ADKskier;c-70202 wrotejustkeepmovingne;c-70172 wroteADKskier;c-70168 wroteski_it;c-69830 wroteIDK Old Forge is pretty pristine. Never knew about the restrictions on ski areas. Interesting.
McCauley actually had plans and trails cut in the connecting valley to expand to another peak in the late 90s. There was a large picture in the base lodge with the future expansion on it and current terrain. Not sure if it was an APA thing or the town decided against it. McCauley is owned by the Town Of Webb but also under APA jurisdiction like everything inside the Blue Line.
Wasn't McCauley connected to Maple Ridge at a time, too?
no, they were never connected. There's a pond and flat area between the two places. McCauley base is actually almost the same elevation as town.
Fair enough. I think I'm miss-understanding Joshua's writing on his Lost New York page for Maple Ridge stating "During the forties and fifties, by using two rope tows, a common sense interconnection was achieved. Located behind the Town of Webb Central Schools, access to McCauley Mountain was made easier." It wouldn't be possible for the two areas to be connected at that time because McCauley wasn't founded until 1958.
That being said... I was curious, so I looked at some aerial imagery from 1953, and to my surprise, there were a couple trails going from the top of the ski area slightly down the back, then up to the top of the ~1980' peak of Maple Ridge... and then continuing down the BACK of the it to the base of McCauley Mountain at around ~1770'. Topo maps of the area also confirm there were tows in these locations, showing them until at least 1970 (despite the fact that these areas had grown in quite a bit by then).
I'm not sure what the *point* of this interconnect was considering there wasn't anything on McCauley yet. That being said, you're totally right in that the ski areas were never connected, though the physical mountains themselves were.
Editing: Flipped through my copy of Lost Ski Areas of the Southern Adirondacks... Yep, that confirms it. 1 tow across the flats and back up to the far summit, 1 tow up the back side of Maple Ridge. That backside was called Hells Gate Slalom Slope, specifically for races and training...discontinued in the early to mid 1950s, just a few years short of *actually* being an interconnect with McCauley Mt. Apparently the engine and some of the pieces of the tow remain in the woods there. So we have our mystery solved - the point was not to connect the physical mountains or ski areas at all, it just happened to.
