Sue Catana, Ski Hickory manager

Ski season is also ski film season, when any number of movies about the sport are released. This may conjure images of Warren Miller, or films about 20-something free skiers who conquer remote mountains or perform evermore challenging and outrageous stunts.

But I recently attended a film that spoke to the history as well as the present of skiing.

“Reviving the Legend” is a half-hour documentary about efforts to bring lift-served skiing back to Ski Hickory, a small area near the Adirondacks’ Gore Mountain.

The enthusiasts who attended the premier of the movie, at an historic theater in Hudson Falls, N.Y., was filled not just with Boomers but some of their parents and grandkids as well – many of them fans and some stockholders in this small resort.

Hickory 16 months ago had a brief viral moment online that led to production of the movie.

It all started when operators of the ski center, notably Manager Sue Catana, took to Facebook saying they needed to raise $38,000 for insurance in order to open for the 2023-24 ski season.
Without that, state lift inspectors wouldn’t come and certify Hickory’s aged poma-lifts and t-bar for operation.

Hickory had been closed since 2016. Without a snowmaking system, there weren’t enough skiable days to make the place profitable. While it is owned by a group of shareholders whose families helped start the area in the 1940s and 50s, Hickory had become something akin to a club.

The Albany Times Union newspaper and several ski-focused social media sites picked up the call for help. Local devotees began contributing and buying season ski passes. (Full disclosure, I am the retired ski writer for the Times Union who wrote the story and am interviewed briefly in the film).

Most notably, operators of the Unofficial Networks ski site and of the Indy Pass multi-mountain pass chipped in more than $30,000 needed to pay Hickory’s insurance bill.

News that Hickory’s lifts would be spinning elicited cheers from the area’s fans, many of whom were descendants of the area’s founders, who live in and around the Southern Adirondack communities of Warrensburg, Glens Falls and Lake George.

That community spirit caught the eye of Kingston-based cinematographer Ian McGrew who started researching Hickory’s history and decided to produce a short documentary. He interviewed players like Catana and others.

McGrew drew on archival footage of the ski resort in better times when it was bustling with weekend visitors from the surrounding  area. He also weaved in photos  and interviews to portray the area past and present.
Hickory in many ways represents the way skiing in the Adirondacks used to be, before the technological revolutions in snowmaking, high speed chairlifts, along with the corporatization and convenience of skiing that characterizes so much of the sport today.

The place is a proud throwback. In addition to the all-natural snow conditions skiers rely on poma lifts and t-bars for uphill travel. In fact segments of the movie, and testimony from longtime skiers after the viewing, pointed how youngsters could, with the proper combination of technique and intestinal fortitude, get “launched” several feet off the ground when riding the poma.

With a 1,200-foot vertical rise, Hickory can also satisfy hardcore skiers as the upper trails are narrow, steep and twisty providing plenty of challenge. The base lodge is simple but inviting with a 60s-era round fireplace in the middle. The spot’s mom-and-pop nature also comes through in the film, with Catana, now 76,  describing how she did everything from taking lift tickets to answering the phone and making vats of chili hours before the lifts opened.

Her father Hans Winbauer helped build the area after WWII. He served in the 10th Mountain Division U.S. Army ski troopers who battled the Axis forces in the war.

After returning home, some of these veterans went on to build what became mega resorts in the U.S. including Vail.

Hickory, though, stayed true to its small-town club-like roots and McGrew’s film depicts families of skiers, with little kids making their first turns at the resort.

He plans to enter “Reviving the Legend” in several outdoor and film genre competitions next year and plans to find an online outlet for it in the near future.

As for Hickory, they were hoping to open in late February, once state inspectors approve their surface lifts.
When they open tickets are free for those 17 and under, $70 for adults and $45 for those 70 and over. Hickory is located on 43 Hickory Hill Road, Warrensburg, N.Y.

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Rick Karlin

A retired newspaperman, Rick Karlin was most recently the acting business editor for the Albany, NY, Times Union. He has also covered state government, the environment and energy development as well as the ski industry. He previously worked in Maine and in Vail and Glenwood Springs, Colorado, where he covered the tourism and mining industries among other topics. In addition to freelance writing, he is a certified ski instructor at the Windham Mountain Club in the Catskills and earlier in his life worked as an instructor at Keystone, Colorado. He has also served as a volunteer with the Vail Mountain Rescue Group.

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