By Steve Bergsman
The Lake Placid paradoxes are numerous: The town, which can be found in the Adirondack Park region of upstate New York, is world-famous for having hosted two winter Olympics, one of only three locations around the globe to have doubled-down on Olympics fever (the others were St. Moritz, Switzerland, and Innsbruck, Austria), yet its busy tourist season is the summer.
About 70 percent of Lake Placid's tourists arrive in warmer weather, despite the region boasting an Olympic ski mountain, Olympic skating oval and, of course, the ice rink where the greatest American hockey victory took place, the Miracle on Ice, when the United States upset the mighty Russian hockey team in 1980.
I've been to most of the major ski towns in North America, stretching from Banff and Whistler in Canada down to New Mexico, and Lake Placid is the most proletarian-looking of them all. The one thing almost all ski locations have in common, whether they're in pricey Vail, chic Lake Tahoe or funky Telluride is second-rate restaurants. It's hard to get a good meal in an overpriced ski town.
However, in down-home Lake Placid, I had the best meals I ever had in a ski town, from the Breakfast Club with its pancakes topped with Adirondack berry compote and the Prince Edward Island mussels, or salmon over leeks at Lisa G's to the tender smoked brisket (lean or marbled) at Smoke Signals. I was pleasantly shocked at how good the food was.
Finally, the town is called Lake Placid, but I spent a couple of days there and I never saw the actual lake. The famed Olympic hamlet is built on the edges of Mirror Lake, which is frozen over in the winter and groomed for dozens of activities from hockey to speed skating.
There is even a toboggan run built at the edge of the frozen lake, and it's here that I'll begin my story, because tobogganing was the first activity I did in the town.
My wife and I drove from Connecticut and arrived midafternoon on a frigid Wednesday; the temperature sat below double digits. After sundown, I put on my cold-weather ski attire and wandered over to Mirror Lake, where an elevated platform had been constructed and now was lit up like a Christmas tree.
The toboggan platform was reconstructed from an old ski jump owned by a private club, that in a bygone era was a major presence in the town. As I wandered closer I could see a healthy crowd of people, many families with school-age children pulling toboggans about the incline. I peered up to see two runs side by side. Each run was an inset with wooden borders so each toboggan would stay in its own chute, and the base of each run was an absolute, smooth-as-glass ribbon of ice.
I pulled over the guy in charge and asked how fast the toboggans go. He scratched his exposed and scruffy chin and said when you get toward the bottom you are doing close to 30 miles an hour. I had to try it.
So here it was, a dark night with the temperature quickly heading to subzero and there were about 60 people, mostly families or teenagers on their own, cavorting on the icy toboggan run as if it were midday at Disneyland. I joined the crowd, grasping the cord of my toboggan. I pulled it slowly up the side path alongside the runs and waited my turn at the top.
The toboggans, which are for rent, can seat up to four people, but I was on my own. I was snuggly almost warm with my ski parka exposed to the elements. Unfortunately, as it turned out the parka still had a lift ticket attached to the zipper, which, with the zip pulled up, was just under my chin.
I got pushed off the platform, the toboggan rocketed downward and the lift ticket flapped up in my face. My hands were holding the toboggan's cord and there was nothing I could do. For the few seconds I was at peak speed down the chute I was almost blinded with the lift ticket firmly stuck to my glasses by g-force pressure.
Obscured vision turned out to be my biggest misadventure in Lake Placid.
The next morning I met Dan Cash, a local mountain-bike enthusiast, who was going to guide me on a fat-tire bike excursion through Henry's Wood, just on the outskirts of town. When I awoke the temperature was -10, but at the start of our excursion it has risen to zero, which Cash assured me was perfect for our ride.
Now Henry's Wood is a wonderful forest cut with fine trails for backcountry skiing, snowshoeing and even fat-tire biking, but the first part of it is a ridge, which is a hard climb in zero weather on low-pressure tires. I worked hard on the trail, building up a nice sweat underneath my layers of clothes. My heavy breath rose up and condensed on my glasses, which then froze in the zero degree temperature. Even though I've worn glasses since I was 10 years old, I had to pull them off and ride the single-track back down the ridge sans spectacles.
The only time I had clear vision all day, it was the one activity too many for me. In the afternoon, a young skater named Christie Sausa agreed to show me the finer points of speed-skating on the oval of Mirror Lake. Having ice-skated just once in the past 40 years, I really didn't have what it took to even muster a stride. The only clear vision I had all day was of me falling on my behind. Sausa was a good teacher and I survived this most dangerous of my Lake Placid activities, but there certainly was no Olympic speed skating in my future.
It was time to close the day and head for another fine meal at an unheralded Lake Placid eatery.
WHEN YOU GO
We stayed at Art Devlin's Motor Inn, which was created by the former Olympic ski jumper. His trophies dominate the lobby of the inn: www.artdevlins.com.
We had our best meals at Lisa G's (www.lisags.com), Smoke Signals (www.smokesignals.com) and The Breakfast Club Etc. (www.thebreakfastclubetc.com).
There are myriad winter activities in Lake Placid, but I chose the following: tobogganing (www.lakeplacid.com/do/family-fun/lake-placid-toboggan-chute), fat-tire biking at High Peaks Cyclery (www.highpeakscyclery.com) and ice-skating with Christie Sausa at Lake Placid Skater Productions (contact christiesausa@icloud.com).
Steve Bergsman is a freelance writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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