rental which was $164.41.
Therefore, those who hit the slopes at Gore will spend a total of $195.02 per day for both the lift ticket and a night in a vacation rental–less than what they’d spend at any of the other resorts in the ranking. That makes for quite the cost-conscious skier! It makes sense why Gore is known as the premier snow sports experience in the Northeast!
Beyond Gore Mountain, Whiteface Mountain, which is further north near Lake Placid, and Belleayre Mountain, located in the Catskills, were named as other affordable New York options.
The top ten most affordable ski resorts in the U.S. are as follows:
1. Gore Mountain, New York
2. Mount Baker, Washington
3. Whitefish, Montana
4. Sugarloaf, Maine
5. Ski Santa Fe, New Mexico
6. Sunday River, Maine
7. Purgatory, Colo.
8. Jay Peak, Vermont
9. Angel Fire, New Mexico
10. Mount Bachelor, Oregon